Posts by Jefferson Graham
TRAVEL: Get lucky with Las Vegas Parking Roofs for photos
It’s hard to get a great free photo of the Las Vegas Strip from down on the ground, as you’re right in the middle of it. You can try standing in one of the overhead crosswalks, but they are covered in dirty glass, making it hard to get a great shot. You can pay $20…
Read MoreThanks a Million, PhotowalksTV fans
It happened this week: I was attending the WPPI convention in Las Vegas, a meeting of wedding and portrait photographers, when I received an e-mail from VidIQ, a YouTube analytics tool. “Congratulations, you reached 1,000,000 views.” Or, let’s put it this way: After five years (first episode posted 3/26/2018) of beating the drum for PhotowalksTV, my travel…
Read MoreTRAVEL: Backroads Florida gem, Safety Harbor
If you’re like me, you’ve heard of Tampa, Florida and other West Coast beach towns like Clearwater and St. Pete, but Safety Harbor hasn’t made your radar. I stumbled onto it when I went to Florida on business recently, near Tampa, and got invited to lunch on Main Street in this cute, tiny town of…
Read MoreTRAVEL: Explore Solvang’s Danish town for history, food and photos
If you shop well, you can score a non-stop flight to Copenhagen from LAX, and it will take 11 hours to arrive, and cost just over $700 roundtrip, depending upon when you fly. That sounds “wonderful, wonderful*” (who gets the reference?) but even cooler, if you live here in the South Bay, is a…
Read MoreWind cracks Manhattan Beach Tree; falls on apartment and truck
The strong winds of Wednesday night, February 22 caused a huge tree in Manhattan Beach’s Tree Section to crack and fall over portions of an apartment building and parked truck. The tree lives on the backside of the Pacific Lanai apartment building, at 777 Pacific, and the accident occurred on the 1100 block of Laurel.…
Read MoreTravel: San Francisco’s remote Angel Island
Just 6.2 miles from the Ferry Building in San Francisco is another world, far from crime, thefts, murder, traffic, congestion, homeless issues and all the other ills of urban life in the city. Try a tiny island that can be explored in a 5.5 mile loop on foot or bike, with just 12 full people…
Read MoreMB Rabbi blasts Super Bowl for Kanye song in halftime show
Rabbi Joshua Kalev, the rabbi for Manhattan Beach’s Congregation Tikvat Jacob, has called out Super Bowl organizers and singer Rihanna for featuring a song by controversial rapper Ye, formerly known as Kanye West during the halftime show. “Kanye continues to spew antisemitic statements in almost every interview,” wrote Kalev in a note to his congregants.…
Read MoreTRAVEL: Walk from San Diego to Mexico–what they don’t tell you!
The brochures and hype hit me: you no longer have to sit in your car at the border crossing for hours to go from California’s San Diego to Mexico. Instead, why not take the trolley or drive to the border town of San Ysidro and just waltz over the pedestrian bridge to Tijuana? I was exploring San Diego for…
Read MoreTRAVEL: Four Iconic San Diego Beach towns
Just like the South Bay’s Redondo/Hermosa/Manhattan Beach trio of beach cities, each unique and different from each other, California’s second largest city, San Diego, has four distinct beach cities as well, all worth exploring. For the latest episode of #PhotowalksTV, I brought my iPhone 14 Pro Max to San Diego to explore life outside of…
Read MoreTRAVEL: A “Greetings from San Diego” photo tour, letter by letter
Those who don’t really know California might get the idea that our state has two main cities, San Francisco and Los Angeles, and that’s where most of the action is. Los Angeles, birthplace of the movies and the media capital of the world, and San Francisco, home to Cable Cars, the Golden Gate Bridge and…
Read MoreHuge crowd gathered to watch sun set in-between Manhattan Beach’s Light Gate
Over 200 people came out Friday night to watch the sun set directly within the Light Gate art project at the Manhattan Beach Library on 14th street. “I’ve been coming here for years, and this is by far the biggest crowd I’ve ever seen for this,” said Tracy Windes, a member of the Manhattan Beach…
Read MoreHermosan wants owls to not be disturbed by city
Hermosa Beach resident Izumi Brandvold has been back and forth with the city of Hermosa Beach for months about trimming trees in front of her home. The city wants the leaves cut back, but she doesn’t and she had a good reason. A nesting pair of barn owls owls live peaceably in the tree, and…
Read MorePhoto project: take a new look at the Beach Cities with your camera eye
You could spend thousands of dollars to visit Europe and explore other worlds. Or you could do something way cheaper and very novel this weekend: take a “photo-cation” like visit to your hometown, going to places that have been ignored by you, as you lead your busy life. Think Manhattan, Hermosa, Redondo. Open your camera…
Read MoreTravel: The winter magic of Palm Desert
“Wilderness. The word itself is music.” ― Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire Winter in the California desert is the best time to leave the South Bay bubble and visit. Warm weather, the colors, wide open spaces, blooming flowers, snow-capped mountains—does it get any better than this? Palm Springs is the poster child for the California desert,…
Read MoreClosed Pier, flooded Polliwog, huge waves: Manhattan Beach in-between rain
The South Bay caught a break Thursday afternoon when the huge California rainstorm of 2023 stopped briefly and opened up to sunshine. The rainfall brought massive waves to area beaches, and a flooded Polliwog Park, with picnic areas covered in overflow water. Both the Manhattan Beach and Hermosa Beach Piers closed early Thursday. The Manhattan…
Read More10 Great Smartphone Pro Photography Tips for the New Year
We all know how to click the shutter button on our phones and get a basic shot. But how to take it to the next level? As the host of the YouTube PhotowalksTV series, I get asked the question all the time, and with a new year ahead of us, what a great time to…
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