On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
Good Morning All,
This weekday feature is for Juicers who are are on the road, traveling, or just want to share a little bit of their world via stories and pictures. So many of us rise each morning, eager for something beautiful, inspiring, amazing, subtle, of note, and our community delivers – a view into their world, whether they’re far away or close to home – pictures with a story, with context, with meaning, sometimes just beauty. By concentrating travel updates and tips here, it’s easier for all of us to keep up or find them later.
So please, speak up and share some of your adventures and travel news here, and submit your pictures using our speedy, secure form. You can submit up to 7 pictures at a time, with an overall description and one for each picture.
You can, of course, send an email with pictures if the form gives you trouble, or if you are trying to submit something special, like a zipped archive or a movie. If your pictures are already hosted online, then please email the links with your descriptions.
For each picture, it’s best to provide your commenter screenname, description, where it was taken, and date. It’s tough to keep everyone’s email address and screenname straight, so don’t assume that I remember it “from last time”. More and more, the first photo before the fold will be from a commenter, so making it easy to locate the screenname when I’ve found a compelling photo is crucial.
Have a wonderful day, and enjoy the pictures!
Sorry I’ve been not-so-involved. I hurt my back 1 1/2 weeks ago and the first week, I didn’t really sit at my computer more than an hour a day. Holding my iPad has also too much, so I’ve been surfing and doing online reading on my phone pretty much exclusively. Each day is better but I aggravated it Sunday, so I’m a few steps back….
Today, pictures from valued commenter J R in WV.
After a long week in Baja watching and petting whales, we decided not to fly straight home, but to spend a few days in LA. It rained the whole time, so was cool and damp, and I caught a cold after a couple of days (darn) so we did two museums. First the LA County Museum of Natural History on Tuesday, where dinosaurs and minerals were the most interesting photo subjects, and then the Getty Museum on Wednesday, before I laid up with my cold.
The Getty Museum is a white Travertine temple o art and culture on a mountaintop in the wooded hills on the edge of Los Angeles.
The two exhibits we viewed were Early Photography and Rembrandt Miniatures after the Mogol Empire. The early photos were pale, low contrast, and difficult to take pictures of. I did anyway, and my pictures were mostly not usable. The Rembrandt miniatures were really tiny, like 2 inches on a side. So also difficult to photograph.
I did take some pretty good (for a cloudy rainy day) photos of the actual museum itself, so that’s mostly what we have here. By the way, the food in the cafe was fabulous!! No pics, tho!
The Front Steps of the Getty
Taken on 2018-03-14
Getty Museum, LA
After you arrive at the parking facility, you take a tram up the hill to the actual Getty Museum, and this is how you arrive at the actual facility, which is mostly White Roman Travertine.
The bronze is the best of the sculpture we saw, very Greco-Roman in style. The steps and the buildings are awesome when you arrive!
f/3.4 for 1/800 sec at 52mm
The Interior Atrium of the Getty Museum
Taken on 2018-03-14
Getty Museum, in LA
This is interior of the roundest, swoopiest building in LA. Unless BillInG. knows of something we don’t! The main gift shop, the information desk, presentations, mobile equipment, lots in here.
f/2.8 for 1/640th at 25mm.
Exhibit Room – Early Photography
Taken on 2018-03-14
Getty Museum, in LA
A beautiful room full of the earliest American photography. Many photos were covered by a black opaque cloth that you had to lift away to see, in order to protect the fragile and dim photo from light which tends to fade some early technology used for photography pretty quickly compared to today’s dyes
Pre-Emancipation Children – trigger warning!!
Taken on 2018-03-14
Getty Museum, LA
This was one of the more successful attempts at photographing these early photos, so I decided to include it, after much repair work on the original picture I took.
These cute children were (according the the legend beside the frame) slaves, probably from New Orleans.
They were obviously prepared for being photographed, and we can have little knowledge of the circumstances or reasons for these photographs being taken. Perhaps advertising? Who knows.
I decided to put a lot of time and energy into learning how to repair my photo, and then into working on the photo, because it is so relevant to today’s most important political issue… how our current administration decided to treat refugee families.
When this photo was taken, slavery was the law of the land in the Deep South, and owners were permitted to do whatever they pleased to their slaves. These children look pretty light skinned to me, but they had the rule of “One Drop” of African blood, made you African, and potentially a slave. They could be bought and sold for any purpose. These children were not going to be field workers, and they may well have had a much worse fate in store.
Owners and overseers of slaves could do and did do anything to their property. This is why each generation of slaves included some who had lighter complexions than their parent. There were no laws about sexual abuse regarding slaves, nor murder, although that would be costly… no, I’m not kidding, that was the equation in the Deep South.
Today DHS Secretary Kirstjen Neilsen set in motion the separation of children from their families with less paperwork than the confiscation of a criminal’s wallet.
We know today that DHS, as ordered by Secretary Neilsen, made no provision for reuniting these illegally arrested children with their families whatsoever. They were taken away and imprisoned in a system that assumes 3 year old children can represent themselves in a kangaroo immigration court. They made no records of these children’s names, of their parent’s names, of their home town, NOTHING.
Slaves were transferred with better record keeping in most cases, as it was a transaction with lots of money changing hands. I personally believe Secretary Neilsen and everyone else in that chain of command down to the capo who took the child from his family should be in jail awaiting trial for kidnapping and human trafficking, because we made slaves illegal 150 years ago, even in the Deep South.
I believe Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions should be in jail for failure to control illegal behavior, child abuse, in the DHS. He knows what is happening, and takes no action to prevent the kidnapping and illegal trafficking in child refugees, the most vulnerable persons in our land.
I’m sorry to introduce a painful issue into the Photo journal, but the more I went through these photos, the more this one cried out to me. We can do nothing for these children in this photo, over a century and a half old. But by God we can do something for the illegally kidnapped and trafficked children today.
f/2.8 for 1/125 sec, at 25mm
Main Plaza of the Getty Museum
Taken on 2018-03-14
Getty museum, LA
IIRC, the building in the background is the dining facilities, where the food is from 12 different ethnicities, and they are all delicious. On the left is another of the 6 buildings that make up the museum complex.
In the background you can see that there are green hills, except for the burnt ones, all around the hill of the museum. It isn’t raining hard, but it is very wet and foggy.
f/2.8 for 1/1600 sec at 25mm
Getty Offices
Taken on 2018-03-14
This is on the right of the front steps as you arrive. The building is covered with the same Off-white Travertine the floors of the plaza are paved with.
f/3.6 for 1/1000 sec at 66 mm
Rail Head on Mountain Top
Taken on 2018-03-14
Getty Museum, LA
You can see that by closing time the fog had cleared somewhat, and that the hills around the museum have their own grand architecture.
On the left is the road that deliveries are made on, and on the right is the tram station that visitors arrive in. And the same pretty Travertine from Rome.
f/3.2 for 1/1300 sec at 42mm
Thank you so much J R in WV, do send us more when you can.
Travel safely everybody, and do share some stories in the comments, even if you’re joining the conversation late. Many folks confide that they go back and read old threads, one reason these are available on the Quick Links menu.
One again, to submit pictures: Use the Form or Send an Email
raven
Too bad is was overcast, the view to the Southwest off the back terrace in nice. Off to Houston. I was less than thrilled but this made it more interesting
Anthony Bourdain Shined a Light on Houston’s Stunning Culinary Diversity
rikyrah
Those were really nice pics ? ?
rikyrah
@raven:
Have a safe trip.
raven
@rikyrah: Thanks, the drive to and from the airports will probably the biggest risk!
satby
@raven: it usually is the most dangerous part! Safe travels, I hope it ends up better than you expect.
satby
JR, nice photos and totally agree with you about the parallels between children slaves and children stolen from their parents today. A more direct comparison could be the Native American children taken from their families and tribes and sent to boarding schools to Anglicize them. We never seen to learn from history.
arrieve
Thanks for the beautiful photos, JR. I’ve never been to the Getty and have always wanted to go. Someday. Those pictures of the slave children are chilling — we never learn.
Quinerly
?
debbie
Alain, hope your back’s better soon. Having dealt with a lousy back for almost 30 years, I definitely feel your pain. As they say, one step forward, two steps back…
eclare
Great pictures and descriptions
JPL
Thank you for the wonderful pictures.
Gin & Tonic
@raven: Statistically you are correct.
David Evans
Great pictures. That’s a really handsome building and I didn’t know about it.
?BillinGlendaleCA
I’d say the Disney Hall would give the Getty a run for it’s money in that account, but it’s a Gehry. The buildings in the background on the hill in your last shot is Mt. St. Mary’s College, they also have a a campus north of U$C(the old Doheny mansion and it’s area*). One thing I’d suggest, on exterior shots and where you have enough light, use a smaller aperture to get a greater depth of field.
*Previously feature in one of my “On The Road” posts.
Manyakitty
Alain, I hope you find some relief soon. Can’t take care of others without taking care of yourself!
Great pics–I adore the Getty. This reminds me that I need to send in some pics of my last CA visit.
Mnemosyne
It’s always fun to see someone else’s perspective on a place I know pretty well. The Getty is even more impressive when it’s sunny because the white marble glows in the sunlight.
That’s also the location where the laboratories for the Getty Research Institute are, which I was lucky enough to get a tour of once upon a time. They’re in one of the buildings towards the front with the rest of the administrative offices.
If you’re primarily interested in the Greek and Roman statuary and other ancient objects, you have to go to the Getty Villa in Malibu, which requires a parking reservation, so it takes a little more pre-planning.
J R in WV
@Mnemosyne:
We intended to go to the Getty Estate in Malibu the next day, via a cab, but I caught a cold and tried to get mostly over it before flying back east. We like art from the stone age up to right now… Europe is full of pre-Roman art, as well as Greek and Roman stuff, even after the English and American super-rich stole shiploads of it.
The Getty is six big buildings, mostly underground, as one of the directions was to not go up over two museum-sized stories. One is a restaurant, one is an auditorium, one is administration, I think the rest is museum space. We saw a tiny bit of one building, it would take a week to see a majority of it.
The day we were there it wasn’t overcast so much as the museum on the hill was up in the clouds, when we got up there you couldn’t see the other hilltops around it at all. So there were no views anywhere.
By the time we left in the late afternoon you could see that the hillside across the interstate freeway was burned.
Glad you all enjoyed it. Thanks for the tip Billin, advice is always welcome.
meander
Thanks for the photos of the Getty Museum. I like the look of the white buildings against the overcast sky — in some, it looks like the buildings are floating.
I highly recommend the Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades on the Pacific Coast Highway (i.e., Hwy 1, the PCH). The focus is art from classical Greece and Rome. But for me, the highlight was the building and gardens. The main building at the site is a recreation of a major villa in Pompeii that was buried by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, and therefore lets you walk through history. You can see how the Roman house was constructed, layout of rooms, typical adornments. The gardens also attempt to recreate ancient Rome. The museum conducts many tours each day on the architecture, art, and gardens (e.g., walk through the garden talking about food of ancient Rome).
The art highlights for me were the funerary monuments — i.e., gravestones with sculpture or messages — and an exhibit of glass work from the era.
As the commenter above mentions, you need to plan ahead, as they often sell out. (I’ll note their unusual but somewhat logical policy on “walk up” visitors. If you walk up to the entrance gate and don’t have evidence that you took the bus to the site, they won’t let you in because part of the deal with the neighbors was to vigorously discourage people from parking in the neighborhood while visiting the museum.)
If you have a lot of museum endurance, the Getty has a great deal: pay for one museum, get the other for free. I can imagine picking a day when the main museum is open late, visiting the Villa in the morning, enjoying a long lunch (perhaps Santa Monica) and some sightseeing, grabbing a late afternoon snack (or a nap), then visiting the main museum in the early evening.