There was a point in my photo journey where it seemed so many of my photos contained a massive chunk of sky. It’s fine occasionally, but too much of anything becomes noticeable. It’s a bit more difficult to avoid this in Santa Monica as I spend a considerable amount of time on or near the beach with very few tall buildings. The sky is always present. My way to work around this is to just point down a bit. Works like a charm. Looking at my timeline in Flickr, I’m happy with the way things are going.

Unfortunate circumstances, but resulting in the coolest street photos. Looking forward to seeing them on my timeline.

The most rewarding city to do street photography in is Los Angeles. Why? Because people are more spread out, but there’s still opportunity to capture interesting things anytime you go out. It’s just hard enough to get a good photo but not so hard you’ll go weeks without a good one. When you get a good photo, you know you worked for it. There’s a lot of tension on the streets. The discrepancy between the rich and the poor is vast. There’s a lot of mental illness and drug use in public. This creates an environment where the most elite and poor are existing around each other. Every income class can be seen walking down the same street. It’s an interesting dynamic for photos. There is a huge variety of different landscapes to shoot in from beach to mountain to desert which can make your photos unique. Every culture is represented here giving you endless possibilities to see different things. LA has a unique culture different from any other city I’ve been to. Angelinos aren’t competing with people from New York, Chicago or San Francisco. Angelinos are very proud of their city. They march to their own beat. There’s tourists from all over the world visiting. If you walk down the Santa Monica Pier on a Saturday evening, many of the locals which are already very diverse will be there in addition to tourists. The weather here is favorable so you can shoot 365 days a year. There’s not a lot of well known street photographers doing work here, so there’s a better chance to stand out.

I put this on my YouTube channel as well.

understanding fellow humans in a candid way and documenting the world around me. This is the best I could come up with. It will probably change tomorrow.

Eventually, you’ll piss someone off if you do street photography. Do these negative interactions make you question why you partake is this weird hobby?

Yesterday I wrote about Los Angeles probably being the most strange place in the USA. Not long after I wrote about this, I took my daily photo walk and lived it once again.

I was going to try a little something different so I figured I’d do a short VLOG. It would be my very first VLOG. I started by taking a walk through the beach to the Santa Monica Pier. I headed towards a spot close to the Pier that has a large collection of pigeons. As I approached, I notice a homeless guy laying in the middle of all the pigeons. It was an interesting scene as this guy was surrounded by birds and in the background the pier and lifeguard shack were visible. I took a quick photo and walked by. As I was walking, the pigeons got spooked and flew away. I felt some sand hit me and looked over to see the homeless guy wake from the dead, stand up and spit at me. Luckily I was a good 20 feet away so he had no chance to hit me. This was my first time being spat at. I had some choice words for him and continued my walk towards the Pier.

I’ll share some screen grabs from my video. I’ll probably never share the video as it’s a bit too spicy.

I thought it’s best to deescalate the situation and just walk away. But he followed me. He started to reenact what looked like a scene from Full Metal Jacket. Motioning at me with a machine gun and yelling out things about private. He then started to roll towards me.

By this time we were approaching a bunch of families on the beach. It was pretty awkward, everybody looking at me, looking at him. People started to record the interaction. Now that I’d hit the water, I thought this is finally over. He stopped following me and I continued my journey. I thought wrong. He quickly picked up some sea trash and ran towards me flinging it through the air at me like a ninja warrior.

He got a bit too close to me so I had some more choice words for him. I finally told him to go one way and I’ll go the other. Then a lifeguard drove up and told me to walk away from him. She was polite enough, but I wondered why she was getting involved and why in my eyes she was placing the blame on me. She said nothing to the guy, only me. That did deescalate the situation however and I walked away.

I thought it was over. Nope. I was now on the Pier 20 minutes later. I looked towards the area I was just at and noticed the man taking a swim in the water with lifeguards and police overlooking. It eventually escalated with four police officers stopping him for a chat.

I see them putting on the rubber gloves and thought its hands on time. But they let him go and he walked under the Pier to the other side. Since I’m so invested, I walked to the other side to see a Lifeguard boat and five lifeguard trucks a long with the four police. It was a whole scene.

He walked away from them to his home under the pier. I stuck around for a few minutes and nothing else came of it. I was left wondering, I had a part to play in all this. I stirred the guy up and now look at all these resources dealing with the issue. I also noticed, as these events progressed, he lost more and more clothing.

But as things go, it wasn’t quite over. I managed to clear my head of the drama and focus on taking some photos. I ran into another homeless guy on the pier. Ya know, I don’t take a lot of homeless people photos, only if they are part of a larger story. Today was just one of those days where I felt compelled.

I snapped the photo and walked away to another spot. As I was hanging out, a woman and a young girl approached me. The woman started the conversation with “you should learn to have more compassion.” I thought she was talking about me taking a photo of the guy. Turns out, she thought I was the one who yelled out “is that a bum over there!” No, that was not me. I told her that and she didn’t believe me.

Weird turn of events for sure. After all this, I just went home. I thought I better not push my luck. Something else is bound to happen. Maybe it was karma. The universe or something telling me I’m unethical.