Southern California Photography by Alan Pavlik, editor and publisher of Just Above Sunset
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Photos and text, unless otherwise noted, Copyright © 2006 - Alan M. Pavlik

If you use any of these photos for commercial purposes I assume you'll discuss that with me

These were shot with a Nikon D70 - using lens (1) AF-S Nikkor 18-70 mm 1:35-4.5G ED, or (2) AF Nikkor 70-300mm telephoto, or after 5 June 2006, (3) AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor, 55-200 mm f/4-5.6G ED. They were modified for web posting using Adobe Photoshop 7.0

The original large-format raw files are available upon request.

Contact the Editor


Visitors from February 28, 2006, 10:00 am Pacific Time to date -


Wednesday, 31 May 2006
System Failure

Offline: System Failure

Mid-afternoon on Wednesday, May 31, 2006, the computer used to create the weekly, Just Above Sunset, and this daily web log, and the daily commentary site, failed. The system is now in the shop of the people who built the whole thing, over in Westwood. If all goes well they should have everything all straightened out by June 5 or so, and the more than three years of archives and the massive collection of web photographs and master photos will still be there.

While the system is being repaired, operations have been moved from Hollywood to Carlsbad, California, on the Pacific just north of San Diego. Postings to the web logs will resume soon, but the weekly site may not publish this Sunday. It's a matter of installing some special software and that sort of thing.

Visit again in twelve hours. Some new material should be here by then.


Posted by Alan at 9:41 PM PDT | Post Comment | Permalink
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Tuesday, 30 May 2006
Mediations on the Past, in Color
Topic: Color Studies

Mediations on the Past, in Color

Color study, Travel Town Museum, Griffith Park, Los Angeles
Color studies from the Travel Town Museum, an outdoor transportation museum on the other side of Griffith Park, beside Forest Lawn, and across the bone-dry Los Angeles River from Warner Brothers and Disney studios - the Burbank side of the park. The focus here is the history of railroad transportation in the western United States from 1880 to the 1930s. The place opened on December 14, 1952, and now has fourteen steam locomotives and twenty-six other pieces of rolling stock. The website is here, with history of how the museum came to be there here, and a list of what's on display here.

The locomotives, and more, will appear in these pages later, and in next weekend's Just Above Sunset. These are a few of the color studies. They were taken at noon, Monday, May 29, 2006, a dry hot day with harsh sun.

To the right, the side of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe caboose, number 999110, built in 1928 by American and Foundry.

Trivia: "On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe" - music by Harry Warren, lyrics by Johnny Mercer - was written for the 1946 movie, The Harvey Girls and won the Academy Award that year for Best Song in a Movie. There were versions in the late forties by Mercer, Bing Crosby, the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra, and Judy Garland and the Merry Macs, and now even one by Harry Connick, Jr. Add John Denver and Frank Sinatra too. You can find the lyrics here, including the French version (Jacques Plante) and the German version (Knud Schwielow). You can listen to a clip of the song from the soundtrack of The Harvey Girls here, but those days are long gone.
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Pink: Detail of Los Angeles Metropolitan Transit Authority 1543, built in 1911 by American Car and Foundry -

Color study, Travel Town Museum, Griffith Park, Los Angeles



Western Pacific Caboose, number 754, built in 1910 by Haskell & Barker -

Color study, Travel Town Museum, Griffith Park, Los Angeles



Locomotive detail -

Color study, Travel Town Museum, Griffith Park, Los Angeles



Posted by Alan at 7:21 PM PDT | Post Comment | Permalink
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Updated: Tuesday, 30 May 2006 7:24 PM PDT
Monday, 29 May 2006
Long Light
Topic: Light and Shadow

Long Light

Sunset, Sunday evening, May 28, 2006, from Mulholland Drive, Los Angeles
Sunset, Sunday evening, May 28, 2006 - location, Mulholland Drive, the two-lane road along the ridge of the mountains that separates the Los Angeles basin to the south and the San Fernando Valley to the north.

This is the view from a turn-out between the winding roads up out of Hollywood and Beverly Hills, to the west, Coldwater Canyon, and Laurel Canyon, to the east. This is looking north with Studio City immediately below, the western edge of Burbank in the middle, and Pacoima and the mountain communities in the far distance.

Consider this a technical exercise in light and shadow, and seeing how the Nikon D70 with the AF-5 Nikor 18-70 mm lens handles the various levels of intensity.






Sunset, Sunday evening, May 28, 2006, from Mulholland Drive, Los Angeles





























Sunset, Sunday evening, May 28, 2006, from Mulholland Drive, Los Angeles



Sunset, Sunday evening, May 28, 2006, from Mulholland Drive, Los Angeles


Posted by Alan at 9:12 AM PDT | Post Comment | Permalink
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Updated: Monday, 29 May 2006 9:22 AM PDT
Sunday, 28 May 2006
The Pause That Refreshes
Topic: Oddities

The Pause That Refreshes

Hollywood Boulevard, Friday, May 26, 2006 - detail across the street from Grauman's Chinese Theatre. Just a touch of the third world in what is otherwise the most American of places.

Painted Coke sign at hostel for foreign students, Hollywood Boulevard, across the street from Grauman's Chinese Theatre



Posted by Alan at 5:04 PM PDT | Post Comment | Permalink
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Saturday, 27 May 2006
Classic Hollywood
Topic: Historic Hollywood

Classic Hollywood

The El Capitan theater on Hollywood Boulevard - Friday, May 26, 2006
At the historic El Capitan theater on Hollywood Boulevard. Friday, May 26, 2006 - noted without comment.

History -
The El Capitan Theatre is a fully restored movie palace at 6838 Hollywood Boulevard in the Hollywood district of Los Angeles. It is owned and operated by The Walt Disney Company.

When the theater opened in 1926 as "Hollywood's First Home of Spoken Drama," it featured a Spanish colonial exterior designed by the architectural firm of Morgan, Walls and Clements, and a lavish East Indian interior by theatre designer G. Albert Lansburgh. It was later completely remodeled in the moderne style. In 1941, "Citizen Kane" made its world debut here. Senator Richard Nixon delivered his famous Checkers Speech from the theater in 1952, then a NBC studio.

After many years of disuse, The Walt Disney Company purchased the theater and paid for a fourteen million dollar renovation. The theater reopened in 1991 with the premiere of "The Rocketeer." In recent years, many of Disney's feature films have premiered here, accompanied by live stage shows.
Dumbo is back. Nixon isn't.


Entrance Detail -

Entrance detail, the El Capitan theater on Hollywood Boulevard



Entrance detail, the El Capitan theater on Hollywood Boulevard



Posted by Alan at 4:03 PM PDT | Post Comment | Permalink
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Updated: Saturday, 27 May 2006 4:06 PM PDT

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