The Catalina Mountain Range, just outside of Tucson, AZ.
Very pretty. I also love the little red-bird of paradise flowers like the one that got into the edge of this view of the mountains.
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Pandemic Fears Benefit Catalina Island Tourism
Cruise ships normally destined for sunny Mexico are diverting to Santa Catalina Island to avoid possible exposure to the Swine Influenza Virus at Mexican ports like Ensenada and Puerto Vallarta. Cruise ship traffic to the island is normally three to five ships a week, depending on the season.
Through May, the island now expects 25 cruise ship calls, possibly more. With one ship in the harbor, it is our personal experience that the foot traffic in town and the island’s attractions become quite busy. Now, according to the Catalina Island Company, there are likely to be several more instances of two ships in the harbor at the same time.
Image: a 2005 photo of Avalon Bay taken from Island Express Helicopter.
Our anniversary is in September and, as usual, we’re booked in to the Hotel Metropole. We hope that the rush is over by then.
Freighter Cruising the Catalina Channel
We took a quick drive to the top of the Palos Verdes Peninsula in Southwestern Los Angeles County today, despite our busy schedule of chores, errands and shopping. The visibility was pretty good, but the lighting was unusual due to high clouds in the area. I took this photo of a freighter slowly making its way toward the Los Angeles Harbor through the Catalina Channel. You can see the Catalina Island Isthmus and Ship Rock at Two Harbors in the distance. Click for the full-sized image.
Catalina Channel – 180° View
After a horrible three weeks on Wall Street and another demoralizing day today (especially for conservatives), I’m going to just say woooo saaaaah and divert my creativity to these nerdy panoramas. In the top image, on October 11th, I stood at Del Cerro Park near the top of San Pedro Hill on the Palos Verdes Peninsula and snapped eight separate images in sequence from left to right. I used the Canon Zoom Browser Photo Stitch utility to assemble this 180 degree view of the Catalina Channel on a nice clear day.
The second image is an experiment – The normal mode for panoramas is to center the horizon vertically in the image and pan the camera. I wanted to get a panorama of the coastline from Del Cerro and to get the foreground to blend into the picture as well. I am pretty pleased with the results I got. I took the series by trying to keep the horizon ‘horizontal’ in the viewfinder. I took six such images going from left to right. I had to post-process the pictures using a parallel scan setting on the stitch tool to get this ‘fish-eye’ sort of panoramic rendering. Both the foreground and the distance are rendered in perspective – just the effect I wanted to get.
Click on either of these images to view them in the image viewer.
A Look Back to Catalina
Damsel took a lot of photos last Saturday when the air was exceptionally clear here in Southern California. We spent quite a lot of time shooting photos along the coastline, but when it came time to climb back over the hill to our side, we stopped at a scenic overlook and took this panoramic look back towards the coastline and Catalina Island in the distance. Click for the full-size panoramic image in the viewer.
The Catalina Casino – An Art Deco Treasure
The Casino in Avalon, CA. on Catalina Island, is truly one of the world’s greatest Art Deco treasures. The mermaid over the box office (see a closer image here) has become an icon associated with Avalon – her image appears on event posters all over town and on the mainland in the terminals.
Cap’n Bob captured this vertical panorama of the mermaid while standing in the loggia at the entrance to the theater and ballroom. He combined three images to render this top-to-bottom view of the mural and box office. Click on her for the really big version – use the scroll bars to see the entire image.
More about the Casino’s murals from LAMurals.org:
Date
1929Location
The Casino’s Avalon Theatre
1 Casino Way
AvalonMedia Notes
Designed by John Gabriel Beckman. Executed by Emil Kosa. Jr., Aloyous Bohnen, Vyseled Ulianoff, Alexander Kiss, Eugene de Goncz.Description
Nine panels of underwater marine life including a mermaid encircle the loggia’s inside walls. They are painted directly on the concrete.Around the dome, within the auditorium in an Art Deco style, are local flora and fauna, scenes of early California, and abstract designs. They were painted on a burlap-like material with extra-fine ground pigments in a flatene medium (used as a binder by printers). On a seashell carried by seahorses, Venus rises from the the waves. She is the central figure above the proscenium arch. Inside the arch are other figures as well as a map of Catalina.
More about the Casino’s description and history from Away.com:
Packin’ Heat for Catalina Island
This year for our trip to Catalina Island, we took a flight to the island on Island Express Helicopters, just as we did last year. I took some video of the last trip that you can see at this link. Damsel took some stills this year which I stitched together in the composite below – the helicopter arrival at the helipad – the departure over Los Angeles Harbor – Passing Avalon Bay – on the pad at Pebbly Beach.
However, we did something this year that we have never done before – we took firearms. I made a couple of calls to Island Express and Catalina Express (the boat coming back) to inquire about the policies for bringing firearms for non-CCW private citizens. (We have the Utah CCW but the idiots in the California Legislature deem that to be worthless here).
The helicopter folks told us to declare the firearms to the attendant who would ensure that they were packed in the baggage compartment. We were instructed to pack the ammo in separate luggage.
The boat people said to present the weapons to the Captain of the vessel before boarding and the same admonition for packing ammo as before.
Since we didn’t want to take the guns with us during the day while we were touring and dining, we had the hotel clerk lock them in a safe compartment for which I was presented the only key.
We packed the guns (S&W 686 and 442) in their original cases with padlocks. To avoid blatantly carrying gun cases in the terminals and around the streets of Avalon, I packed both cases in a paper supermarket shopping bag which I kept with me at all times until surrendering to the transportation agents.
Lessons learned – we can get both revolvers into a single case since the 442 is very small and the 686 has a short barrel. The safe boxes do not have any padding, so there was metal-to-metal contact during storage and handling of the box. Next time we will put the guns in a pouch or padded gun case when we put them into the safe.