Mall Santa

Got the cover the District this week. Haven't seen the print issue yet, but the layout of the Santa photos is suppose to be killer. Pick up a copy if you're in the LBC!

Twilight of the Press Telegram?

I shot a portrait recently of Joe Segura, who is part of the union at the Press Telegram, Long Beach's daily newspaper. Sadly, it seems that since the PT was purchased 10 years ago by a larger media company, it has gutted its editorial and photography departments.


The PT is now a shadow of its former self. The news is no longer really Long Beach oriented, but the sort of syndicated canned news that can be found in other papers.


To emphasize the point, Joe brought three newspapers during the portrait session, each with the same EXACT headlines and stories. Talk about homogenization!

Another cover....

If you're in Long Beach, be sure to grab a copy of The District. Got the cover this week! It's a shot from the Andy St. assignment. It's a bit of a crop but it still came out well. There's also a nice spread of images inside.

Andy St. and a minor tragedy....

Well, I had a good and bad day...mostly bad, I suppose. I was out on assignment shooting a rough little neighborhood in North Long Beach. I was with the reporter and the story was about a street in Long Beach that was riddled with violence and drugs, but managed to turn itself around with community effort.

Andy St. was rampant with gangsters and drug dealers. The SWAT team made weekly visits there. At one point, the US Postal Service refused to deliver mail to the individual apartments and instead put up a group of mailboxes at the end of the street. So, to say the least, it was a little rough around the edges.

I met some families that pulled together to get rid of the troublesome residents, plant trees, paint a mural and more or less revitalize the neighborhood. I got some great shots of the families on the street.

When I was photographing some kids playing on the street, my wallet of memory cards fell out of my back pocket and someone either walked off with it or it grew wings and flew away. We scoured the street for a good forty minutes with no luck. I'm more upset with the lost images than I am with the cards, since I got some great stuff that I can't shoot again. Fortunately, I had enough variety in the final card that was in my camera to hopefully cover the story.

C'est la vie.

Photography can be loud!!!!!!

I had a relatively peaceful afternoon today. I met with a family about ordering prints. Had some tacos at my new favorite taqueria stand (Taqueria Mexicana for the LB locals). I put on a new front rack for the bike I'll be taking on the bike tour this summer.

Then, I had to go to San Pedro for a band shoot. San Pedro is a terrible city to get to by bike from Long Beach. You have to take Anaheim (heavy traffic, crappy road) to Gaffey (heavy traffic, crappy road, hills), since it would be a near death wish to ride over the Vincent Thomas bridge.

One thing I've learned is to work smarter, not harder. I took my folding bike and piled on two light stands and a pelican case with my camera and strobes and went multi-modal (part bike/ part mass transit). I rode to the transit mall, picked up the Commuter Express to San Pedro, got off on 7th and Gaffey and rode the remaining 8 blocks to my job. It would have been feasible to do it all by bike, but by the time I got there I would be too wrecked to shoot.

The assignment was the hardcore punk band, 46 Short. They were practicing in the basement of the drummer's house. It was a small hot room that filled up with loudest punk rock I have ever heard in my life. Luckily, they had a spare set of ear plugs so I wouldn't go deaf. I could feel the air literally vibrate when I was shooting. It was hard to get a good shot of the whole band in the room, so when they went on break we went outside to shoot.

Still fighting the man...

I got the great pleasure of photographing Ed Hendricks, the chairman of the Long Beach chapter of Surfrider. He is 80 and still alive and kicking. His current mission, which is no small task, is to see the breakwater come down in Long Beach and to bring waves back to our shores. Go Ed, go!

I should mention that I had an assistant at the shoot tonight too (thanks Dominic). Hard to hold a strobe with an umbrella, carry a conversation, take photos and balance on boulders at the same time without an extra hand.

Close to home....

Sometimes, I get really lucky and get an assignment close to home. This portrait was shot about two blocks from my apartment. It's a portrait of Talia, singer in a band called Katie the Pest, who was performing at She Sells CDs by the Sea Shore, a small music store down the street. The location was right in front of the store.

Not the most picturesque site (sitting on a bus bench on Broadway and Falcon), but the light was golden and at a pretty good angle. I was getting flare in my lens but decided to play with it. It creates a nice ethereal mood to the portrait. Luckily, I had some help. A friend of Talia's showed up and was kind enough to hold my reflector to bounce some fill in.

Native Plants

On assignment today for the District Weekly. The location was a 10 acre wholesale garden grower in Long Beach (who knew?!), The Garden of Eva.

The light wasn't the best (1pm, summer sun beating straight down). I decided to put into practice what I was playing with at my brother's graduation. I put my flash on the TTL cord, set the camera to -1.3 and the flash to +2 and held the flash with my hand. The woman, Annika, was a great sport but had a wide brim hat. I had to angle the flash so the light would get under the brim and still create some nice sculpting.

Congressional Race Photos

Michael Clements, organizer of BeerandPolitics.org
I was sent down to my local watering hole for Beer and Politics, a monthly gathering where one really fun thing and one really frustrating thing are shaken up to a milky froth. This particular session was packed and attracted a lot of interest as it was a forum for candidates running for the 37th District congressional seat.

My goal was to try to get a portrait of all the candidates by the bar. I set up my umbrella and a little kicker light for separation. As it turned out I was only able to get about three portraits since people were coming late and the bar was filling up quickly. After about the third person almost tripped on my lightstand, I packed it up and decided shift gears from portrait mode to event mode. I tucked my backpack away by the stage and went light, shooting with available light.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with the portraits I was able to get with the light kit. It was something different. I had never tried to set up some sort of formal lighting at an event and it was a learning experience. I had to act fast with setting up the light and think quickly as people were moving all around me. I was pretty impressed with the quality of light the big silver umbrella gave and made a mental note to take it out again.

Republican candidate for the 37th Congressional District, John Kanaley.

Democratic candidate and State Assembly member, Laura Richardson.

The crowd at Gallaghers in Long Beach.

White Balance magic....

I decided to try out some white balance techniques I've been playing with. I shot this portrait in shaded daylight. I set my camera's white balance to Tungsten, so everything had a bluish tint. I then set up a strobe with a tungsten gel so that my subject would be properly exposed. The end result is a nice moody portrait right in the middle of the day.

It always takes longer than you think...

My view from the San Gabriel River Trail

My adventure yesterday took a little longer than planned. The mileage came out closer to 50 miles for the day after a few wrong turns and a stop for lunch. For the most part it was nice and straight with a little urban freestyle once I left the river trail.

Some highlights included hearing gunfire, which I thought was coming from the Walmart, but was really coming from the police academy shooting range next to it.

I also almost ran into a horse. About mile 15 you pass by a lot of homes with horse stables and people apparently ride their horses down the trail.

I saw a falcon-type bird eat a smallish-type bird (I'm not an ornithologoist), plucking it right out of the sky and tackling it into some high grass. It was very Animal Kingdom.

The assignment itself was a little wacky. It was given to me by District writer, Theo Douglas. The last time I photographed something for a Theo Douglas story it involved an automatic assault rifle. So I was a little weary, especially since he closed the email with an ominous "good luck."

My subject was a house in suburbia that was embroiled in a lawsuit of somesort with a certain television makeover show. When I arrived I circled the house on my bike, half-expecting a police perimeter and snipers on the roof. I decided to eat my muffin and picked a shaded tree that wasn't too far from the house so I could see if there was much activity on the street.

Some gardners packing up their truck. A woman watering the lawn. The ocassional mini-van pulling in and out of a driveway. Things looked reasonably still.

I steeled my nerves and rode up to the house, whipped out my camera that was in my handlebar bag (it was already turned on and dialed into the right settings) and began snapping away.

Wide establishing shot. Horizontal. Vertical.

A little closer. Wide shot using the driveway as a visual lead in. Horizontal. Vertical.

Step back and get the street. Horizontal. Vertical.

All this while I'm thinking about my legal defense as a photographer, should someone come out of the house frying pan or assault rifle in hand. "I'm on public property. Your house is in plain view from the street. Your house has no reasonable expectations of privacy being out in the open like this."

Of course, nothing happened. No cars with sirens came whipping around the nice wide sidealks. No sniper (atleast that I saw) was locking down on me from one of the 2nd story bedroom windows. Just another day in suburbia. Although, I still packed up pretty quickly and zig zagged down some streets incase someone was following.