Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Camp Bonita, Irvine, Anaheim, and Laurel & Hardy

Today's photos show Camp Bonita, which was an old cattle camp on the Irvine Ranch. The first image is a 1937 postcard I scanned from Tom Pulley's collection. I took the other two photos recently. Three of the camp's building still stand, along with a cluster of old trees. I was surprised to find so much left. The camp's site is now just off California Ave., south of Adobe Circle Rd., and adjacent to UCI's big new sports building. If you look closely at the older photo, you can see Turtle Rock in the distance. (Which is how I figured out this site was from Irvine.)
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The City of Anaheim and the Anaheim Public Library will sponsor a "Victorian Christmas Open House" at the historic Woelke-Stoffel House (the Victorian "Red Cross House"), at 418 N. West St., Saturday, Dec. 13, noon to 3pm. The Mother Colony House next door will also be open for viewing.
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As an archivist, I find it hard to convince some people that lengthy research among stacks of government documents can lead to extraordinary things. But a YouTube video I saw recently, "Laurel & Hardy On Location," made the point better than I can. It's about a man who used various government and historical records to create a 3-D digital model of Culver City as it appeared in the films of Laurel and Hardy (70 years ago). Granted, this is not Orange County history, but you could do this anywhere, and take people on virtual tours through time.
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And speaking of YouTube, also check out this video about the Santa Ana Historical Preservation Society's tours, featuring Guy Ball.

4 comments:

ItsNotAPlace said...

is there a place were one can download or view that 3d model besides the youTube documentary of its making?

that would be cool to have something like that of Orange County locations too!

Chris Jepsen said...

I've been thinking of this exact kind of project ever since I took my first computer animation classes in college. (We were using Commodore Amigas, which tells you how long ago THAT was.)

In fact, I did a detailed 3-D animated fly-through of a classroom as a test run. (Start with something familiar and easy to research.) Ultimately, I ended up going in other non-art-related directions with my life. But I still find stuff like this pretty fascinating.

ItsNotAPlace said...

I am actually in the process of building a virtual 3d model of the Dreger Clock using a free (open source) 3d program called Blender.

I am not too far along yet... but when I do get it done I want to use it in rendering still and 3d rendered fly bys of the clock.

walterworld said...

Dang---That Laurel & Hardy link was extraordinary!