Analog Love Letter: Awake

Sometimes all it takes is good timing.

I used to frequent my friend's house quite often. Most of the time I come unannounced. I'm almost like the Kimmie Gibbler (from Full House fame) of my group of friends.

My friend Flor was babysitting while the parents worked and this photo was taken just as my friend's son was waking up from a nap and his mother had just come from work to pick him up. As she was feeding him, he looked towards me and gave this curious look.

Me and kids are weird. I love kids but sometimes kids are stranger danger with me which is fine. Some take to me well from the start while others I just need more time so I can grow on them.

"Wrong side of a nap" / 35mm Kodak Portra 160VC / April 2011

Analog Love Letter: Sunshine On The Beach

Fun under the sun takes a whole new meaning when you're at a beach party. That was always the case whenever Distant Beat organized their beach parties a couple of years back.

During one beach party in August, the beach in Sea Cliff, Calif. was oddly overcast through much of the day. Other DB beach parties were normally sunny and warm. I was over by the DJ tent and the sky was already starting to clear up to let Sol's rays shine down on us when I noticed my friend Becky from afar dancing and making her way towards us. She's always been a bright soul to me and every time I'm in her presence, she brightens my mood and the setting. 

"Sun is shining" / 6x6 medium format Fuji Velvia 50 / August 2009

Analog Love Letter: Beautifully Lounging

Editorial fashion shoots was still a new experience for me in 2012. I've studied (read: flipped through fashion magazines) and a lot of the photos I saw back then had this washed out look to them which were obviously edited to look like an old film stock look (most but not all of them...) and I thought it would be fun to actually bring one of my film toy cameras and shoot a couple of frames and see what happens.

This was taken during another DeLacy Collection shoot after we had gone through multiple pieces for their look book. I had the model lounge on one of the patio chairs some time after noon to get a bit harsher light. Normally you don't want to do that but I figured the toy camera's plastic lens would soften the light a little bit so it doesn't look too harsh. I liked the resulting photo with the light leak to the right which is what I love about toy cameras. Their unpredictability almost always works.

"Toy camera fashion" / 6x6 medium format Fuji Astia 100F / December 2012

Analog Love Letter: Let Me Get Out Of Your Frame

I had my first experience doing a fashion photoshoot in 2011. It was for a friend of a friend and she owned a boutique label called DeLacy Collection. She needed a new photographer and asked my friend if she knew anyone and recommended me for the job. I had just purchased a new set of studio lights so I was well equipped for the job not just skill wise but technically.

This was a BTS (Behind The Scene) photo that I decided to shoot on the Mamiya C330. Just prior to this photo, an assistant helped out by prepping her hair and some other of the finer details on the model and when she turned her head and saw me with the camera ready to shoot, she probably thought I was ready to run the next set of photos with my digital camera so she quickly jumped out of my frame so I could take the photo. That was awfully nice of her but all I wanted to do was to document on film, her prepping the model.

"Hopping out" / 6x6 medium format Lomography 100 / May 2011

Analog Love Letter: Desperate For a Smoke

My friend Genna and I took our first break of the day during Outside Lands in 2014 when we ran into these two guys and they had asked me if I was willing to sell them two cigarettes after seeing I had lit one myself. I don't ever charge money in exchange for something like cigarettes that can potentially kill you and I offered them at no charge but they wouldn't have it. Some sort of guilt I suppose so they gave me $5 for two smokes.

We chatted with these two for a good amount of time and they became our "festival friends" where we would exchange salutations if we were to every run into each other. We ran into them one other time during the 3 day festival but it was always cordial and friendly. We briefly talked about our opinions on whatever act we saw for the day and what our recommendations of other acts we each need to see. 

Before going our separate ways in this instance, they asked again for two additional cigarettes, to which I offered for free but again, they wouldn't take. So they gave me another $5 for another two cigarettes. 

"Festival friends" / 35mm Adox CHS 100 / August 2014

Analog Love Letter: A Vigilante and Protestors

I shoot a lot of street photography. I also shoot a lot of protests. It's rare when I get to capture both styles in one photo.  

Me and my friend Calvin were looking for something to photograph one Saturday and I told him that there was a protest going on somewhere in downtown Los Angeles over the shooting death of Mike Brown by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. The freeway was jammed in Hollywood so I told him to take the surface streets. While driving, I heard some yelling out of the car window and I noticed that people were protesting something and it hit me, we ran into the protest we were looking for.  

We got out of the car and started shadowing the protestors. At one point, the protestors hit Hollywood Blvd. where there are people dressed as characters of all sorts trying to shake down tourists for a dollar or two to have a chance at having a photo with said fictional character.  

On the corner of Hollywood and Highland, I noticed one of the Batmans (yes, there is more than one Batman there) about to cross the street while the protestors were marching towards him and the thought of having these two forces cross paths would make for an interesting photo opportunity.  

I waited until they both met and shot this photo. In hindsight, I probably should've developed this roll instead of cross processing it which is why it looks so grainy and contrasty. Oh well. It kind of works.  

"The caped crusader meets actual crusaders" / 35mm AGFA Precisa 100CT / November 2014

Analog Love Letter: A Man And His Camera

Around 2009, I bought a Polaroid SX-70 film on Etsy because I wanted to get into instant film photography. I loved the washed out look of the emulsions that you couldn't replicate with 35mm film (unless you really over expose an image which didn't look great 90% of the time). I was so excited to add a new camera to my collection. I wanted to dive in and create as many Polaroids as I could. 

Some time in that same year, I remembered leaving the camera in the trunk of my then girlfriend's car and asked her if I could get it back. She told me that it was probably gone when someone broke into her car and took everything in the trunk. I was saddened by the loss of the camera.  

A year ago, her brother told me if the SX-70 he found belonged to me and I told him I thought it was stolen but apparently he found it. Lucky for me, he's also a photographer and owns an broken model so he knew exactly what it was. The camera, when not used, looks like some tiny storage box but when you open it up, that's when you realize it's a camera. She didn't know that it was a camera she had all these years and I was finally reunited with my camera! As soon as I got it, I bought film for it so I can start shooting some instant magic. Polaroid no longer produces film but the Impossible Project bought the emulsion recipe from Polaroid and are now the sole provider of Polaroid instant type films.  

This is a photo of Jasson Bautista in front of the Grand Central Market in downtown Los Angeles. He had newly acquired a Leica III and I had newly acquired a Contax G2 so we decided to do a little street shooting session with our rangefinders. A little shoot out of you will. 

"Jasson and his Leica" / Impossible Film SX-70 / April 2015

Analog Love Letter: Bon Voyage

I never really got along with my mother in my later years. We butted heads on many things. We're both pretty stubborn people. I get my methodical reasoning from my dad. I get my stubbornness from my mom. My good looks come from both of them.  

I took this photo of my mom, dad and sister at LAX before they went on vacation one last time to Indonesia. While there, my mother had some health issues which later turned out to be cancer. She's still there. I miss her.  

"Departure" / Fuji Pro 400H 35mm /  August 2014

Analog Love Letter: Missing Piece

I had a cat a couple of years ago and I loved her dearly. My mother told once told me that as a child growing up, I was always attracted to cats and they were attracted to me. I'm a lover of animals and I'm fond of both cats and dogs when it comes to the great debate between the two but I'll always be drawn to cats. 

She passed away in 2011 and I miss her dearly. She was more dog like in that she would greet me whenever I walked in. Cats care despite the popular belief. They just show it in different ways. She never had a name.

"Cat" / 35mm Foma Fomapan 200 / February 2010

Analog Love Letter

A few things are established and known.  

1. I love analog film. 35mm, medium & large format and Polaroids.  

2. My film process is slow. Friends and others will always ask me what ever happened to the photo I took of them on film are. My reply is always "When it's ready.  

With that being said, I will no longer post blog entries regarding my love for film since everyone knows it and since I'm slow with updating content on my site with new photos, I'm going to start something new with my blog called Analog Love Letter (hence the title of this entry). This series should solve my haphazard content updates.  

Simply put, Analog Love Letter are brief stories and some thoughts of certain photos I took on film. This is the first.

I was in San Francisco for an annual music festival called Outside Lands at Golden Gate Park. Me and my friend took a breather on the side of a hill in the afternoon because we were tired as all hell and  I saw this one couple in front of us laying on the grass. It became cold rather suddenly so they cozy'd up trying to stay warm, all the while enjoying the sound of Death Cab For Cutie playing on the main stage. 

"Music Brings Lovers Together" / August 2014 / 35mm Ilford Delta 100