09-04-2021 - 15th St Cruise Night On Labor Day Weekend - Part 1

Thanks for stoppin' by and checkin' out the blog. It's been a few weeks since I've gone to a cruise. Mainly, because I've been working so much. But also because I hit a "creative wall" of sorts... As a creative I find it difficult to stay on one subject or style for too long. I get bored of repetitive processes and routines and often drop the things I'm working on to start something new. I like to switch things up and explore my options to creatively express myself. Repetition feels redundant and restricting to me. 

For the past year and a half, I have been focused on lowriding, though. That, for me, is a long time to spend on one subject. Plus, I went from shooting light trails, portraits, cityscapes, supercars, and aerial photography to shooting nothin' but lowriders, over the course of a couple of months. This was a very difficult and confusing process for me, because I was so used to shooting a wide variety of subjects. But lowriders are something that I have loved and appreciated since I was a little kid. And the more I learn about the culture the more I appreciated it. Plus, I've been having fun and the lowrider community has been very embracing and supportive of me and my work. So I started to focused more on the community and all the different aspects of the lowrider culture and lifestyle. This made it easier for me to stay on the subject. But I finally hit that point were I started to feel like things are getting too repetitive and becoming a stagnant routine. So I had to take a moment to consider what lowrider art and photography mean to me. And whether on not I wanted to continue focusing on it or move on to other subjects and ideas.

I decided that I still have a lot to do and explore in the world of lowriding. Also, lowriders mean a lot to me. From cruisin' with my uncle in his mini truck, to ridin' around with the homies in their lowered Cadis, to street racing in my slammed Civic, to cruisin' on 3 in the homies' Cadis... I've had a lot of great times, thanks to lowriding. For these reasons I decided not to move on to something new. Instead, I want to keep learning more about the people and the cars that make up the lowrider culture. But, to make it easier for myself (so I don't feel so restricted), I've decided to start incorporating more abstract and creative styles into my lowrider photography and to start experimenting with new processes. I've also decided to start making more lowrider art aside from photography, like drawing, painting, and designing. In the face of doubt, I have been fortunate to find new inspiration.

This past Saturday, I went to 15th Street Cruise Night to begin testing new ideas on how to capture the cruises and all the energy that they create. 15th Street Cruise night is one of the best cruise nights in L.A. It's hosted by @Dangerustla81 and is always a good time. So it was the perfect place to go to get back into my groove and start testing ideas.

I wanted to do something fun and different, in addition to what I usually shoot. The first thing that came to mind was light painting. Although I still can't decide on how I am going to execute that ideas, it lead me to thinking about different things I could do with slow shutter & long exposure photography. I came up with a few new ideas, while I was on my way to the cruise. I also wanted to test some old techniques to see how I could apply them to the lowriders. By the time I got off the freeway, I had a short list of ideas to test and was the most hyped I've been about shooting in years.

I started off shooting hand held slow shutter shots (.08 - 1 second exposure times) to see if I could make the lights trail without blurring the cars too much. I got a handful of shots that I liked, out of a shitload of tries. But I started to understand the process and was able to get to the point were I felt like I could control the shot enough to get what I wanted out of the flicks.

I didn't want to get too abstract. I still shot a lot of the typical stuff that I shoot. Like some street photography, some lifestyle photography, some portraits, and some automotive shots. But I tried to limit those shots and keep myself in an experimental state of thinking.

I like combining time-lapse techniques and long exposure photography to make creative videos. So I got the tripod out and shot a lot of long exposure shots that I later assembled into a short time-lapse test. I'm not going to post the time-lapse because it was just a test. But I was really happy with how it came out. I will start making more of these videos at cruises, in the future, and sharing them. 

I also played around with the idea of trying to distort the lowriders with long exposure, in order to make them look like spaceships flying by. Or like ghostly glowing lowriders that you can see through. I had some success and a lot of failures. But over all, I brought home some flicks that I was not only happy with. But I was also inspired by some of them. As usual, I shot a lot. So I'll break up all the pics into multiple posts so it isn't just one giant post that no one will ever get to the end of. Without further delay, here's the first batch of flicks from 15th Street Cruise Night on Labor Day Weekend 2021...

There's a lot more left from 15th Street (not to mention the 80 other cruises and car shows that I still have to edit and post). So make sure to check back soon for more art, automobiles, and a whole lot more Bsombin'!