West Coast Weekends Pt1 - Venice Beach

Happy Summer! And thanks for checking out the blog! Although today is the "official first day of Summer", I got a head start and made last weekend my un-offical start of Summer. And what better way to start Summer than with a trip to the beach, right? Truthfully, I'm not a big fan of the beach. But I got an invitation to my friend Angela's birthday. And it just so happened to be at Venice Beach...

As expected, Venice was packed! From the freeways to the backstreets, to the boardwalk, traffic was crazy! I got lucky, though... I found a place to park on the street, near Abbot Kinney, and just walked to the beach. I took the camera and shot a few pics, along the way, too. The invite I got just said the party would be "on the beach between the pier and tennis courts." So it took me a while to find the party... After walking from the tennis courts to the pier and back, I couldn't find the party. I actually walked past it twice. But, when I did, I didn't see Angela or anyone I recognized and kept walking. It turned out that I only knew one other person besides Angela at the party, when I finally figured out where the party was. But, I did find it, after getting lost for a bit. I didn't mind being a little lost, since I had my camera, though. I'd been wanting to shoot the skaters at the skate park, for a while, too. So, while I was lost, I took some time to walk over and get some shots of the skaters that were at the park. A few of the guys there were really sick and ripped! But shooting them was a lot harder than I thought it would be. I still got some shots worth sharing. But it took a minute to figure out the settings to use and how to time the shots. Definitely something I want to do a lot more of, though...

After the party, it was time to head back to the Valley to go to the Van Nuys Blvd. cruise night to check out the lowriders...

A day in west L.A.

Thanks for checkin' out my blog! A few months back, I took my buddy Erika out to shoot the west side of town, after work. We were working in the Marina that day. So, we took the opportunity to get so nautical captures, once we were done with work, before heading over to the Venice canals. We strolled around the canals for a bit, before shifting into "lurk" mode and finding our way over to Santa Monica. I decided to take Erika up onto a rooftop for some cityscape shots, before moving on to our next location. Then, after my acrophobia therapy on the rooftop, we headed over to Century City for some architectural shots. It was a great day of shooting and Erika and I had a lot of laughs along the way. All together, we made our way through 7 cities on the west side, before calling it a night and heading home. I think I shot about 200+ images that day, too. But, I'm only going to share my favorite 8, our off the multitude of shots, for now. Check back soon to see more of my beautiful city and for more Bsombin'!

Lurkin' by the seashore

Thanks for checkin' out the blog! As I often do, I went out to shoot my city, one October night. I decided to hit up Jefroe, my brotha-from-anotha-motha, to see if he wanted to ride shot-gun on the mission. He was down, so I scooped him up and we set out for the west side.

...We had tried to go and shoot the marina one night, several months prior, but construction on the 405 freeway killed that plan. After sitting in bumper to bumper traffic from 12 - 3a.m., we aborted the mission and wasted a night of shooting, on our first attempt. On this October night, however, the freeway was wide open and there was nothing keeping us from our objective. We landed in Playa Del Rey around 12a.m. and began our adventure on a bridge over Ballona Creek. It was the perfect place to break out the steel wool and pop Jefroe's "steel wool cherry"! Lol. I went through a whole pack of steel wool on, the bridge, before getting the attention on some LAPD officers that were ticketing some guys doing donuts in a parking lot on the other side of the marina. After shooting fireballs all over the bridge, with them watching, we packed up and disappeared into the night. 

After cruising around the marina for a bit, we headed to the Venice canals for some more fiery fun. Jefroe was lovin' it, as I'm sure most photogs do their first time shooting wool! I did all the spinning, for the night, and had Jefroe click the shutter for me, after setting my camera up. Unfortunately, I blew it on the best spin/shot of the night, and got fuzzy doo-doo, thanks to me forgetting to turn off the autofocus. But Jefroe had his setting right and our teamwork resulted in some awesome captures. You can see some of the pictures on his Instagram account. (You're just going to have to scroll down through a lot of his lil' squares before you get to them, since it was back in October.) ...If you'd like to peep the homie's work, and give him a follow, check out @atlastleague. 

We cruised around a bit more, after the canals, but hunger's call distracted us and lead us back to the greasy goodness that is Tommy's Hamburgers. ...Tommy's Chili cheese fries and burgers are know to induce food commas. So, with grease in gut and gas in butt, we called it a night and headed back home, before the "comma" started to kick in. It was a good way to end a great night of "lurkin'". Here are some of the captures I brought home that warm October night. Check back soon for more images from my beautiful city and more Bsombin'!