(top) Photographer, Gilbert "Gil" Garcetti, 67, former LA County D. A., discusses his book, "Water is Key" during The Senior Arts Foundation's Arts & Community Forum 'Gil Garcetti: My Story, Act II' at the Main Library on Wednesday, January 21, 2009. (above)  Garcetti signs his book during the forum. Garcetti has always been an avid urban photographer. During his time as District Attorney he would carry a small camera with him at all times. After leaving the DA's office, Garcetti focused on art photography, initially producing two collections on the Walt Disney Concert Hall: Iron: Erecting the Walt Disney Concert Hall, focusing on the ironworkers who constructed the landmark, and Frozen Music, focusing on the finished building itself. Photos from these works were featured in an exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution's National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. and at the Pasadena Museum of California Art. His most recent exhibition, Dance in Cuba: Photographs by Gil Garcetti, was featured at the UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History in Spring 2006.

A surfer lays on his back at Venice Beach on Thursday, January 1, 2009.

(TOP) Reverend William H. Knight DD, 65, sings, "We Shall Overcome" during the 24th Annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Day Celebration at the SGI Auditorium onMonday, January 19, 2009. Knight began singing at the age of three. (ABOVE)  Youth Taiko Group performs during the Celebration.

Red clouds can be seen early in the morning over Santa Monica on Monday, January 19, 2009. Before the advent of modern meteorology, explorers and settlers of North America developed rules of thumb for the weather based on common observations. One of the most famous – and sometimes true – is:

  Red sky by morning,
sailor take warning.
Red sky at night,
sailor's delight.

(top) Guest admire the photographs at Santa Monica College’s Emeritus Gallery on Thursday January 22, 2009, during the opening reception for "Gil Garcetti 2nd Act.” (above) Santa Monica College Emeritus Associate Dean, Maggie Hall (right) listens as Gil Garcetti (left) explains to  guests that he has been a photographer longer than  an attorney. Gil Garcetti spent 32 years in the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office, including eight years as the elected District Attorney managing the largest local prosecutorial office in the United States. Since leaving that office in 2000, he has found his passion in life with photography, particularly urban photography. Garcetti has produced five photographic books, including a couple on the Walt Disney Concert Hall that have received wide critical acclaim. He has had several solo exhibitions at galleries, museums and other institutions across the country and abroad.

The world’s greenest procession of its kind, 74-All-Electric and Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles paraded south on Main Street in Santa Monica during the “Inaugural Parade West: Plug In, America!” on Saturday, January 17, 2009. The inaugural parade's mission is to jump start the nation’s presidential inaugural festivities with a message for Congress, Detroit and Barack Obama: America wants plug-in vehicles, the most fuel-efficient cars ever made.The clean-car parade, coming as gas prices begin their inevitable rise again, represents the largest assembly of its kind in history. It demonstrates the number and breadth of new plug-ins coming onto the market and the continued viability of those that have been on the road since 2002. The event’s all-electric vehicles, all of them freeway-capable, include more than two dozen Toyota RAV4 EVs—with tens of thousands of oil-free miles on each—three Tesla Roadsters, two Vectrix motor scooters, one Zero Motorcycle, two Phoenix SUTs and a prototype Mitsubishi iMiEV. The latter is undergoing testing at Southern California Edison, which also will provide a prototype Ford Escape plug-in hybrid electric vehicle. A 1971 Porsche 914 is among other EV conversions. Parade-vehicle owners and drivers range from Ed Miller, an engineer with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Mars Science Lander Rover project, to Alexandra Paul, an actress and Plug In America board member, to green leader Ed Begley, Jr. Plug In America recently launched a campaign to encourage Detroit to build fuel-efficient vehicles with the billions in federal bailout dollars it has now begun to receive. The production of 10 million plug-in vehicles by 2016 by a retooled, electrified auto industry will create hundreds of thousands of new green jobs. Even when charged on today's electrical grid, plug-in cars are cleaner than the average gasoline car. They also run on domestic electricity, notes former CIA Director R. James Woolsey, a Plug In America supporter and clean-tech venture partner with the Silicon Valley’s VantagePoint. “Electric vehicles can deliver a deadly blow to our dependence on imported oil from hostile countries while addressing our environmental crisis,” Woolsey says. “A plug-in future is key to a sustainable America and a stable world.”

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(TOP) Sara Manzanares, 21 (left) Taylor Lyon, 18, listen with free headphones to sound-clips at the Venice Board Walk on Friday, January 16, 2008, during a HBO marketing promotion for the TV Show "Big Love" now in its third season. Big Love is a drama about a Mormon fundamentalist family in Utah that practices polygamy and centres around a polygamist (Bill Paxton) and his relationship with the three wives, all whom he is married to. Big Love stars Bill Paxton, Chloë Sevigny, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Ginnifer Goodwin, Harry Dean Stanton, and Amanda Seyfried. It premiered in the United States on March 12, 2006 The show was cocreated by Mark V. Olsen and Will Scheffer, who also serve as executive producers.

Circus contortionist Milo Gonzales, 19, who was born and raised in Venice, puts both legs behind his head while practicing his act at Santa Monica's Muscle beach on Monday, January 5, 2009.