ELEVEN years ago, a German tourist named Martin Schall arrived in Los Angeles, armed with a guidebook, a camera and a traveler's vision of the city. He was at the end of a long road trip along Route 66 and had parked his rental car on the Sunset Strip, close to the House of Blues.
Schall paid a scalper $30 for a ticket to a Marc Cohn concert, found a hotel nearby and made plans to visit the city's tourist destinations, including Hollywood Boulevard and the beach.
But it was raining. He got befuddled by the freeways. And at some point, he ended up downtown.
Schall was awed by the skyscrapers. He visited the Wells Fargo museum, rode Angels Flight and ate at the Grand Central Market. And he aimed his camera at the city's more unfamiliar sights: the twin cupolas of the Terminal Annex building downtown, an ornate yet graffitied doorway along 6th Street, and a colorful mural at Olvera Street, which he reverentially calls El Pueblo.
His photos were not the normal tourist's fare. Instead of stock shots of amusement parks, sunsets over the ocean and celebrity haunts, Schall focused on a moodier, more eclectic L.A. There were few people in them -- just the shapes and shadows of the city.
It was 1996 -- a few years after the L.A. riots and long before downtown's revival. To Schall, though, Los Angeles was full of promise -- "a place where you can look into the future like in a crystal ball and be your own fortuneteller."
When he got home to Stuttgart, Schall decided to share this vision of Los Angeles with a few friends. He posted a handful of photos to a simple website. But he thought there was more to see, and share. So he made plans to return.
In the last 11 years, Schall has visited Los Angeles 10 times -- mostly in February or November, when he thinks the light of the city is particularly good.
And in that time, he has gone from tourist to architectural maven. His website, you-are-here.com, has become the ultimate online collection of photos documenting the city. It now includes more than 1,700 images of what Schall thinks makes Los Angeles great.
The website has made Schall a celebrity in the urban design world. Building owners beg him, via e-mail, to include their buildings on his site. And preservationists and other architectural aficionados use it as a bible of L.A. architecture.
