I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving yesterday. I did. I am blessed with a great life. It probably isn’t the life everyone would wish for or like, but it fits me perfectly. With that said, here is a photo I took two years ago from inside an amazing church in Sacramento. Sacramento isn’t my favorite city, but I’ve enjoyed my visits and its hard not to appreciate locations like this one.
Citizen Hotel
This 15-story building was Sacramento’s first skyscraper. It was built in 1925 as the California Life Insurance building, now it is home to The Citizen Hotel. The hotel is a first rate luxury and boutique hotel, at least that’s what the Internet claims. It has 198 rooms, which are almost all unique in design and décor. The Citizen is also home to Grange Restaurant & Bar, which I visited with some friends. I would highly recommend this restaurant because the food was wonderful.
I found the hotel’s lobby by mistake when I left the restaurant’s dinning room to find the restroom. Once I stumbled upon the lobby, I knew I had to photograph it. By today’s standards the lobby is very small. You can’t tell by looking at my photo, but there isn’t much more to this setting. But as you can tell, it is an amazing spot with lots of rich fabrics, colors, and atmosphere.
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Bless You
Here is a 7 auto-bracket exposure HDR image I took in Sacramento California at the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament. This is an amazing structure, which is part of the Roman Catholic Church. It is the mother church of the diocese covering the entire northern California region.
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Sacramento
This is the Ziggurat Pyramid on the west side of the Sacramento River. I took this picture over a year ago now. It is amazing how quickly time flies by when your having fun and busy.
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Sacramento River
It’s hard to believe it was a year and a half ago since I was last in Sacramento. I am always amazed at how quickly time flies by. I got up before the sunrise and walked about 1.5 miles to this location. I think the only other people up at that time were the homeless men, women and children of Sacramento. I left the homeless alone and they did the same with me. It was a peaceful morning and I got some great photos.
Crossing the Sacramento River, the Tower Bridge is 737 feet long with a vertical lift for boat traffic. The towers are 160 feet tall and the bridge was made with four lanes for cars and one large center lane for trains. Construction of the bridge started in 1911 and was completed in 1933. In 1982, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places. Today the bridge is only used for vehicle and pedestrian traffic.
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Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament - Sacramento
On my last trip to Sacramento California, I scouted this
location in advance via Google Maps.
Once I found it, I knew I had to find time to visit this location on my
trip. I am a sucker for old
churches. Something about the
architecture of old churches just pulls me in regardless of the type of
religion.
This is the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament, which is the mother church of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Sacramento. The facility is located in downtown Sacramento at the corner of 11th and K Street, about two blocks from the California Capital building. The architectural style is Italian Renaissance on the exterior and Victorian on the interior. Construction of this facility was started in 1887, during the California Gold Rush era. I’m guessing some of that gold paid for this church. Money well spent for this amazing building that has lasted over a 100 years.
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Sacramento Homeless
Last fall while traveling in California, I got a chance to
stay in Sacramento for a number of days.
I enjoyed the city, the people and the culture. I was a little surprised at the number
of homeless people in the downtown area.
Apparently, a large number of them have been camping out on the City
Hall property, using the Occupy Sacramento movement and holding an “extended
protest” as a cover/excuse to abuse the situation and just live on the
property. So the City Counsel
passed a policy on 9/11/12 stating if you wanted to hold a rally/protest on the
property it would require a permit and set the fee at something like $50. This amount is low enough to allow a
real rally/protests, but high enough to prevent the homeless from camping out
there forever.
Well the policy wasn’t in effect yet at the time I was there and there were homeless individuals hanging out around the building. This gentleman was more then happy to pose for this picture with one of his many signs he uses throughout the day. I had a great conversation with him, learned a lot about him and his situation, and unfortunately got close enough to smell him….. That part wasn’t great.
Photo Technique:
This was a 3-exposure auto-bracket (+1, 0, -1) set taken in Aperture Mode set at f11. Merged in Photomatix Pro.
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All Bears Today
Looking back at some photos from my trip to California, I came across this picture I took outside the Governor's office inside the capital building. As it was explained to me, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger found this while on vacation and purchased it for the State of California. It now sits outside the Governor's office. The capital building is very cool and I was glad I took the time to tour it both inside and out.
fyi... The employees at the capital building refer to this bear as "bacteria bear" because all the kids like to touch the bear. It stands about waist high and is probably about 4 to 5 feet long.
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