Western White House
It seems that I’m on a mission to explore Southern California as yesterday I made my first visit to San Clemente with a good friend of mine. San Clemente is the most southern town in Orange County before the start of Camp Pendleton, it got its world fame by former US President Richard Nixon. Rumor has it is that he dreaded being in Washington, D.C. and he tried to do as much business as possible out of his San Clemente estate; which was commonly nicknamed as the “Western White House”. Even though this is not the view that his estate would have overlooked, this is the famous “San Clemente Pier” located in downtown San Clemente. Its a really beautiful town, if you’ve never been I would highly recommend a visit. I wanted to take a great sunset shot but it was very apparent that the clouds were coming in and they were going to blank the sky, 15 to 20 minutes after that the sky was completely grey!
A Gentle Giant
If you look at the above close up you’d probably never guess that this gentle giant can be so vicious & fatal! This series of images were taken at the Polar Bear exhibit at the San Diego zoo back in November. It’s a very interactive exhibit for children, there is a playground as soon as you enter that will let them feel as if they are in the arctic. There is also a life size bear statue that they can compare their size to; and that will always a draw the kids & adults in 🙂 They can also weigh themselves on a scale that shows their weight compared to a bear’s life cycle; most humans (more…)
City of Angels
Yesterday I spent the day in Los Angeles with my cousin. We didn’t have any set agenda besides hanging out and walking around the city. We started off the day at Griffith Observatory which overlooks the whole city from Mt. Hollywood; the Hollywood sign was right beside us while we overlooked the whole city. Its quite the scene and here is one of the images that I took from up there. I was quite happy to see that we had some clouds that day otherwise this would’ve been one boring shot, I like the shadows formed by the clouds with the pockets of light. It reminded me of the UFO attack in the movie Independence day!! 🙂
The fountain
This is the fountain in my housing complex, its right at the front of the entrance when you walk in. The complex is made up of series of building that form 3 hollow rectangles; 2 of them have swimming pools and this is the other one. The other side of the fountain looking out would be the view of the arches that I shared a few days ago.
Sunset & Algae
I took this image over a year ago while walking around La Jolla Cove. Right around sunset, I walked down to the rocks as close I could without being on top of the algae as its very slippery; the tripod slides all over it. If you look all around the algae there is distinct ring of water as they absorb quite a bit of it. Not much more to say that I hope you like the colorful show 🙂
Snowed in
Yesterday we had a bit of rainfall in San Diego and the city got paralyzed as if it got snowed in! Traffic does get pretty bad in Southern California when it rains but yesterday was very odd because I didn’t notice a lot of rain and the traffic jam was on the same level of a snow storm back in Canada. Speaking of which, this particular shot is of Mississauga right after Christmas after a typical days’ snowfall: everyone went to work and traffic was moving! 🙂 This is a close up shot of that skyline that I took on Christmas day that I posted previously.
Man in the tunnel
This is from that infamous day in Abu Dhabi, where I thought I can handle the heat of the Middle East; after all I grew up there. While I had about an hour to kill early in the morning I strolled for a walk to the corniche and decided to take some pics. The terrain has changed so much since I grew up there; now you have to take an underground tunnel to get to the other side of the road! This is the tunnel looking back into the city, one of the workers was biking towards me and I just caught him while he was dab smack in the middle 🙂
MTV Canada
An image I took of MTV Canada when we were walking around downtown Toronto. Apparently it was controversial that they decided to take over the building that was/is housing a Masonic Temple. I tried to look up the term on Wikipedia to truly understand what a Masonic temple is and I got more confused after reading the article. I don’t understand the controversy, that is my conclusion 🙂
Batmobile
A few days back I posted an image of McLaren SLR saying that it looks like the batmobile, I’m quite sure its this particular angle that made think that. I processed this image slightly differently, wanted to give it that blue/cool look… more suited for Gotham City 🙂 Hope you like it.
Green Flash Brewing Co.
A few days back I posted about a potential fad going on with food trucks in the south. In San Diego however, I’m sure there is an explosion of microbreweries at least it seems that way to me. There is a specific crowd that is drawn to them as there isn’t much there to do besides drink beer: the brewery just has a store front to serve beer and some memorabilia merchandise, thats it! I’m sure that they have some kind of deals with the food trucks to come by as they won’t be able to keep their customers for the night. Enough of my ramblings, on this particular day the sunset was too good to pass up. I had to put my beer down, grab my camera and take a few pictures to capture the amazing colors of that night specially the way it reflected on the glass.
Arches
Not quite the Arc de Triomphe in Paris but these are the arches that lead you from one building to the other in my housing/condominium complex. I find that each condominium complex our my area to be taking a theme of one of the European cities. Most have taken an Italian/French theme and mine I think has more of a French influence?!?! Anyway one of the things that I look for is symmetry, maybe its the Engineer in me but I’m really drawn to these kind of compositions. This is not the most perfectly symmetrical shape but its close enough 🙂
Storage Room
This was a storage room/area in Solana beach for the lifeguards. I thought it was an electric room but right around sunset I saw a lifeguard empty some of his belongings in that room and then lock it up again; I’m referring to things such as floats. Its a bit odd to see the storage area not close to the ocean but that part of Solana beach has a very narrow beach so I suppose it makes sense.
Church in La Jolla
Just another beautiful church in La Jolla on a Friday afternoon that was taken over a year ago. Its always nice going back through all these old photos and remembering the day and what was going on through your mind and what was the unknown at the time. Photographs can be therapeutic in more ways than just being pretty, for some its about reliving & recounting all these good ol’ memories that we all love to hold on to… at least for me they do 🙂
The view
Continuing with the the theme of office views from yesterday, here is one of the possible views in our San Diego office. During my orientation, which was 3 years ago, we were told that we have 42 buildings in San Diego; so you can only imagine the different views of the city that you could end up with. This particular one is not much more than a window office, the way I see it: at least you get to see the sun and for the record its not mine 🙂 I’m just lucky to have my own office.
2 Rivers Photos 