Analog Love Letter: End Of A Good Day

In my younger years, I never once caught a bout of motion/sea sickness. Didn't really have sea legs either but being on the open water in a boat never bothered me. It wasn't until recently in my life where I started to suffer from sea sickness to where I would have to sleep on the boat to get over it before finally enjoying whatever little time I had left being on a boat.

Towards the end of a day being on a boat, I was able to wake up from my nap to capture this photo of the setting sun in Marina Del Rey. My nap wasn't due to being sea sick, but rather being tired from the lack of sleep the night before. I was able to sustain being good, thanks to the help of some friends who had this nifty wristband that helps people with sea sickness.

"Sunset over Marina Del Rey" / 35mm Adox CHS 100 / February 2011

Analog Love Letter: Outside Lands

The older I get, the less inclined I'm up to go to large music festivals like Coachella. I'm just not fond of dealing with being inside the massive crowd that's packed in like sardines in a can so I could see whichever artist I wanted to see. Coachella is also out in Palm Springs and it can get rather hot there during the festival.

San Francisco offers a similar music festival but on a smaller scale (but still big mind you) called Outside Lands. My first time hearing about it was about a year ago from a friend who had rave reviews about it so when time came around in 2014 to attend, I thought, "what the hell?" I also love San Francisco so if the festival was a bust in my eyes, I could always venture out into the city to do some street photography and become more acquainted with the city.

Luckily for me, Outside Lands was more than what I had expected it to be and I had a great time. The one thing that I didn't like about Outside Lands, and any music festival at that, is their nonsensical rule about bringing in "professional" camera equipment. I didn't bring my digital camera for this trip (not my style), and I thought I would get in without any hassle with my simple film SLR because it didn't look "professional" and it was, well, film. Who still uses film right? On the first day of the three day festival, security didn't allow me entry. They're excuse was "no professional camera equipment." I told them it was a film camera. "The lens couldn't be less than two inches." Huh?! Frustrated with trying to reason with them, I ended up going back to my friend's car to leave it there which annoyed me.

On the second day, it was decided that we would try to hide the camera in my friend's bag, underneath a blanket and the scheme worked flawlessly. I was worried about the possibility of my camera being confiscated by security inside festival grounds if they saw it but my worries were found to be unreasonable because there were countless people inside the festival that had "professional" DSLRs that weren't even a part of any press/media. 

This photo was taken on the second day of the festival at the main stage during a switch in performers and just before Haim were set to perform. 

Music festivals are weird events. You have a large group of people who will go to a particular stage to see an artist, get all into the performance and once the show is over, they leave for another stage while the next large group of fans seamlessly flows in to catch the next artist. It's like literally watching a moving current comprised of human bodies.

"Waiting for Haim" / 35mm Efke KB100 / August 2014

Analog Love Letter: A Magenta Fair

A fair taking place on the Martian surface? Hardly. Just another example of a cross processed photograph. I talked about cross processing film in a previous post and you can get some wild and varying results depending on what type of film you develop in the wrong chemicals (cross process).

This photo yielded a rich magenta shift in the color spectrum due to the film being a Fuji brand slide film. Kodak slide film generally tends to shift towards the blue and green spectrum while Fuji shifts magenta and yellow, again, depending on the film stock.

The photo was taken at the Los Angeles County fair in November of 2008 which was the time when I started experimenting on cross processing my slide film to get interesting and weird results.

"LA county fair in magenta" / 6x6 medium format Fuji T64 / November 2008

Analog Love Letter: Crate Digger

I'm a lover of analog. All analog. Not just film. As this photo is the collection of vinyl currently sitting in my room. Yes, it's a lot but not as much as others may have in their collection.

Comprising mostly of hip hop 12" singles as I dabbled little in the art of the hip hop DJ. I sucked but my brother was much better than I but our interest faded eventually - mine quicker than his.

I have a good number of full length LPs that range the gamut of jazz, hip hop, soul, rhythm & blues and rock. Nothing really beats that analog sound. Much like film, it's something tangible as well as warm with regards to how it sounds. The clicks and pops of the stylus along the groove of the record is...awesome.

"Stax o' wax" / 35mm Fuji Neopan SS 100 / October 2010

Analog Love Letter: Lovers On A Rock

I'm not quite sure what prompts lovers to scale objects just to sit on them. This isn't the first time I've seen this phenomenon or documented.

During a location scouting session, I happened to come across this couple sitting atop this rock. I'm quite sure they were looking out at the ocean and it boggles me a bit. It's not like sitting on top will change the entire view. It's just the same as if you were sitting down on the beach this rock was located. Sure, it's just you two so I suppose the experience can be argued as different.

I'm not entirely sure why I felt the need to capture this either. Maybe I'm just starting on another project of couples just sitting on rocks and I just don't know it yet.

"Lovers rock #2" / 6x6 medium format Kodak Ektar 100 / December 2014

Analog Love Letter: Sunbathers

An interesting trend in the new hotels that are propping up these days is having rooftop pools surrounded by cabanas and sun chairs (I think that's what they're called?).

Many of the newer hotels in Los Angeles have them and I'm not really one to frequent such places so this was the first time I've ever been to one, and to this date, my only experience of the rooftop pool.

I was invited to my friend Melissa's birthday party to what was then the SLS Hotel. She's seen here (pictured middle) surrounded by her friends Jessica and Lee Ann. I took a great deal of photos on this day and even went in the water with my camera in hand to take a couple of shots as seen here. The water was ankle deep in this pool but I have other photos where I'm pretty much submerged and tried my best not to drop my camera under water. Anything to get the shot.

"Jessica, Melissa and Lee Ann" / 6x6 medium format Kodak 125PX / April 2011

Analog Love Letter: Instant Self Portrait

Self portraits can be taken many ways. Some methods are easier than others. Normally I would place myself in front of a mirror (as seen in other images), focus the lens and snap the photo. Other times, if I'm up for it, would be to set the camera on a tripod and compose my photo and set the camera on a timer if the camera has such a setting but most of my film cameras are manual so they don't have such an option. The other way, which is the more popular way these days for many people, is the "selfie" method in which you basically just turn the camera around and snap the photo. For film shooters, if your camera doesn't have an autofocus, this would be problematic and the other factor being that after you take the photo, you're not able to immediately see your result so you're hoping you got the shot.

I took this photo with a Fuji Instax 210 camera with the selfie method and one of the cool things about this camera, other than the fact that it shoots out instant film similar to Polaroids, is that it has a mirror adapter that you stick on the lens which faces you, allowing you to take a selfie. How cool is that? It's probably one of the reasons why the Instax format is so popular with young people who like the old instant film look and don't have the photoshop skills to reproduce it on a computer.

Which you shouldn't. Because that would just be ethically wrong.

"Selfie" / Fuji Instax 210 Wide instant film / Circa 2014

Analog Love Letter: Much Too Bright

This is a photo from my earlier days of film photography. I was using a standard Canon AE-1 Program SLR, and heavy in the Flickr scene when it was a big thing, uploading all my scanned film photos and joining the various analog groups on there. I discovered the very small niche scene of lomography and xpro'ing film which highly interested me. It was something new and exciting and I wanted to know more about it so the more research I did on the subject and scene, the more I wanted to go out and buy a toy camera and try out cross processing my film.

The day I purchased my first toy camera, a Holga CFN, I bought some film and promptly began shooting. There was a small house party of sorts and I went through my first few rolls of film that night when I took this photo of my friend Flor.

The CFN has a special flash built in which has colored gel filters on it so you're able to change the color of the flash at your choosing. That ability, along with the various color shifts that come with cross processing film, the resulting image possibilities are nearly endless.

For some people, the niche look of lomography and cross processing film can get boring and tiresome but to this day, I'm still shooting on various toy cameras and cross processing film.

"Too bright of a flash" / 6x4.5 medium format Kodak Ektachrome 64T / February 2007

Analog Love Letter: No Pictures Please

Sometimes I don't understand the shyness of people whenever a camera is pointed towards their direction. Photos are taken all the time, often without people knowing of it. I find little to distinguish between knowing that a photo is being taken to not knowing. The end result is the same.

Jorge doesn't really like having his picture taken. At least from my experience but he's getting a bit better about it. Maybe because he knows I always have at least one camera on me at all times and at some point I may feel inclined to take his photo. Or maybe he's getting used to the fact that I'll keep taking his photo when I wish and I'm stubborn about getting the right shot. This photo was taken long ago before he warmed up to my picture taking when I first purchased my Fuji Instax camera.

"Jorge being shy" / Fuji Instax instant film / Circa 2014

Analog Love Letter: Me & Melissa

This is another photo inspired by Interpol's Turn On The Bright Lights album of myself and my friend Melissa. 

I forget who took this photo but it was during my birthday celebration many moons ago at a bar called The Woods which is located in the city of Hollywood. Much of that night ended up being a blur to me. 

It's been awhile since I've seen her face and we've been trying to get together sometime in the near future. Not sure if it'll play out by the time I publish this but I know eventually I'll see her again in the near future.

It was a great night.

"Me and Melissa" / 6x6 medium format Fuji Astia 100F / December 2011