Christmas 2008, California State Capitol, Sacramento

Just received an invite to join a Northern California group and I am honoured to do so. However, I’m at home on a dial-up Internet connection yet want to submit something new to the group. The result is a shot I took last night of the State Capitol’s west steps and the Christmas Tree.

I almost missed this shot. Between “The Terminator” and the Legislature, California has no budget and no money. This has happened before but never this badly. So Gov Arney is so mad he’s putting up a running tally of how much money the state is losing per hour that we don’t have a budget. I guess he’s also doing something else: turning off the lights. When I got there it was full dark and the tree wasn’t lit. That annoyed me because it was cold and windy and I’m driven there and had to pay for parking! Grrrrr!

So I was walking around seeing nothing to shoot by people shooting a dark tree when I noticed that ALL the external lights of the building were off. The place was deep-as-yer-navel type dark. I thought this was seriously strange but there’s nobody hanging around from the state police (now CHP) anymore so I started back to the van. A large click later and the tree is lit but the building still isn’t. A very large click and only the front of the building is partially lit.

Looked about as good as I was gonna get so I dragged the tripod out and tried to find an angle that didn’t look like crap because of the ‘dead building’ in the background. I finally settled on some tightly cropped shots, none of which is what I saw on TV a week ago but that was all I was gonna get.

Thanks again for the invite to a group that specializes in my home territory!!!!

THIS PIECE WAS FEATURED IN: Northern California Style