Last February, I began to look for another go-to location for sunrise shots other than my favorite spots in Laguna Beach. I had seen several shots, over the years, of the Los Angeles skyline in front of the snow covered San Gabriel Mountains, but I had no idea where these shots were taken from. As I stared and stared at google maps, I just couldn't figure it out. I didn't see ANY hills on the western side of Los Angeles, and I was just about to give up when I found several shots on flickr that were tagged with "Kenneth Hahn State Recreation Area." After searching a bit on this park, it turned out to be the location I was looking for.

Now all I needed was a clear weekend, right after a Winter storm. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get get down there in March and then things pretty much dried up after that. So last Saturday was my first opportunity since discovering this park. I set off at 6 AM with high hopes of getting something decent as a recent storm was still clearing the area.

When I arrived, I was immediately struck by the fact that Kenneth Hahn Regional Park is easily one of the butt ugliest parks I've ever seen in my life. It was completely surrounded by brown weeds, dead trees, chain link fences and oil pumps. Although I made it down there in just over a half an hour, I spent 20 minutes looking for the entrance as I was POSITIVE that there must have been some sort of mistake. There was nothing remotely resembling a park from La Cienega as I drove up, and I lost the majority of a gorgeous sunrise driving up and down La Brea thinking that the entrance must be on that side.

Once I found the entrance, it was $6 to park and then I drove to the Summit. As I arrived the actual area around the top was rather nice...except for the brown weeds in all directions. But the view of Los Angles was truly spectacular. From the far end of the walk trail, you have an incredible panoramic view from the Hollywood Sign across all of Los Angeles over the San Gabriel Valley with glimpses of peaks from the San Bernardino mountain range and the Anaheim Hills. When I arrived, there was only a brief moment or two when the city was side lit by the sunrise, and then the sun disappeared behind some clouds and never really popped out again before I left. I will definitely be making a return trip, hopefully right after a big Winter storm.


William McIntosh Photography | 500px | Twitter

Tags:   Los Angeles Sunrise Kenneth Hahn Park Los Angles Skyline San Gabriel Mountains Nikkor 28-300 VR

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It's been quite a while since I made my last trip to the Griffith Observatory. It may very well have been during my college days, and that does go back awhile. But after snooping around for more locations to shoot sunrises and sunsets from here in Southern California, the Observatory seemed like an obvious choice. The main obstacle for me for the past several...dozens...of years has been traffic. Los Feliz is on the OTHER side of Los Angeles and any photographer making the trip in from Orange County can count on horrendous traffic if they were to try to get there on a week day.

But on Black Friday, 2013, I set off at 5 AM with hopes of making it up there for the sunrise. As I arrived and pulled into the parking lot, it struck me that there are some similarities between the Observatory and Peter Jackson's Interpretation of Tolkein's Minas Tirith. As you approach from the parking lot, there is a green lawn with walkways through it that approach from North, South, East, and West and a circular center, granted the center is taken up with an obelisk rather than a white tree, but the effect is still there. Secondly, You've got this panoramic view of the surrounding lands below. And lastly, the columns, railing, detail and overall architecture, especially on the lower walkway around the back of the observatory seem like they would fit rather well in a city designed by the Numenorians.

OK...so maybe I'm stretching here, but that's how it came across at 5 AM after only 4 hours of sleep. The fact that black storm clouds were rolling in from the West really added to the whole Mt. Doom thing as well, so maybe that's what got me started on Minas Tirith. And the lights could be orc torches....no?

ANYWAY...I had a wonderful time shooting up there and I will definitely be back. I only shot for about 45 minutes or so, but in that time, the Eastern horizon glowed red, the entire sky lit up in pink, and then the sun actually burst out between a crack in the clouds for a few minutes and lit up Los Angeles in an eery glow against the storm moving in. The view from up there was amazing as I zoomed in on the San Gabriel and San Bernadino Mountains, the Anaheim Hills, Los Angeles and all the way across down to Westwood where the ocean behind it was obscured by the rain storm moving in.

Ironically, there were only about 10 people up there as the sun came up. Maybe the rest of the world was standing in line at Walmart, but I was very glad I passed on the flat screen TV and went for the sunrise at the observatory instead. What an incredible morning!

William McIntosh Photography | 500px | Twitter

Tags:   Griffith Observatory Los Angeles California Sunrise Storm Nikon D800 Nikkor 14-24 2.8 HDR

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So I was on my way back to the car when I glanced up and noticed the red light reflecting on the lamp posts in front of me. I immediately turned around just in time to see the sun burst through a slit in the clouds. I set up the tripod and cranked the aperture down to f22 and quickly fired off several brackets before racing back behind the observatory to grab some shots of the sun hitting the buildings of downtown LA. The sun disappeared again after a minute or two so I didn't have time to switch from my 14-24 to the 28-300. I'm still working on cropping those shots, so hopefully at least a couple of them will turn out and I'll be able to post them soon.

I also wanted to mention the stark difference in terms of crowd levels between 6 AM on a Friday and 4 PM on a Sunday. I returned to the observatory again last Sunday afternoon and I have never seen so many cars parked along a stretch of roadway in my entire life. The Observatory parking lot was full so people started parking what seemed like MILES away down Western Canyon Road. After finally finding a parking place, I half ran all the way back to the observatory in an attempt to get up there before the sun went down. Compare that to Black Friday at 5:30 AM when I parked in the front row of the parking lot and was one of about 5 people there at that hour.

I think I'll be sticking with sunrises from now on. :)


William McIntosh Photography | 500px | Twitter

Tags:   Griffith Observatory Los Angeles Sunrise Winter HDR

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A couple of weeks ago, I noticed some high clouds moving in and I had a hunch that I might be able to catch a colorful sunrise the following morning. I was just about to head off to my normal spot in Laguna when I began to wonder where else I might try. I had seen some shots of Palos Verdes from other photographers, and I began to search through shots on various sites, and while I was searching, I came across a shot of Griffith Observatory by Flickr user Andy Kennelly which had the tall buildings of the LA skyline directly behind. As I had just been up there a couple of weeks before, I was intrigued as to where this shot was taken from, and how close those buildings were due to the compression using a telephoto lens.

So I gave up on the beach and spent some time on google earth trying to find a spot on the trails above the Observatory that would put the skyline directly behind it. After getting a general idea, I set off the following Saturday morning at 4 AM. By the time I made it up to the Observatory parking lot, I was shocked to see so many other people out and about while it was still dark. There had to be at least 50 people as I parked and by 5 AM I think there must have been about 100. After a 20 minute hike, I found the spot, set up my tripod, and waited for the sun to rise. As luck would have it, the sky lit up and I spent quite a bit of time shooting the observatory from several angles before finishing my hike to an incredible lookout point higher up the trail.

It hurt pretty bad to get up at 4 AM, but it is definitely something I'll be doing again.

William McIntosh Photography | 500px | Twitter

Tags:   Griffith Observatory Los Angeles CA Sunrise Nikkor 28-300 VR

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I've been sitting on this photo since last November as I've had such a difficult time figuring out how to crop and process it. The dynamic range was rather huge and my first two, or three or forty attempts to use hdr on it gave me mixed results. Finally, after using "Merge to 32 bit HDR' with Lightroom and quite a bit of tweaking in with Nik Efex, I came up with something I thought would work.

This is the view that greeted me as I stood on the balcony of Griffith Observatory last November. I had arrived at about 5:30 AM and was hoping that the sun might be able to just sneak under the cloud layer of an incoming storm. After a while, the faintest bit of pink appeared on the horizon, and within 10 minutes, the entire sky just to the left of the LA skyline was lit up.

My cropping problem came from the fact that the sky was so amazing and I wanted to fit all of it in with my 14-24 lens, but there was just so much to look at. I finally cropped away about 60 percent of the photo leaving what you see here.

A bit of useless trivia: Before I took this shot, two of the large buildings in the downtown skyline left specific lights on over night. One read "USC" and the other "UCLA." This must have been the weekend of the big game.

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Tags:   Los Angeles Griffith Observatory Sunrise

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