The weather in Los Angeles is often imagined as a chain of bright, cloudless days, punctuated rarely by sudden torrential rains. But the sky above L.A. has exerted endless fascination, both for residents and a long line of artists who have worked there since the nineteenth century. In his "6:30 a.m" series--a collaboration between an artist and the forces of nature--Robert Weingarten has created a body of work that at times resembles abstract painting, capturing changes in the Los Angeles sky that elude human perception. No other photographer has revealed the unique light of Southern California with such surprising beauty.

 "Weingarten is a man obsessed with beauty found in nature," writes J. Paul Getty Museum curator Weston Naef in his foreword to this book. "Desiring his photographs to be compared with painting and drawing, he was inspired to advance the idea behind the Rouen Cathedral series by Monet, whose studies of light and chromatic change have been a lifelong interest. Moreover, he shares a goal of some important Old Masters of Pictorialist photography such as Heinrich KOhn, Robert Demachy, Edward Steichen, and Baron de Meyer. One key difference is that Weingarten's pictorial effects are not the result of manipulation in the scanning or printing, but rather represent the faithful translation onto paper of what has been recorded on film, a goal shared by all purists of photography."