LA Pumpkin Hunt Fires
As in "Aliens," this series gets more orange by the frame.
October 26, 2003

Heading north on the 405 into Bel Aire. The plumes of smoke are framing the Getty Museum at the top of the mountain (obscured a bit by the tree in the foreground). The cylindrical building is a Holiday Inn. We were on our way to a pumpkin farm, but got diverted from it eventually by a closed exit. We found another small pumpkin place at the exit where we turned around, and spent a few hours there picking pumpkins and watching kids hurtle themselves down the giant inflatable slide/funhouse.
 
I don't know where we are here. Maybe the 605? Or the 132? I'll need to ask my friends. I was too busy taking pictures and asking questions about iPods.
 
We're not stopping until we're on fire!
 
A view toward the source of the smoke: St. Elmo's. I KNEW it!
 
Cloud shadows make for some awesome lighting effects. I used to see oddly backlit cars like this on the highways in Florida, before or after some of the big storms.
 
You can get some neat pics sticking your camera high out the window. These are all shot with an Elph Powershot 230 (3.2MP). These are also greatly scaled down from 2048x1536 to 400x300.
 
God, forsaking us, as we blasphemously search for the source of his power. We believe it's beneath the cloud of fear just ahead.
 
These clouds aren't clouds at all. They're actually rapidly oxidized real estate.
 
As the light faded out over LA, the road separated into two factions; careless fossil fuel burners speeding along toward their destinations, laughing wildly, and hitchhiking environmentalists fruitlessly thumbing for rides near their stalled solar-powered vehicles.
 
...and I feel fine.
 
I'd like to take this moment to mention that while I did scale them down from their absurdly huge original sizes, I did no color correction or photo-manipulation of any kind on these images. Everything actually looked fake that day.
 
I like the subtle changes of light in the hills near the horizon
 
My Elph wasn't going to get a good picture of the sun. It was a perfectly round circle of red.
 
Interestingly, far south of this, where I live, my car was covered in ashes. Here, however, under the fallout, the air was as clean as ever it is in LA. You know, like smoking an entire pack of cigarettes all at once, backwards.
 
From a distance, this place looks like da bomb!
 
HAL dispassionately watches over the highways.
 
It's so annoying when kids shine their keychain lasers at my online photo pages! Through the cloud of ash and burnt wildlife, the sun takes on a Comfort Inn stylization.
 
Fearless driver Amanda ain't afraid o' no Black Hole Sun.
 
I'm pushing for this one to become a postcard/warning label. The postcard would double as a sticker, and it would say something clever on the back like "RUNNN!!!"
 
I'm still really mad at this van for getting in the way of my epic "Surface of Mars" limited edition lithograph. If it wasn't there, I could've totally sold this off as a genuine Mars Rover photo.

Okay, time to go watch "Aliens." The moral of the story is that you should always try to enjoy life, whether or not your entire city is engulfed in flames. Peace.