The LA County Museum of Art is actually a rather impressive art museum. It is a complex of buildings used to house a permanent collection as well as special exhibitions and a building dedicated to Asian art. Across the street is a modern art museum as well as other special exhibition halls.

I like going to LACMA. It's not in downtown, it is out on Wilshire Blvd in Hancock Park. It's a large collection that always has something interesting. Not as high end as the museums in London or Paris, but pretty good.

In the permanent collection you are allowed to take photographs. No flash or tripods. On this day I had my new camera with me and was wandering around finding things to take snaps of. I also had my macro lens.

The thing about a macro lens is you have to get right up close. That's what a macro lens is, actually, it allows you to get within a couple of inches of something and still take a photo. There were guards around watching to make sure no one did anything nasty to the paintings like steal them or touch them, but I wanted to use my macro lens.

So I waited until the guard left (they usually have two or three rooms they patrol). I then sneaked up and got really close to a painting... zzoooomed in on something, and voila. There you have it.

These are from paintings by Pissarro.

I tried it a couple of other times, the last time setting off an alarm. I didn't actually touch anything but I must have tripped a hidden sensor someplace; but the alarm was confusing to the guards. Several of the guards gathered in the next room and looked puzzled for a bit then shrugged and went back to trolling the area.

This top photo was the one I think tripped the alarm (it was only on for a second or two).