Just finished up a two day assisting job in wonderful Palmdale (yes that was sarcasm).  Grabbed these shots with the D200 at the 4 Aces motel and gas station.  It's a great location if you can afford the $3500 rental.  Or if you can assist someone who's paying for it.  It's rare, but sometimes there are actually perks to assisting.

 

Jason's dog Major got the surgical tubes out of his face recently,  so I went over for some doggy portraits.  Shooting more and more with the D200 again.  I forgot how much fun it is to have instant gratification.

Went back to Chicago for Thanksgiving/wedding and decided to go downtown for some shots on the coldest day of the week when it dipped town to the teens.  I did the usual River/Loop/Lakefront/Gold Coast/Millennium Park tour.  Almost froze my toes off, but some good shots were had after sundown.  Not bad for iso100 and no tripod while trying not to shiver.

Stopped at this spot off the 10 on my way back from Tucson.  There was a really eerie vibe about the place.  It looked like it was abandoned, but you could tell people still lived in some of the places.  There was a house in the middle of a giant sea of abandoned cars, but there was a fairly prominent sign at the driveway about trespassers being shot, and I decided to take that seriously.  I took a few shots and got out before some radioactive freak could jump out and grab me like in "The Hills Have Eyes."  Can't trust desert folk.

After assisting on a shoot with a dozen naked models all day, I finally manned up and asked a couple of the girls if I could take some shots on the side.  The photographer had an old polaroid camera with about 10 boxes of expired film sitting in storage, so I busted it out.  Pretty great results on the frames that didn't come out black.

Drove all the way up to Paso Robles only to stop for gas and turn around.  There's so much amazing country you can see from the 101.  The only problem is that the amazing view is from the middle of the freeway, and they really try to discourage parking there.  I managed to find a frontage road on the way home with a ramshackle old diner.  It was super contrasty with the sun low in the sky and the building in shadow, so the best I could do was take advantage of the flares with the Black Slim Devil.

More toy camera stuff.  Hit up Montebello skate park in the morning with the boys.  As usual, I went to a place full of people and took empty landscape shots.  Saw the beater on my way to Borders in the afternoon.  Ran home to get the camera just for this shot.  I love the way the flat wheel is turned just perfectly.  I had to stand uncomfortably close to a random dude at the crosswalk to get the whole thing in frame, and for some reason he seemed really unwilling to move.  Sometimes I feel like I'm the only normal person in Hollywood, and then I remember that I'm the one taking pictures of crappy cars two blocks away from the Walk of Fame.

Took this one last winter in Chicago, just getting around to uploading it now.  Taking into account my aversion to newer model cars, this was about all I could shoot from the middle of the mall parking lot.

Got a new toy yesterday on Fairfax.  It's a Black Slim Devil 35mm toy camera.  Super wide angle lens.  Took it to play on a location scout in Long Beach.  It gives pretty awesome flares.  The fixed aperture kind of sucks, though.  Makes taking pictures outside of direct sunlight pretty much impossible unless you want to use high iso film.  Which, if you know me, you know I pretty much refuse to do.  It's kind of a "grass is always greener situation" though - if I don't use a higher iso I can't take pictures indoors.  But if I load some 400 or 800, I'll immediately want to go out in the daylight.

Scored a free Lensbaby kit from my buddy Adrian.  I don't really have occasion to use it much, but hey free is free.  I took it out to Joshua tree on a scorching 114 degree day.  Touching the tripod after about 4 minutes outside the car became an issue, and I got a cactus spine pretty deep in my finger for my troubles, but I can't really complain.  If you have the patience to set up a fixed composition and fiddle with the knobs and locks on a lensbaby, you can get some interesting results.  I really hate having to change out the magnetic aperture rings though.  I wish they could figure out a better system.  I also hate trying to type in this damn template.  For obvious reasons.

It was another amazing road trip with John this summer.  This year we decided to go camping in King's Canyon National Park.  It's a pretty amazing U-shaped canyon with Giant Sequoia forests all around.  Despite only shooting half a roll of 645 before the camera battery died (note to self, always carry extras) and then subsequently losing the roll amidst all Jason's undeveloped stuff, I did get some good shots on the AE-1.  John's misguided attempts to stoke the fire with green branches led to some great pictures and smoking out the entire campground, which made us very popular.  The first night was spent next to a roaring river, the second was mostly spent awake and terrified in the car after reports of bears in the area and hearing strange cracking sounds in the woods nearby.  After our ursine encounter the year before at Convict Lake, I wasn't about to take any chances.

Random cars from the neighborhood.  Jason thinks I'm slightly retarded for refusing to take a picture if there's a post-1990 car in it, but I disagree.  There's just something timeless about old vehicles.  You know, like back when they were actually made of metal.

After living in LA for almost ten years now, I've really come to hate the constantly perfect, cloudless bluebird skies.  I find myself wandering around in the rain on the rare days that we get it, just to see what real weather actually feels like.  It was a good thing I took my AE-1 with me today, because Runyon looked amazing in the fog.  The only problem with walking around in a wet shirt all day is the nipple chafing.  I'll remember to bandage up like a marathon runner next time.

Is it possible for a place to be your muse?  Seems like I always find new stuff to shoot at Jason's.  And before you ask, yes I planned those flares perfectly.  Canon AE-1.