I have good news and bad news. I’ve spent the last two Thursdays up in Los Angeles taking pictures of iconic LA sights at night, and I’m pretty happy with the results. That’s the good news. The bad news—maybe—is that I got hooked on a particular style: deliberately overexposing my shots so the nighttime city looks almost overpoweringly bright.  I happen to like this, but you might not. Nevertheless, over the next few months you’re going to see a whole lot of pictures shot in this style.

But I’m going to ease into it. Today, I’ve got a series of pictures of the LA skyline, each with its own particular appeal. To start us off, here’s a picture taken by my father in the early 40s. My best guess is that it was taken from somewhere around Bronson Canyon, and the brightly lit street is Western Avenue. Needless to say, the downtown skyline doesn’t exist yet:

Early 1940s — Bronson Canyon (?), Los Angeles

(The speckles in the black areas are there because my father printed the picture on matte paper and that produced little patterns when I scanned it. There’s probably a way to get a better scan, but I’m not sure what it is.)

Next up is the iconic LA skyline shot taken from Griffith Park Observatory. I’m delighted with how this turned out. The observatory itself is on the left with the moon rising right behind it, and then I stitched together a second shot to create a nice, wide panorama. The street looking dead ahead is Normandie. Vermont is to the left and Western is to the right. This is a really pretty picture:

June 28, 2018 — Griffith Park Observatory, Los Angeles

Next is a picture taken from Radio Hill Gardens, a small park on a hill right next to Dodger Stadium. The park itself isn’t much, and not really someplace you want to be at night anyway. But it does have a terrific view of downtown. You can see City Hall off to the left:

June 28, 2018 — Radio Hill Gardens, Los Angeles

Next is a view of LA that you won’t recognize even though you’ve probably seen it before. There’s a street in Boyle Heights that’s frequently used as a setting in car commercials because, surprisingly, it’s unique. It’s just about the only place in the city where you have a view of the skyline looking west from an ordinary, 1930s-era neighborhood. The commercials are typically shot near sunset with a very long lens and some bungalows on either side of the road. The effect of this very careful composition is a hazy, lazy small-town feel with skyscrapers in the far distance. I wasn’t trying to recreate that vibe, just to show what it looks like at night:

June 28, 2018 — Blanchard and Ditman, Boyle Heights, Los Angeles

Finally, here’s a closeup taken from a neighborhood just south of Dodger Stadium. There’s a spot called Spiders View (you can find it on Google Maps) that’s a well-known scenic spot, but I chose to take this picture from a couple of streets away because I liked the palm tree in the foreground. I didn’t especially like the power pole in the foreground, but that’s the big city for you. This picture was taken on a misty, almost foggy night, and I shopped out a whole bunch of power and phone lines:

June 21, 2018 — Centennial and College, Los Angeles

So there you have it: the LA skyline at night. Someday I might go back and try to get a picture of the skyline from Wilshire looking east, but that’s a tougher nut. There are really no good places to take a photo in that direction except from the rooftops of tall buildings, and I don’t have access to any rooftops in Westlake or MacArthur Park—especially at 1 in the morning. So that’s a project for another time.

WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate