Two photos from my early walk tonight in downtown Los Angeles.

The iPad looks like a hit, but not for me. I am planning to wait a year or two for additional features and better software like Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom. Otherwise I have no use for the iPad.

The key features I liked were the external keyboard and case.



Is the iPad a computer, left, or a book, right? The new dock for the iPad, left includes a keyboard that turns the iPad into a computer. The new case, right, makes it into a book. Either way the new iPad and these accessories will attract a lot of interest from educators. I suspect iPads will be scooped up by school districts, resulting in declining MacBook sales.

The bad: no video conference camera, video output, USB ports or multitasking.

The good: price. At $499, the iPad is half the price I was expecting.

I will take a pass on the original iPad. I need a better way to import and export images (USB ports) and software multitasking to easily jump between programs. I will stick with my trusty MacBook.

At 11 a.m. this morning I sent out my morning diet coke twitter message:

"Shaq beats Lakers, more rain, stocks down another 50 - but I have my diet coke. Let there be rainbows!"

At 2:30 p.m. on the way to work, I shot this pic.


While headed eastbound on the Ventura freeway, this great rainbow popped out in the Woodland Hills area.

Life is good.

Last Thursday dinner break was during the monthly Art Walk in downtown Los Angeles. Robert Lachman and I went over to check out the Luminosity exhibit at the corner of 4th and Spring. Time for a slide show.




Artwork by Sean Sobczak on display at the Continental Gallery on Art Walk night 1/14/10. Show is titled “Luminosity.”

I finished working on these images last night, a week after shooting them - more playing around more with Topaz plugins.

Flickr



Playground equipment at Peppertree Park in Newbury Park after using Topaz Simplify.



A self-portrait shadow at Peppertree Park after using Topaz Simplify cartoon preset.



Photo from my iPhone using Topaz Simplify to give artist look and hide the grain in shadow areas.



Fountain in downtown Los Angeles given bump with Topaz Detail.

Last week I used one of my walks to visit the Triforium in downtown Los Angeles. From Wikipedia: "The Triforium is the name of a six story 60 ton public sculpture in the Los Angeles Mall Civic Center complex, located at the intersection of Temple and Main Streets in Downtown Los Angeles."

The work by artist Joseph Young was originally installed in 1975 and has been rebuilt in recent years. On this visit I wanted to try a few slow exposure camera twirls. By the look of my flickr Triforium photo set, below, I got carried away. This morning I uploaded about 50 frames.

I was having way too much fun.

While I am not covering Newbury Park High soccer this season, I had to shoot the Alumni matches. Besides my son Nick was playing for the Alumni.

Here are the links to Dotphoto albums:

NPHS Girls Alumni

NPHS Boys Alumni


After all the years of getting faces with ball, just for once I wanted something different. So here is my feet and ball photo from Alumni game. Of course I ran it through Topaz Adjust.

1951 AP photo of Los Angeles Times building with current view in background from top of Los Angeles City Hall.

Ok, I'll admit it, I like historical photos.

Back in November I came across a set of seven Associated Press images of downtown Los Angeles taken in January, 1951. They were all shot from the top of LA City Hall. The logical idea was to match the images and document how downtown has changed in 59 years.

My first attempt bombed - the observation deck was closed that day. So LA Times staff photographer Gary Friedman gave me his City Hall contact - Los Angeles Councilman Tom LaBonge.

Councilman LaBonge not only got me up to the observation deck, he held up the proofs of the 1951 images for me to match. That's his hand in the photo above.

I turned in the photos and went off on vacation. While gone, web photo editor Bryan Chan really got behind this project. He went back to City Hall and did one of his 360 panos. Then Chan and web expert Sean Connelley built the final interactive web page on LATimes.com.

The Metro Photo desk editors also got behind this project. Some of the images became a full page Then and Now column for the Sunday, January 3rd, 2010 edition.

What about the original 1951 photographer or photographers? Two images have a photographer byline of Ellis R. Bosworth. The other five had no photographers' byline. I strongly suspect all the images were taken by Bosworth.

The final web page includes six of the images. The seventh overlapped two of the others so was dropped.

Link to the LATimes interactive page.

Every year Jack shows up in my tree in his special spot.

But now that the holidays are over and Jack is back in his box.

Come next Thanksgiving, Jack will pop out and return to his spot.

But until then I visit Jack at his box.

Did you know he serves breakfast Jacks all around the clock!

Happy New Years!

From Scott