20 February 2022
On the Southern California Beaches page photo #5481 was added to the Wayfarers Chapel section. Also the Cabrillo Beach section was added in its entirety.
5 July 2021
Added picture #5143 to the Misc. Other Pictures page.
5 July 2021
Added picture #5143 to the Misc. Other Pictures page.
Southern California Beaches
January 2022
After two years of not being able to travel and take any pictures; the weather forecast said there were going to be higher than normal surf for the next day. So I decided to go down to the beach to see if I could find anything interesting that I could photograph. Over the next several weeks I made several visits to various Southern California beaches and beach related sites. The following are the results of those visits.
Redondo Beach Pier
Picture Number: CM1_5163
Date: January 2022
Camera: Nikon D7100
ISO: 200 Shutter Speed: 1/640 sec
F-Stop: f/6.3 Lens: 200 mm
Picture Number: CM1_5159
Date: January 2022
Camera: Nikon D7100
ISO: 125 Shutter Speed: 1/125 sec
F-Stop: f/11 Lens: 98 mm
Picture Number: CM1_0463
Date: January 2022
Camera: Nikon D7100
ISO: 200 Shutter Speed: 1/640 sec
F-Stop: f/6.3 Lens: 200 mm
Torrance Beach
Picture Number: CM1_5228
Date: January 2022
Camera: Nikon D7100
ISO: 140 Shutter Speed: 1/125 sec
F-Stop: f/11 Lens: 98 mm
Picture Number: CM1_5170
Date: January 2022
Camera: Nikon D7100
ISO: 200 Shutter Speed: 1/500 sec
F-Stop: f/5.6 Lens: 200 mm
Picture Number: CM1_5272
Date: January 2022
Camera: Nikon D7100
ISO: 200 Shutter Speed: 1/500 sec
F-Stop: f/5.6 Lens: 200 mm
Ventura Marina
Picture Number: CM1_5243
Date: January 2022
Camera: Nikon D7100
ISO: 100 Shutter Speed: 1/160 sec
F-Stop: f/11 Lens: 195 mm
Picture Number: CM1_5244
Date: January 2022
Camera: Nikon D7100
ISO: 100 Shutter Speed: 1/160 sec
F-Stop: f/11 Lens: 170 mm
Picture Number: CM1_5256
Date: January 2022
Camera: Nikon D7100
ISO: 100 Shutter Speed: 1/125 sec
F-Stop: f/11 Lens: 300 mm
Picture Number: CM1_5270
Date: January 2022
Camera: Nikon D7100
ISO: 100 Shutter Speed: 1/125 sec
F-Stop: f/11 Lens: 175 mm
Picture Number: CM1_5283
Date: January 2022
Camera: Nikon D7100
ISO: 125 Shutter Speed: 1/125 sec
F-Stop: f/11 Lens: 300 mm
Picture Number: CM1_5371
Date: January 2022
Camera: Nikon D7100
ISO: 200 Shutter Speed: 1/100 sec
F-Stop: f/11 Lens: 75 mm
Point Vicente Lighthouse
Point Vicente Lighthouse is located in Rancho Palos Verdes, California. It is 67 feet tall and stands on a cliff with a height of 130 feet. It is just north of the entrances to the Los Angeles/Long Beach Harbors and is between Point Loma Lighthouse to the south and Point Conception Lighthouse to the north. The lighthouse was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980. The lighthouse is owned by the United States federal government and is managed by the United States Coast Guard. It is not usually open to the public, but the Coast Guard Auxiliary run tours once per month and it is used annually for the city's "Whale of a Day" festival.
Point Vicente Lighthouse was built in 1926, following years of complaints by shippers about the dangerous waters around the Palos Verdes peninsula. It was constructed using a Parisian Fresnel lens with a width of 5 feet, which had been in use in Alaska since its construction in 1886. In 1934 the Long Beach Radio Station opened in a neighboring building, which was used to monitor for distress signals. The light source was dimmed to just 25 watts during World War II to avoid aiding the enemy. It was automated in 1971, and the radio station was closed in 1980. In 2015, the Coast Guard announced its intention to replace the original third order lens with an LED light with a 14 nm range, replacing the current light and lens. In February 2019 the lens was removed from the light room. The Coast Guard Light List specifies its light characteristic as being a pair of two white flashes, repeating that pair every 20 seconds. An emergency light of reduced intensity operates if the main light is extinguished.
Picture Number: CM1_5339
Date: January 2022
Camera: Nikon D7100
ISO: 110 Shutter Speed: 1/125 sec
F-Stop: f/11 Lens: 122 mm
Picture Number: CM1_5341
Date: January 2022
Camera: Nikon D7100
ISO: 100 Shutter Speed: 1/125 sec
F-Stop: f/11 Lens: 75 mm
Picture Number: CM1_5338
Date: January 2022
Camera: Nikon D7100
ISO: 125 Shutter Speed: 1/125 sec
F-Stop: f/11 Lens: 55 mm
Picture Number: CM1_5350
Date: January 2022
Camera: Nikon D7100
ISO: 100 Shutter Speed: 1/320 sec
F-Stop: f/9 Lens: 20 mm
Picture Number: CM1_5354
Date: January 2022
Camera: Nikon D7100
ISO: 110 Shutter Speed: 1/250 sec
F-Stop: f/8 Lens: 30 mm
Picture Number: CM1_5494
Date: FEBRUARY 2022
Camera: Nikon D7100
ISO: 100 Shutter Speed: 1/400 sec
F-Stop: f/10 Lens: 86 mm
February 2022
Point Fermin Lighthouse
Built in 1874, the Point Fermin Lighthouse was the first navigational light into the San Pedro Bay. Phineas Banning, with the support of many local businessmen, petitioned the Federal Government and the US lighthouse Board to place a lighthouse on the point in 1854. Although the Lighthouse Board agreed funding and land disputes delayed its construction until 1874.
The lighthouse was staffed by federal employees under the Treasury Department and regulated by the US Lighthouse Board. These employees were called Lighthouse Keepers. It was their job to keep the light lit as a beacon for ships, maintain the lighthouse lens, and the general up-keep of the building. Point Fermin's first lighthouse keepers were women. Mary and Ella Smith came from a lighthouse family and their brother Victor, a Washington Territory customs officer, was no doubt influential in getting them their positions.
In 2002, the lighthouse was restored, retrofitted, and rehabilitated for public access with funds from the City of Los Angeles, the Port of Los Angeles, and the State of California. The lighthouse was opened to the public on November 1, 2003 under the management of the Department of Recreation and Parks for the City of Los Angeles. Volunteers from the Point Fermin Lighthouse Society serve as tour guides and help to keep the lighthouse open to the public.
Picture Number: CM1_5397
Date: February 2022
Camera: Nikon D7100
ISO: 100 Shutter Speed: 1/320 sec
F-Stop: f/9 Lens: 18 mm
Picture Number: CM1_5403
Date: February 2022
Camera: Nikon D7100
ISO: 100 Shutter Speed: 1/320 sec
F-Stop: f/9 Lens: 17 mm
Picture Number: CM1_5505
Date: February 2022
Camera: Nikon D7100
ISO: 200 Shutter Speed: 1/2000 sec
F-Stop: f/5.6 Lens: 140 mm
Picture Number: CM1_5509
Date: February 2022
Camera: Nikon D7100
ISO: 100 Shutter Speed: 1/320 sec
F-Stop: f/9 Lens: 10 mm
Korean Friendship Bell
This massive and intricately-decorated bell and pavilion were donated in 1976 to the people of Los Angeles by the people of the Republic of Korea to celebrate the bicentennial of the U.S. independence, honor veterans of the Korean War, and to consolidate traditional friendship between the two countries. The bell is patterned after the Bronze Bell of King Songdok, which was cast in 771 A.D. and is still on view in South Korea today.
The bell was cast in Korea and shipped to the United States. Weighing 17 tons, with a height of twelve feet and a diameter of 7-1/2 feet, the bell is made of copper and tin, with gold, nickel, lead and phosphorous added for tone quality. When it was built, it cost the Korean people $500,000. Four pairs of figures, each pair consisting of the Goddess of Liberty holding a torch, and a Korean spirit, are engraved in relief on the body of the bell. Each of the Korean spirits holds up a different symbol: a symbolic design of the Korean flag; a branch of the rose of Sharon, Korea’s national flower; a branch of laurel, symbol of victory; and a dove of peace. The bell has no clapper but is struck from the outside with a wooden log.
The bell is set in a pagoda-like stone structure which was constructed on the site by thirty craftsmen flown in from Korea. It took them ten months and costs $569,680. The pavilion is supported by twelve columns representing the twelve designs of the Oriental zodiac. Animals stand guard at the base of each column. Recently the Korean Bell underwent extensive renovation and restoration. On January 10, 2014 the Tarps were removed.
Resting peacefully on the knoll overlooking the sea gate from which U.S. troops sailed into the Pacific, the bell site affords an unsurpassed view of the Los Angeles harbor, the Catalina Channel, and the sea terraces of San Pedro hill. The bell is rung each year on: Independence Day, July 4, National Liberation Day of Korea, August 15, 9:00a.m.-12 Noon and New Year’s Eve, September 17 to coincide with bell ringings around the country to celebrate Constitution week, also on January 13 for Korean-American Day. The Bell is also rung 13 times on the 1st Saturday of the month at 11:30 a.m.
Picture Number: CM1_5414
Date: February 2022
Camera: Nikon D7100
ISO: 180 Shutter Speed: 1/1000 sec
F-Stop: f/8 Lens: 80 mm
As you approach the Korean Bell of Friendship you are greeted by two totem poles placed there to mark the boundary between the outside world and the Temple of the Korean Friendship Bell. These are Jangseung totems and there is a difference between them and the totems of people on the islands of the Pacific Northwest. Unlike totem poles, they don’t tell stories. Jangseung are Korean guardian spirit poles that protect against evil spirits, misfortune, and disease. They are placed at the entrance of a village, temple, etc. to mark the boundary between it and the outside world. Jangseung totems are also expected to bring good fortune. The Jangseung figures at the entry that leads to the Korean Friendship Bell are carved from round posts of wood. The one on the left is male and on the right is female and they are in traditional Korean headwear that dates to the Third Kingdom era. The inscription on the male Jangseung, is “Great General Under Heaven”. The inscription on the female Jangseung is “Great General under Earth.”
Picture Number: CM1_5417
Date: February 2022
Camera: Nikon D7100
ISO: 100 Shutter Speed: 1/320 sec
F-Stop: f/9 Lens: 24 mm
Picture Number: CM1_5419
Date: February 2022
Camera: Nikon D7100
ISO: 180 Shutter Speed: 1/400 sec
F-Stop: f/10 Lens: 38 mm
Wayfarers Chapel
Wayfarers Chapel began as a dream in the mind of Elizabeth Sewall Schellenberg, a member of the Swedenborgian Church who lived on the Palos Verdes Peninsula in the late 1920s. The Peninsula was largely open farmland with a two-lane gravel road skirting the shoreline from San Pedro to Palos Verdes Estates. Mrs. Schellenberg dreamed of a small chapel of exquisite beauty and spiritual architecture on a hillside above the Pacific Ocean where wayfarers could stop to rest, meditate, and give thanks to God.
The church was designed by Lloyd Wright (son of Frank Lloyd Wright) in the late 1940s and was built between 1949 and 1951. Wright departed from the tradition of using masonry in order to "achieve a delicate enclosure that allows the surrounding landscape to define the sacred space". Additions were built in later years, including a tower and a visitor center, the latter of which had been lost in a landslide during the 1960s.
As with many of Wright's buildings, the chapel features geometric designs and incorporates the natural landscape into the design. When the Chapel was completed in 1951 it stood alone like a precious jewel on a deserted dusty knoll overlooking the blue Pacific. Today, what you are looking at is a “tree chapel.” Chapel architect Lloyd Wright had been inspired by the cathedral-like majesty of the redwood trees in northern California. The redwood trees that surround Wayfarers Chapel are forming living walls and roof to a natural sanctuary encased in glass with view of the surrounding forest and nearby Pacific Ocean. These are typical traits of Organic Architecture, which aims at using nature as the framework and regards the space inside as sacred. Lloyd Wright’s design of Wayfarers Chapel is the perfect combination of nature and architectural genius and is one of the foremost examples of organic architecture. Wayfarers Chapel is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.
Picture Number: CM1_55365
Date: February 2022
Camera: Nikon D7100
ISO: 200 Shutter Speed: 1/250 sec
F-Stop: f/8 Lens: 12 mm
Picture Number: CM1_5369
Date: February 2022
Camera: Nikon D7100
ISO: 200 Shutter Speed: 1/250 sec
F-Stop: f/8 Lens: 18 mm
Picture Number: CM1_5377
Date: February 2022
Camera: Nikon D7100
ISO: 200 Shutter Speed: 1/200 sec
F-Stop: f/7.1 Lens: 23 mm
Picture Number: CM1_5379
Date: February 2022
Camera: Nikon D7100
ISO: 140 Shutter Speed: 1/250 sec
F-Stop: f/8 Lens: 27 mm
Picture Number: CM1_5380
Date: February 2022
Camera: Nikon D7100
ISO: 100 Shutter Speed: 1/320 sec
F-Stop: f/8 Lens: 14 mm
Picture Number: CM1_5481
Date: February 2022
Camera: Nikon D7100
ISO: 320 Shutter Speed: 1/125 sec
F-Stop: f/5.6 Lens: 38 mm
Picture Number: CM1_5498
Date: February 2022
Camera: Nikon D7100
ISO: 110 Shutter Speed: 1/250 sec
F-Stop: f/8 Lens: 30 mm
Cabrillo Beach
Picture Number: CM1_5435
Date: February 2022
Camera: Nikon D7100
ISO: 200 Shutter Speed: 1/250 sec
F-Stop: f/8 Lens: 122 mm
Picture Number: CM1_5441
Date: February 2022
Camera: Nikon D7100
ISO: 200 Shutter Speed: 1/800 sec
F-Stop: f/7.1 Lens: 56 mm
Picture Number: CM2_0482
Date: February 2022
Camera: Nikon D7100
ISO: 200 Shutter Speed: 1/800 sec
F-Stop: f/7.2 Lens: 230 mm
Picture Number: CM1_5444
Date: February 2022
Camera: Nikon D7100
ISO: 200 Shutter Speed: 1/640 sec
F-Stop: f/6.3 Lens: 200 mm
Picture Number: CM1_5460
Date: February 2022
Camera: Nikon D7100
ISO: 100 Shutter Speed: 1/200 sec
F-Stop: f/13 Lens: 300 mm
Picture Number: CM1_5465
Date: February 2022
Camera: Nikon D7100
ISO: 100 Shutter Speed: 1/125 sec
F-Stop: f/11 Lens: 210 mm
Picture Number: CM1_5434
Date: February 2022
Camera: Nikon D7100
ISO: 200 Shutter Speed: 1/250 sec
F-Stop: f/8 Lens: 122 mm
January 2023
Ventura Storm
The pictures in this section were taken during the time when California was having a series of major storms move through the area. During this time some places had more rain in two to three days than they normally have in a year.
Picture Number: CM1_6188
Date: January 2023
Camera: Nikon D7100
ISO: 200 Shutter Speed: 1/250 sec
F-Stop: f/8 Lens: 70 mm
Picture Number: CM1_6216
Date: January 2023
Camera: Nikon D7100
ISO: 200 Shutter Speed: 1/800 sec
F-Stop: f/5.6 Lens: 100 mm
Picture Number: CM1_6219
Date: January 2023
Camera: Nikon D7100
ISO: 1000 Shutter Speed: 1/200 sec
F-Stop: f/5 Lens: 135mm
Picture Number: CM1_6228
Date: January 2023
Camera: Nikon D7100
ISO: 200 Shutter Speed: 1/800 sec
F-Stop: f/5.6 Lens: 100 mm
Picture Number: CM1_6233
Date: January 2023
Camera: Nikon D7100
ISO: 200 Shutter Speed: 1/500 sec
F-Stop: f5.6 Lens: 200 mm
December 2023
Redondo Beach Storm
The pictures in this section were taken in late December of 2023. A storm had moved through the area the day before. The aftermath of the storm produced a high storm surge. This storm surge plus abnormally high tides produced waves of up to 20 feet in some parts of California. Redondo Beach did not have waves any like 20' waves; but they were much higher than normal.
Picture Number: CM1_7202
Date: December 2023
Camera: Nikon D7100
ISO: 140 Shutter Speed: 1/250 sec
F-Stop: f/8 Lens: 42 mm
Picture Number: CM1_7208
Date: December 2023
Camera: Nikon D7100
ISO: 200 Shutter Speed: 1/500 sec
F-Stop: f5.6 Lens: 140 mm
Picture Number: CM1_7211
Date: December 2023
Camera: Nikon D7100
ISO: 200 Shutter Speed: 1/640 sec
F-Stop: f/6.3 Lens: 140 mm
Picture Number: CM2_1001
Date: December 2023
Camera: Nikon D7100
ISO: 200 Shutter Speed: 1/640 sec
F-Stop: f/6.3 Lens: 310 mm
Picture Number: CM2_1035
Date: December 2023
Camera: Nikon D7100
ISO: 280 Shutter Speed: 1/500 sec
F-Stop: f/8 Lens: 500 mm
Picture Number: CM2_1026
Date: December 2023
Camera: Nikon D7100
ISO: 280 Shutter Speed: 1/500 sec
F-Stop: f/8 Lens: 420 mm