Exploring L.A. and Beaches

This past week was pretty good. I did a shoot, but it didn't turn out as I'd hoped (I still have a LOT to learn), so that was disappointing. But I'm still enjoying it. I did a lot of fun things that made up for my failure, though :)

On Thursday, we did a shoot for ErgoBaby, a company that makes carriers for babies. They're kinda cute little contraptions.

That baby was SO cute and smiley :) And this was her first shoot, so she did pretty well! It was so fun playing with all the little kids. A fringe benefit of being an assistant.

Beaches:

You can't live in Southern California and not go to the beach. And so far, I've been to Venice, Malibu, and Mission Beach. More beaches than I ever went to as a child.

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On Wednesday of last week, my friend Nate and I went to Venice beach. It's a really cool place during the day, but at night it gets kinda sketchy. I didn't know that it has this reputation. But it was kinda entertaining -- I'm pretty sure we were some of only sober ones there.

But I went again today with my friend come college Melissa and it was a lot better. It definitely has that L.A. feel to it. But here are some pictures from the beach

It's a pretty place. Guess it kinda looks like all beaches though :P

Then, yesterday (Friday) I went down to San Diego for a job interview and to meet up with people and have fun. I found that traffic is a LOT less hectic in San Diego than in L.A. After living in L.A. for 3 weeks, NO traffic anywhere else seems like "traffic". And San Diego is prettier, in my opinion. And cheaper, when it comes to renting. After realizing all of this I'm pretty sure I'm going to move back there. I'd forgotten just how amazing it is. AND, you don't have to pay for parking nearly as much. All I need now is a job! Just one more month in L.A. Crazy...

Anyway, Nate and I went to Mission beach in San Diego and it was SO nice. So much more my scene, more laid back.

And there were a lot of seagulls. An irrational fear of mine. But we don't need to get into that.

Avenue of the Stars:

I FINALLY got out into the city to see what all the hype is about Los Angeles!

Today, Melissa (along with her boyfriend and his friend) and I went to Avenue of the Stars in Hollywood. That was fun, and there were a ton of people dressed up as movie characters. It was really cool. Sadly, I was too distracted to think about taking pictures of them :/ Guess I was just livin' in the moment! But I did grab some pictures of the stars on the ground! Close enough, right? :P

One of my favorite actresses

LOVE this show!

Notice the guy wearing socks with sandals...why is this still around??

Found an empty spot. A miracle.

Dorothy!

We also saw Ripley's believe it or not museum. We didn't go in, but here's a picture of some craziness

Siamese twins playing the harp, guy playing 2 trombones.

We also passed by the Guiness Book of World Records museum. The tallest guy in history was 8'11"!! He was HUGE!!

That's what my past week or two was in a nutshell. I'm doing a shoot next week and I HOPE to have some good images to show!

Transition

I'm finally getting to know the city where I live (Los Angeles, right next to Culver City), mainly because I'm sent on errands (part of being a 2nd assistant) by myself. I thought I'd get lost a lot, but I have only had to turn around once during 5 errands I've run so far. I have to rely on my keen sense of direction (aka GPS) and memory. But one thing I've learned is how to drive on a crowded street. Aggression is key. I have never been cut off so much in one day, nor have I purposefully been that jerk myself. But you gotta do what you gotta do...

One thing that sucks about this city (I found out today): 

NO FREE PARKING :(

In Provo, there was parking is you could find it, but here there's very little, if any, free parking, yet it's still always crowded/full.

Anyway, I get to work on my own shoot on Friday, so I'm pretty stoked about that. And, the more I assist, the more I realize how much photography equipment I have to buy, and the more I realize just how broke I really am... Reality bites. BUT I'm still excited to shoot on Friday!

I thought it would take me a while to get used to L.A. but so far the transition has been much easier and better than I expected. I don't know when or where I'll move next, but for now, it's a nice place to be :)

First Week: Done

I promised you more pictures, so that's exactly what I delivered.

You may get sick of them, but, oh well. At least I kept my promise :)

The rest of this week was better because of 3 things (not necessarily in this order): (1) I got to help photograph products (my favorite subject matter), and (2) I GOT a decent amount SLEEP!! Ok, I may have overslept. But I'm technically still a college student, so I deserve it :) (3) I explored Los Angeles a little bit with some of my family. Granted, it took us about 1/2 hour to go 5 miles, but we still got out.

For the shoot, we photographed a brand of stage makeup made by Ben Nye. I guess the musical "Cats" used his cosmetics line and he was the makeup director for 20th Century Fox. Pretty cool, huh? The founder's son, Dana Nye, currently owns the company and he came by with some of his most recent product to photograph. It was pretty cool stuff (I thought it looked a little weird for a cosmetics line, but after I knew what it was for it made sense) and I got to learn what to use and what not to use for lighting products. And I learned a lot about post-production. It was a great 2 days :)  Oh, I got a tour of his factory (a fringe benefit of being the photographer) and it's so cool! They hand-make all of their product in the building. Looks like a LOT of work, though. And I got some free "Zombie" makeup that could be fun for Halloween... haha.

Here's some shots of our photoshoot:

 Some of the makeup. Pretty weird colors, huh?

The setup for the shoot

Another angle

The main assistant Taylor joking around while adjusting the lights. Yeah, we have fun here, sometimes :)

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Then, I got to spend some quality time with Gucci (the dog), AKA take her on a walk and play with her while we waited for the roomies to come home...

So I thought we should take at least one pic together :P

And the sky was really beautiful from being cloudy all day... I have a much better pic on my DSLR, but I'm too lazy to get that one right now. I'll post it soon, though.

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Then, my eldest sister and her family (who lives in Riverside) came to visit me, so we went to lunch and then went to The Grove L.A., which was really cool. It was like it's own little city tucked into Los Angeles. 

All of us (minus Jeff) on the roof

Overlooking the city

There was a live concert, which was really nice and relaxing

A pretty fountain. Kinda reminded me of the one in Vegas, because it did some cool things and lit up at night.

It was a pretty good first week. It started out slow and stressful, but ended quickly and fun :) I learned a lot about what being a photographer is really like. Work long hours to make and keep a living, but also keep it balanced with your life outside of work. Jerry, the photographer I'm interning with, takes weekend off of work, and that's the way it should be. He's not lazy by any means; he just has a family and a life. Working with him has taught me that you should work hard, but also take the time to enjoy life and take one day at a time. I'm really happy to be here. And though it's stressful for me at times to have moved out here with basically no friends less than an hour away, it's a good time for me to be independent and discover what I want in my life.

A 48-hour Day

So, the past 2 days, I worked 13 hours per day and got about 4 hours of sleep in between. I had to be at work at 7am on both days, and got off at 7pm on Tuesday and 6pm today, just enough time for dinner, a little relaxing, and getting ready for bed. Fun, huh? C'est la vie. But it was fun, the shooting part, I mean. Since we were doing portrait shots at UCLA, as the assistant my job was to entertain the people/subjects and move lights around. So I had conversations with the UCLA business school students and we could talk about pretty much anything. It was great :)

Here are a few shots of shoot.

Okay, this isn't the most interesting shot, but we were busy so I didn't really have time

Our crowded table that we stuffed some of our expensive equipment on. I got to man it while they shot some other stuff outside.

Makeup GALORE. Our professional makeup artist's (who is AWESOME) kit. Yup, there is even some makeup for the guys. How glamourous ;)

One of the huge houses we passed on our way to UCLA. There was a production going on there, and that house was MASSIVE! I'm sure it wasn't the biggest one around, but it was pretty dang close

K, so this isn't really at the main site that we shot at, but it's in the UCLA library, and it's a REAL stock machine from back in the day. I don't know when, but I thought it was cool. Also, I got to go on top of one of the roofs and UCLA is MASSIVE!! And the buildings are so cool-looking. I really want to go exploring there when I have time.

There are also some perks to my apartment. For example:

I got to see this from my apartment balcony (not the BEST view, but pretty reasonable for the price)...

and get greeted by this the second I come home :) She's so cute and energetic and just follows me to my room and hops on my bed as if to say "play with me!!" I love it! Dogs are the best :)

These are all just taken on my camera phone, but I should start to shoot my own stuff (more interesting, haha) in the studio within the next few weeks here, so keep your eyes peeled for that!

First Day= SUCCESS

Today was my first day of my internship with Jerry Garns. It was a longer day than I expected but still good. We already have a shoot tomorrow at UCLA, so I basically had to learn how to be an assistant in one day. No big deal, right? It's actually pretty cool, because he already has a full-time assistant, so I just get to work with both of them, and it's not too much pressure being the only one to get things set up and perfect right away. Jerry's really cool and he's already giving me advice as to how to find a job right out of the internship, which is hard to do. His assistant is really cool, too, and is very helpful and nice. It should be really fun and I hope to learn a lot. I just need to come up with ideas of what to shoot for my portfolio.

Oh yeah, and it is the assistant's birthday today so we went out to lunch at The Counter. You build your own burger. Soooo good! :) Oh, and I guess LA is "burger town", which I am perfectly okay with. 

My room and roommates are awesome too. I live on the top floor, so I kind of have a view of the city on a clear day (aka when the smog is somewhat gone :P ) I will supposedly be able to see the Hollywood sign. We'll see. I'll take pictures of it on a better day. My fellow assistant took me on an unofficial tour of the nearby city and I'm SO excited to go to the museums, esp the La Brea Tar Pits, where ancient animals were preserved in tar. So cool! The area is full of awesome museums, which I'm normally not a huge fan of, but they all sound so cool! Much better than paintings and art. Yeah I know I'm weird, I'm not really into art museums...

This post isn't nearly as exciting as future ones will be (I hope) because I didn't really do any shooting or traveling, so I don't have any exciting/fun pictures to show. Once I get more around the city I'll take more pictures, because after all, I AM a photographer. I'm so excited live here. So much different than Provo and Idaho :)