Balboa Park at Night: Fun without a Tripod - 2009-05-17 21:26:11
<<< Previous - Shishi Odoshi, or The Thing That Goes Doink | Next - Evening on Coronado: More Messing AboutA without a Tripod >>>Our friend Mike was in town for a convention and so we met up to go out to dinner at
The Fish Market (the food's just as good whether you eat up or downstairs, if you ever wondered). Afterwards, trying to think of what to show someone, we hit upon wandering around
Balboa Park. Because we love the place, and there's always something there to photograph.
I should add that we each had a point-and-shoot camera, and the challenge was to see if we could come up with any photos that were presentable, even without using a tripod. (I have no idea how the guys made out - these are the best I could manage. Will add links later if the others are online.)
A sign that we do have folks still concerned about the contagiousness of swine flu - or at least I assume that's why we found this face mask discarded in the parking lot.
Thanks to Photoshop, what would be just a dark shot with only a few barely discernable branches becomes the tree I stopped to look up at. (I couldn't actually tell what it was before I tweaked it - then said "ooh yeah,
that tree.") Ok, yes, it's wildly grainy, but at least you can tell what it is.
Keep telling yourself that as you look at the rest of these. And remind yourself - no tripod, everything set on auto, no use of flash on most of them. Which is why they're all sooooo very fuzzy.
But it was all a lot of fun.
That's another shot of the same tree. Which I believe is a
ficus. When I first moved here I was shocked at the size of the ficus trees - I'd only ever seen small, ornamental ones before, and had no idea they could grow so large.
Realize that for every one of these shots I was scampering around to find a post or pole or wall to set the camera down on in order to make it as non-wobbly as possible. And failing a lot - I probably took about 10 shots for every one of these. And yup, still blurry. But interesting anyway.
Only other folks around at this hour were people walking dogs, theater-goers on their way home, and other tourists. Yes, next time I'm bringing a tripod. (We used to have one in our car's trunk - until that particular car was stolen. And since then I keep forgetting to put another one in - mind you, a cheap one, just in case.)
This is one of my favorite buildings in Balboa - The Botanical Building. In an area where there's a fee for just about every museum or place you'd like to peek in, it's delightful that this place is free of charge. You ponder the plants and flowers for a few minutes or as long as you want. Great architecture too. There's an annoying fence around it now - just stakes and string, which doesn't look good at all. I assume the fence is supposed to keep people out of the reflecting pool. I think. In any case, it does nothing for those of us who want to take photographs of the place.
....Er, not that you can even see it in this photo, as it's too darn dark. We'll pretend that I planned it that way.
All around the central area of the park are these covered walkways, and I love the way they feel like lighted tunnels at night.
Randomly we noticed that the fountain (the one with the large spout by the Museum of Man) didn't seem to be lit. Of course we most often spend evenings in Balboa like this around Christmas time, and then it's hard to tell what's lit for the season and what's always lit that way. Still, it seemed odd to have one smaller fountain lit up well, and not the larger one. ...Though now that I think of it, the smaller fountain is in the middle of a parking area. So if they didn't keep that well lit someone would probably end up driving inside that fountain.
Meanwhile, near that lit fountain is this equestrian statue of
El Cid. Which we found vaguely confusing as a choice of subject. Carved on the base of the statue:
El Cid Campeador
Anna Hyatt Huntington
Sculptor
Presented by the Trustees
of the
Hispanic Society of America
July 5, 1930
And thanks to wikipedia, I now know the following:
"The El Cid Statue overlooks the Plaza de Panama, facing south toward the Spreckels Organ Pavilion in Balboa Park, San Diego, California. This 23-ft (7-m) tall bronze equestrian sculpture was dedicated in 1930 as a symbolic guardian of Balboa Park. Three other statues were made from the same mold — one stands in the court of the Museum of the Hispanic Society in New York City; anothes stands on Plaza de España, Valencia (Spain), near the oldest known church in the city - San Vicent de la Roqueta; the other is in Seville, Spain. The statue is attributed to Anna Hyatt Huntington and dated 1927."
So those were the most presentable of the Balboa in the Dark shots. And then as we were driving Mike back to his hotel I managed to catch this:
These glass faces can be found in the cement walls near the Convention Center. I can't seem to remember who told me about them, but I believe that they're deeply embedded in the cement wall so that they can't be pried out and taken away by anyone that desperate for a souvenir. Annoyingly my google skills are failing me because I can't find a name of the artist that created them. Glad at least that the photo reminded me to look for more information.
Must do some more research...
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