Location: Palisades Park, Santa Monica, CA
Been in L.A. for more than a week and I finally got a chance to see the ocean. Santa Monica's Palisades Park is a favorite place for outdoor workout buffs during the morning and the evening and of course, later it's a lovely place to gaze out onto the Pacific and wonder what's churning beneath the surface of the sea. With or without that special someone.
I took a number of shots closer to the water, but this one was my favorite. I like its perspective and I like how solitary the scene feels, in that way you can feel totally alone in a roomful of people. When I first moved to Santa Monica, I came to this spot a lot. I'd sit on the bench with my notebook and write and write. Most of that stuff is still buried in my notebooks forever, but some of it ended up in my published work. Part of L.A.'s mystique, part of what makes L.A. , well L.A. is places like this, where the proximity of humans to the vast mystery and power of the elements is ignored at your peril. Like living on the edge of the world.
Indeed beyond that fence in the background is a very long, steep drop onto Pacific Coast Highway. The fence wasn't always so sturdy either -- you could easily get over it and people would climb down the California Incline to get a better vantage point of the view. Of course, you had to be real careful of your footing, unless you wanted to end up road kill for the sight-seeing tourists whizzing down PCH in their rental convertibles.
You can't do that stuff anymore but it doesn't mean the footing is any better. The next rainstorm might bring a mountainside of mud down on your house and nobody lives here without that back-of-the-brain fear of the Big One. Now that's the kind of thing that'll rock anyone's world view. Seriously. You gotta love this town.
Taken with my K100D with a polarizing filter and edited slightly in Photoshop.
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