On November 5th, 2020 – during the Covid 19 pandemic – I volunteered for a day of documentation photography in Watts to support the nomination of the Watts Happening Cultural Center and the Mafundi Mural located at East 103rd Street in Los Angeles. It was a sunny day working with Rita Cofield and the staff…
Historic Preservation
Preserving Los Angeles
Preserving Los Angeles, highlighting dozens of lesser-known buildings, neighborhoods, and places in every corner of the city that have been “found” by SurveyLA, the first-ever city-wide survey of Los Angeles’ historic resources. The text is richly illustrated through images by a prominent architectural photographer, Stephen Schafer.
2020 – The Year We Blow Past 100 Documentations
A little list of the HABS, HAER, and HALS documentations Schaf Photo has competed in the past 10+ years…
CEQA Documentation Mitigations for Historic (Cultural) Resources
The example below is a CEQA compliant Level 2 HABS mitigation for a significant historic district, campus, farmstead or any multi-unit grouping of resources. This example follows the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for Architectural, Engineering and Landscape Documentation.
Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) Highlights: First Over Glendale Bridge 2016
Here’s some highlights from my Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) documentation of the First Street Viaduct over Glendale Boulevard from October, 2016.
Photographer’s Eye: Capturing History Forever, Photographing for the Historic American Buildings Survey
HABS, as the Historic American Buildings Survey is informally called, is arguably the best documentation program in the world for historic buildings. Stephen Schafer has been practicing this archival photographic process to capture sites in California as diverse as an 1840s adobe and a Cold-War stealth ship.
HABS/HAER/HALS Documentations from 2017 and 2018
A selection of my favorite large format negatives from the last couple years of Historic American Buildings Survey photography (HABS). By Stephen Schafer, Ventura, California, (805)-652-1000
HABS Mitigation for CEQA (Part 1: Is Cheaper Also Better?)
Documentation of historic resources is one way to mitigate impacts to significant properties and photographic documentation is one facet of a comprehensive CEQA mitigation strategy, and donating it to the National Park Service through their informal donation policy is less expensive than distributing multiple archival copies locally. The data created for HABS/HAER/HALS requires a Life Expectancy of over 500 years… Can your local historical society do that?
New Book About 1500 Mission Street, San Francisco
Announcing the publication of the 1500 Mission Street Historic Building Documentation book.
MAD Stickers Ye Shall Find
7 Aspects of Integrity and CEQA stickers are here!