the photo one: July 3

The Getty Center!

I am going to just marvel at the miracle of architectural genius that this place is.

The architect, Richard Meier, designed this to be used by people, and he made the stones on the ground 30"x30", which is about as far as people stand apart from each other in conversation. He also modeled it after the city of LA, and made the gridlines of the stones in the walls, floors, and ceilings align, just like the grid on which the streets are drawn in the city. There are many frames created by the pillars and supports that draw the eye to look at the landscapes beyond. He also has all of the buildings either facing due South, following one mountain range, or 22 degrees SW, following the other mountain range that meets at that point. It's so brilliant.

Those light green things are ugly. I meant to Photoshop them out, but I don't have it installed right now.

This little girl was looking at the fossils of leaves that are embedded in the travertine tiles of which a large portion of the Getty is made up.

Leaf fossil.

I like this because it looks like the center of the fountain is climbing out.

And the gardens...

It looks like there's a lot of spider web in the middle, but it's just part of the cactus.

They look like grapes.

These ones are SO green in the center and so purple around the edges.

Robert Irwin, who designed the gardens, was a painter. As the tour guide said, he made the Getty his canvas and used plants as his paint. From above, it looks like an abstract painting, and there are colors galore, highlighting and accenting each other and the greenery surrounding.

Bougainvillea trellis trees.

The edges are so delicate.

It took a really long time for me to get these flowers to look as purple as they were. My camera has a hard time rendering purple, so I had to adjust a lot of stuff, and even then, they only really look purple in the sunlit photos rather than the ones in the shade.