Last Trip to Hollywood for a bit

Hopefully...

I went a couple of weeks ago. The whole trip was planned to a 'T' a few days before hand. I hate going down there without a plan because I usually spend more time than I want to walking around. I'm trying to learn how to be lazy while I'm out. Its not easy when you like looking at stuff. Like the last few times I parked at the Metro Green Line Station which always works out to my advantage.

My itinerary for the day was:
The Wiltern
Pantages
Hollywood Palladium
Las Angeles Theater
Angels Flight
Tower Theater
and the Mayan

My favorite spot of this trip was most definately Angels Flight. I had heard about it several years ago when it reopened but forgot about it until I had seen an advertisement for it on the subway. It's the shortest railway in America and its priced expensively at 50 cents. I wish it were longer than 2 minutes cause I had a blast. heir

I also had a tiny excursion to the Renaissance Pleasure Faire at the Santa Fe Dam in Irwindale. Tis an adventure all must attempt before thy return to the pit of despair, aka Monday morning. I caught the end of The Merry Wives of Windsor who are funny as hell.

Now on with this weeks set of shots.

Give me shout out on what you think.

Portfolio Shoot in Downtown LA

This weeks shoot was a bit different from the last few shoots I went on. I went to see the Ansel Adams Exhibit that was being held at an independent studio in Downtown using prints provided by the Los Angeles Public Library. I'll talk more about the photo exhibit in a different post.

I didn't really really shoot too much this week. I had one roll left in my Yashica Mat and I needed to get it finished ASAP. Right around the corner from the exhibit just happened to be the Tower Theater. I visited this theater a few weeks ago on my initial visit to the Broadway theater district. For me, the place seemed to be fairly difficult to shoot as the front of the theater is blocked by an ever so stupid looking street light placed in front of a magnificent looking building. The last time, I got a similar shot to what was printed on the main page of the theaters website. So this time, I thought I would focus more on the side of the building and shooting it from the back.

The majority of the shots seemed to be of the kind altered by the parallax between the two lenses, but I did get a pretty great shot, in my opinion, that I probably shall be using on my portfolio.

As I've noticed recently while shooting film, at least I got one.

Part two of my shoot was just a few blocks down from the Tower Theater. The Mayan Theater and the Belasco. I've been seeing the Mayan Theater pop up ever since I first learned about it, like on Storage Wars.

Well, that's about it for this week. I think I am going to go on Thursday or Friday evening to get some good pictures of The Roxy, The Palladium and the Keyclub. 

Portfolio Shoot from West Hollywood

For the past month and a half, I have been trying to build up a decent archive of images to work from instead of working roll to roll. I have gone about three times and have about one or two more shoots that I am planning before I stick with just printing my pictures, but it seems that I am kind of limited to the kind of pictures that I can take and where I can take them from. Here, I will show you some of the worse examples. These are still on the better than snapshot side, just not good enough for me to stick in my professional portfolio.

These ones are more or less are not as good because I dont have enough want and balls to get a better angle. Maybe they might even be better if I had stuck my camera on my monopod and set the self timer. I can probably get a more interesting angle that way.

These three are just subject to location and patience. The first one I was able to squeeze my lens in a spot  not blocked by a chain link fence. the second one is the real test of patience. I was waiting for a good 5 minutes just to be able to see the kodak sign, but was unable to get the theater half into the shot. Also the security guard wouldnt let me rest my monopod on the floor even though it had a rubber stop on the bottom. The third image was location. For some reason these old theaters have huge giant trees in front of them. NOt very easy to get a shot without a tree in it. The Mayan Theater has that same problem even though it has a ton of decorations on the outside.

These last two are pictures I think I am going to use for my project. The shot of the Disney Hall especially will be in there. There is almost no way you can shoot that place badly even if you try. The black spot on the left hand side was from a light leak on my Lubitel from the red window on the back. I'm going to crop it out by printing the rest of it bigger using an easel. 

Well, if anybody has any tips for taking better ground level shots, leave a comment. Thanks.