Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Thematic Photographic - Urban

Every week Carmi at Written, Inc. poses a theme for photographic inspiration. This week's theme is URBAN.

Click to enlarge for details

This scene is on one of my favorite streets in the City of Los Angeles. This is Broadway - historic L.A.'s main drag. Broadway was where big downtown department stores were, and where the center of business, commerce, and entertainment was - back before Hollywood and the Miracle Mile became the scene. Broadway is now a bustling urban street, where more cash changes hand each day than on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills - only the transactions mostly happen in Spanish. It is still home to a dozen magnificent movie palaces - closed and concealed behind storefront merchants, awaiting restoration and rebirth. This is not the L.A. that appears in tourist brochures.

This is a games arcade, with nearby clothing, jewelry and music stores. Other entrepreneurs sell soft drinks, fortune-telling, knock-off handbags and street food.

I love the visual cacaphony of signs, blinking lights, banners, colors and shapes. Above and along the street, the buildings are classic turn-of-the-century architectural landmarks - hidden treasures to explore. This is one of the richest environments I've known, and I long to explore every bit of it.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Geeze lived here all my life and never been to this part of LA, Iam so missing out on the fun! Thanks for sharing this great colors, lively scene!
Amanda@moorebloglife.com

Steve Gravano said...

Even the people walking down the street are wearing colorful tops. Nice job.

Heather said...

Lovely capture ... nice job :)

Melli said...

This is definitely what I had in mind when I first saw Carmi's theme this week! I couldn't think of any such image that I had, so I took a different avenue... but now that I think of it, I believe I do have a similar image from New York City... Oh well! We didn't want to MATCH anyway, did we!? LOL! Your urban is great!

Marie said...

A colorful urban photo. I like it a lot.

ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© said...

Downtown Columbus has some areas, such as German Village and the Short North, that are nice to visit and walk through.

But real downtown is home to poor urban planning.

The waterfront is dominated by government buildings, and thus empty after 5 pm and on weekends. There was a downtown Mall, but Polaris and Easton killed it...it's vacant now.
~

Nej said...

I see a ton of pink in this shot. Coincidence? :-) :-) :-)

Anonymous said...

Lots of color!!! Love it!!

cactus petunia said...

This is the epitome of Urban...The only hint of nature is that one tree, waaay in the distance. Great interpretation!

Anonymous said...

So much color here -- and enough pink to count as a Pink Saturday!