#dappergeeknews

Ah, Los Angeles. Gorgeous architecture, amazing history, beautiful sunsets, and her famous yet memorable TRAFFIC. Let’s rewind a week…

The talented Oliver of Dapper Geek News sends me a text on a Tuesday. In it, he asks me if I was interested in joining him on a shoot in Los Angeles that Friday. How could I pass up a chance to shoot some behind the scenes outside of a convention?  

As the day comes, he starts calling up the spot that we were supposed to shoot at. This place is right in the middle of Little Tokyo; A majestic piece of architecture. The neon lights adorning the building, make for the most interesting of backdrops for ANY photographer. There’s a huge catch: It only lights up on non-holiday week days. With Oliver’s shoot being scheduled right on Veterans day, it would mean that the building would not be lit up. This threw a huge wrench into his plans. He informs me that he was going to have to reschedule the shoot to the following Monday. No big deal, right? As I leave work that following Monday, he informs me that he’s about thirty minutes away from my house. That gave me enough time to charge my battery for an extra twenty minutes of valuable time. Or about another day worth of battery. This isn’t important. But Oliver shoots with a Sony mirrorless cam. All the digital extra stuff DRAINS the hell out of his batteries. When he reads this, or any Sony shooter out there for that matter, will laugh, or hate me. I shoot Nikon. BUT It may be important to mention here that we just went through our hour change not too long ago.

We jumped on the Freeway, pleasantly surprised the traffic was light. Google Maps decides to have us take the small streets. It seemed like it took forever, but eventually we made it to Weller Court. The first thing we do is cross the street to the majestic building. As we walk up the steps, it became clear that the lights were not on. This had been the 10th time that Oliver had scheduled a shoot there, only to find out that the building wasn’t lit up. Oliver walks over a and asks a worker that’s exiting the building if the lights were going to be switched on. She mentions that they typically turn on at around 6pm. That’s when we decide to move on to the backup location. There’s a light tunnel that has an amazing array of LED’s running through it, and an even more mood setting lighting sequence. As we wait, I have the need to use the bathroom badly. After about 15 minutes of running around, we get told to get the key form one of the markets and use it to open the bathroom on the second floor. No problem there.

It was once Oliver’s subject arrives (check her out, @SuperTaunt on Instagram,) that I realized that were going to need that bathroom key again for her to change. After we obtain the key, we start to walk up the stairs again and walk her to the entrance of the locked door that leads to a small corridor, to where the bathrooms are. I leave to check if the other building is finally lit up, and Oliver stays outside to wait for her.

I walk over and… the building… is… still not lit up. *insert your choice of sad music here*

Since the building wasn’t lit, I start to walk back. I get back to the stairs that lead up to the bathroom and feel the leer of one of the security guards. I ignore it and proceed up the stairs. As I reach the top, I look over and see Oliver pointing at me. He exclaimed something along the lines of: he’s right there. Yea, that’s him. I ask him what’s wrong. Turns out the security detail thought that I had walked in with Tali and was still in there.

After a few prop adjustments, we walk down to the tunnels. Immediately, she gets asked to pose for a few pictures. People passing by were in awe of her Tracer cosplay. Yes, that Tracer, from Overwatch. One guy with an older Olympus or Canon film camera came up and asked if he could take a few pics too. Tali agrees, and Oliver and I continue to setup. This guy didn’t realize that we were the specifically to shoot her. After about 3 shots, he suddenly picked up on it, and moves on. A few guys pass by and check out our shoot, but then ONE guy got weird with us, though. He totally creeped while he passed by, and then just as he was out of view, he turned around to get a shot of her. She understandably got a little irate because of the way her went about it, but after that, it was all smooth sailing. We shot in one other nearby location and wrapped up without any other problems. I took my behind the scene shots, he took all his amazing shots, and I took a couple of my own!

Oliver and I said our goodbye’s to Tali and we went on our way. We passed by an In N Out in Long Beach and called it for the night.

It was one of the best experiences I’ve ever had artistically. And come this Sunday, I hope to make many more.