In Time for the Matinee

Pantages, West Hollywood, January 2012, YashicaMat EM, 80mm f3.5, Fujifilm Neopan ISO 100

On to the Next

I've been thinking lately about what it takes to do long term projects and how to not get bored after a certain amount of time. I have the issue because my attention span is about 30 seconds. And I have been kind of getting bored taking pictures in Downtown LA and Hollywood. Maybe its because I have a limited amount of places I can shoot with my portfolio project.

Maybe I wont have any problems because my next project wont be like that. Maybe it will be more like a pilgrimmage. There is most definatly a starting  and ending point where my current project doesn't have that. Yeah, thats the key.

Here's my set from my Hollywood shots thus far

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.

Last Set of from LA for Awhile

Its been about 2 weeks since my last post. I went for a night shoot in Hollywood, where all my pictures still came all washed out which leads me to believe that there is something wrong with my camera. I realized afterwards that I took the wrong meter measurements with my SLR to match up with my meter on my Yashica so I screwed up again. I'm going to get the whole apature issue down one of these days, whether it be depth of field or overexposing my film. The most important mistake I learned was don't meter for 250 ISO when your film is clearly marked 400 ISO. You let too much light in and then your pictures look like crap. I'll post the examples at the bottom of the post.

Other than that, I was having some weird issues where some spots are really sharp and other spots were not focused correctly, and it was happening on the same negative. This issue has been happening since my first test roll since fixing the shutter mechanism in February.

I was going to go back and re-shoot everything that I jacked up with my incorrect metering this past weekend, but the intense rain on Friday and Saturday ruined any chance at that. I wont be able to get out there for another two weekends which is a major bummer.

Here are the most decent of what I shot on my most recent trip.

I started my night off at Staples Center with a nice shot of what I presume to  be a statue of Magic Johnson

Took the Metro Red Line to Pantages

Cut on over to the Arclight Cinemas

And I ended up down at the House of Blues and walked to The Key Club about half a mile down the road.

These next two shots are from my Intermediate class. They are substandard and I didn't work very hard when I took these since I developed the roll with only half of the exposures used. They really aren't substandard, I just didn't get the reaction from my teacher that I was hoping for. I shall do better on the next project. I need to show off more.

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.