SEPTEMBER 2003 – The busy highway 405 (Nathan Shapell Memorial Highway), seen from the bridge on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, California. Photo © by Mark Zanzig/zanzig.com
The story behind the image
I am a kid of the countryside. The biggest highway I had seen until the age of 18 was four lanes (two per direction), and I that that this was ‘big’ already. Of course, this changed when I drove into the Frankfurt area in Germany where I encountered an eight lane (four per direction) highway which was quite overwhelming. However, the biggest highway I’ve ever seen was Highway 405 (aka Nathan Shapell Memorial Highway), one of the major highways leading into Los Angeles. California. I counted eleven lanes here.
I shot this image after our stay in Hollywood. That morning we had been enjoying a slow drive along Sunset Boulevard, a name that will be linked to the movies eternally. (The drive turned out to be very nice but not as spectacular as expected.) However, at some point the street crosses the highway on a bridge – and here, I would be entering this busy 11-lane highway to get us to Palm Springs! To me, it looked like pure madness.
Anyway, the area has significantly changed over the past two decades, especially the portion on the left half of the photo. Where a significant amount of trees was in 2003, these seem to have been cut as the highway has been turned into a genuine twelve-lane highway with new ramps.
By the way, it was easier to navigate the highway than I had thought, so my concerns were totally unjustified.
The high resolution image
| Capture Date | 08-SEP-2003 |
| Location | Los Angeles, California |
| Camera | Canon AE-1 Program |
| Image Source | Fuji Slide Film |
| Digital Image Source | Minolta Dimage Scan Elite II |
| Digital Image Source Format | TIFF, 48 bits/pixel, AdobeRGB |
| Edited Image Format | JPEG, 24 bits/pixel, sRGB |
| Edited Image Dimensions | 3778 x 2364 Pixels |
| Copyright | © by Mark Zanzig/zanzig.com |
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