Wandering With Some Old Friends – Street Photography

While sorting through my image collection, I came across some more old film scans I hadn’t previously published.

I love this view…

This is a fun set of images from a little adventure that Kayla and I decided to embark upon because we had nothing else to do.

What are you looking at?

“Life is either a great adventure or nothing.”
-Helen Keller

Thanksgiving 2011, we are orphans in Los Angeles. Family is 2,000 miles away on this day meant to be spent with them. As an alternative to feeling bad for ourselves, we decide to treat ourselves to some fun activities.

We begin the day by heading to Hermosa Beach to visit one of our favorite places to get breakfast and watch football. Sharkeez… Some delicious food, football indulgence, and too many mimosas (for me, not Kayla) later, we decide its time to move on.

Somehow we decide to wander around downtown LA because we know it will be a ghost town on a Thanksgiving holiday. Rather than take the freeway there, we decide to drive along Crenshaw as an alternate route. After the drive up, we walk around downtown admiring some of the architecture and parks.

The architecture images from that day will be posted soon on my other blog: Matthew Anderson Photography.

On our way out of the city, we analyze a few options for places to get a nice turkey dinner, but ended up deciding to forgo tradition and head home and eat PIZZA instead! Some might call this sad, we call this awesome.

While not a typical Thanksgiving day, I think we managed to make a fun little adventure out of it. Perhaps we’ll start our own tradition!

I love street photography, and could spend hours on end looking at the work of the Masters. It’s something I need to work on and do more of. Do you have a favorite image from this set?

The adventure starts withs some breakfast and mimosas…

We encounter these two becoming fast friends…

“Hi buddy!”

Tired of the attention…

It’s time to rest…

Happy adventurers… Let’s go explore!

POW!

Layers in this image…

Layers in this one too…

This was a funny little scene.

Another funny scene.

blur…

blur…

blur…

Interesting building…

Going up…

POW!

Don’t…

HUH?!

Grimace…

oops…

Going down…

Reservoir Canyon Hike – San Luis Obispo

San Luis Obispo is a beautiful town surrounded by beautiful terrain. Hiking trails are everywhere, and people love to use them. One wet morning in January, Kayla and I tried out a new trail we hadn’t previously hiked. I’d read about Reservoir Canyon being beautiful, and someone also mentioned a waterfall…

Waterfall you say? Sign us up!

If you look close you can see the beginning of a long man-made tunnel that comes out in the waterfall! We were lacking in spelunking equipment, so we opted to stay out of the tunnel for now.

The days preceding this hike adventure were rain-soaked and gloomy. This made us excited to get outside. This also made the trails muddy. Like suck-your-shoe-off-your-feet muddy. Not being the types to be turned around by a little mud (good thing we didn’t encounter the spiders mentioned here), we trudged on through and up.

Apparently this is a good place to hunt for Chanterelle mushrooms… Whether the mushrooms in this photo are delicious or deadly, I do not know. I didn’t eat them. Maybe you should come try some?

Alright, this place is starting to seem a little strange. Mud everywhere, waterfalls concealing tunnels, big ‘ole mushrooms, and big ‘ole… Leaves?

Um, that’s a big friggin leaf. If comparing it to Kayla’s head isn’t enough perspective, perhaps this next image will also help…

We’re never going to get anywhere if we just sit here and stare at the leaves! Time to press on and get going with this hike…

Look at that beautiful wooded area! What a majestic feeling place. As we kept going up, the larger trees started to thin out and make way for some beautiful views of the surrounding hills. Another pleasant surprise was a little hangout area complete with a swing in a clearing! We stopped for some swinging, investigating of tee-pees, and other miscellaneous mischief.

And then the hike got hard! We couldn’t decide if it was because of the length, elevation gain, or the mud grabbing our feet, but Kayla and I got wiped out before getting to the top. That’s not typical behavior for us, so it was a little disappointing to leave without being conquerers. Perhaps we will have to attempt this one again soon, even though there are too many other places we’ve never been.

If you enjoy being in nature and getting some exercise, this is a hike you need to check out. Its an extremely unique place with plenty of opportunities to do what we all need more of… PLAY!

Where is your favorite place to explore and play? Feel free to leave a comment!

Inquiries for print purchases should be addressed to: matt@matthewandersonphotography.com

Film Scraps: A Hodge Podge of Images from Multiple Film Rolls

I love to shoot film because of its beautiful and unique characteristics. The images I capture on film often stand apart from their digital counterparts pretty significantly. It slows me down, changes my process, intensifies the experience.

All these things are wonderful, and they are major reasons I keep shooting film.

My reverence for the medium isn’t always beneficial, however, as I often use it so sparingly that I leave half-shot rolls in cameras for long periods of time (I have at least one in a camera now). I forget what’s on the beginning of the roll, and only process them when they’re complete. It makes for a grab-bag surprise when the rolls are finally finished.

Below are some candid shots, portraits, landscapes, street shots, and good times… I hope you like looking through them…

Movnat in Santa Barbara – Fitness that Adapts to the Environment

I would follow Kellen Milad into a flaming building if he said it was good for me.

The man knows what’s what in the world of self-improvement. His journey has been something fascinating to witness, and it only has great things in store for the future.

Knowing his passion for wellness, Kellen was naturally my first stop when I finally made the decision to get my life on track in the realm of fitness, nutrition, and well-being.

In April of 2011, feeling sluggish and in a rut, I made a commitment to myself that I would be in the best shape of my life by the time I turned 30. That gave me 16 months to get my act together and reverse 11 years of self neglect and abuse.

Luckily, I had a master of fitness and the human mind on my side.

Kellen helped align me with ways to eat and be active that worked for me, and that I’d continue to do. What a novel idea! Eat and exercise in a way you enjoy… and you’ll keep doing it! Well before my 30th birthday, I shed about 40 pounds and felt amazing.

The most important lesson for me has been that nutrition and exercise should be an integral part of my life, not just something I do for an hour every day. It’s not always easy, especially when the weather starts to turn and the days get shorter, but I hope it’s something I’ll continue to work on for the rest of my life. Before and near-current photos are in the gallery below.

The latest introduction in this journey has been the concepts of Movnat, an interesting fitness practice that encourages people to move naturally and efficiently in their own environment (http://movnat.com). Witnessing Kellen’s teaching prowess during this two-day seminar was awesome. I took away tons of information and skills to practice, I met lots of great people interested in improving their lives, and I was sore for about three days.

If you’re interested in getting in touch with Kellen, you can email him at: kellen@movnat.com

I highly recommend reaching out to him if you’re looking to make serious improvements in the quality of your life. Tell him I sent you.

See images from both days in the gallery below…

Higher quality versions of the images can be seen in the flash gallery located here: http://www.matthewandersonphotography.com/movnat_09_12/

Un-Dirty Thirty? – Birthday Camping

Comfortable with current life transitions and all the wonderful things that come with them, I had no fear of hitting the landmark age of 30 as I originally anticipated. In line with the transitions, a celebration of my 30th revolution around the earth had to be low-key and modest. Some good pals, some out-of-doors, sunshine, fire, stars, tequila, wine, and scrabble Cheeze-Its all came together to spell a beautiful weekend near Lopez Lake.

We smiled… proof below:

Thanks to Kayla, David, Kiki and Roland for such a great weekend! You guys are the best!

Leave a comment if you have a favorite image or something!

Peterson Automotive Museum

L.A. loves cars this I know, because the freeways tell me so. Saturday involved a trip to Peterson Automotive Museum for me. Quite the interesting place. Included in the Supercars exhibit was a Bugatti Veyron. Beautiful piece of machinery.

Yosemite in B&W…

It never fails that I am awestruck and humbled when I encounter Nature’s most majestic creations. It’s amazing how quickly life and the world can come smashing into perspective when one stands in the middle of some enormous valley etched in stone over millions of years. This expansive piece of art was brought to life with brushstrokes of rushing water, exploding volcanoes, growing trees, and forest fires. The beauty is inspiring, and it makes me wonder why it’s so easy to forget this feeling. Why do we continuously get caught up in the minutia of insignificant things? Why do I check my email so frequently? Why do I stop and enjoy the moment so infrequently? Do I have to be smacked upside the head with beauty before I realize that I’m surrounded by it? Can’t this realization be had on a daily basis?

I think so. I just have to tie that little red string around my finger to remind me to look.

To remind me to…

Stop.

Look around.

Look close.

Stand back.

Squint your eyes.

Open them wide.

SEE things.

See like a child, you will never stop being amazed.

Here’s to slowing life down and enjoying it while it happens…

An update… A long time overdue

As my homeboy Sway would put it, “What’s up world?”

I’ve been slacking and lacking in the blogging department, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been out capturing images… Today I went through a few of the recent prints I’ve made in one of my photo classes, and here are the results… I hope you like… These are all scans of prints I made in the ABSOLUTE DARKNESS! Can you believe it?

Also, you’re only supposed to put one space after the punctuation at the end of a sentence…       Can you believe it?!

The Zeppelins are back!

Nary a boring day in Hermosa Beach.

On Sunday I was working on a photo class assignment that resembles a scavanger hunt, which meant I was outside wandering around with my camera.  An example of one aspect of my mission was to capture a scene with three pastel colors on three-dimensional objects with no black or white in the frame.  To imagine how difficult this is, take a look around you quickly.  Assume you wanted a 4’x6′ frame to be filled with an image.  How many places can you see with no black or white within this area?  Not many.  This was one of seven shots where the instructions were this specific.  While I understand there is a purpose to the assignment, I still reserve the right to be frustrated when wandering the streets for hours looking for these Holy Grails…

Wandering around with my brain in “Pastel” mode, I was nearly knocked over by a man running past me not looking where he was going.  He was staring over his shoulder into the sky behind him, as if he were about to be attacked by birds or air sharks or something awesome like that.  Just as I’m hoping this moron decapitates himself on a volleyball net, a giant silver flash comes into my field of vision…  The man catches a 15 foot silver bullet as it falls out of the sky.

“Pastels, pastels, pastels, pastels, HEY watch out!  WHAT THE FU<K?!”  Says the hyper-eloquent Matt in his head…  These things are instinctual, probably picked up in my past life as a Duke of Somewhere-landia…

Turns out, he’s got a massive tubular balloon that he can punch into the air and send it sailing 60+ feet up.  It’s pretty cool to watch him play with it, but most of the entertainment comes from watching him chase it as it drifts back towards terra firma.  Knocking over children on bicycles (don’t worry, that’s why they wear helmets these days), crashing into patio bar areas, and even bouncing off the top of a police SUV; this shiny inflatable contraption rained down terror from the sky.  It was awesome.  Keep your eyes open for this device to be used as the next cutting edge weapon in urban warfare…  And hope you never have to see it!

Check my Image of the Day Project HERE to see which images from the collection below will make it into the project…  They’ll be up shortly… 

P.S. The flower images were from outside of my office on Monday.

Mixed messages… wait, no… clear messages… wait…

Nobody likes to move.  Fact.

Nobody dislikes moving more than me.  Speculation.

Proof:  I dislike moving so much…  I avoid buying normal things people use on a daily basis because I’m afraid of amassing a pile of junk I’ll need to move in the future.

Case in point:  I don’t own a cookie sheet.  The only reason I have silverware at all is because Joel felt so bad for my pathetic ass when he left, that he was compelled to leave some behind.  My apartment does not have a kitchen table, coffee table, toaster, spatula (making eggs is hilarious), television…  You get the idea.

If I’ve made you concerned about my well-being or left you thinking I’m pathetic, I’m sorry.  I assure you, I’m not.  Well, that’s like, my opinion, man.  I’ve managed to live with people who’ve had all these things for the first 28 years of my life, and haven’t found a need to collect the things we so loosely call “necessities” at this point.

SLAP!  Back on topic, Matt!  Sorry for the digression.

My point here is that I’ve recently come to terms with the fact that I’ll be moving away from the beach.  Sad.  So very sad.  This weekend the PTB (Powers That Be, remember?  Keep up people!) were either trying to make the separation anxiety kick up early, or they were trying to give me a show for one of my last few weekends here.  That show (read: Beautiful Sunset) is the subject of the images for today…  Now since it’s blistering cold elsewhere in the country, I won’t dwell on this too much, but I’d like to mention that this beautiful sunset came with a side of ridiculous wind.  A wind that ripped chills through bodies, ripped hoods off heads, and ripped feeling from hands gripping cameras.

Maybe that wind was part of the mixed message, but there’s more.  Just when I think there’s no way I can walk away from this lovely little beach town buried in big ‘ole L.A., I get the hint that I need to get the ford out of dodge…  PTB had me open my patio door at just the right time, which led to an introduction to my downstairs neighbors, or as I will now call them, the Ghost of Hermosa Future.  Ebenezer Matt introduced himself to the 42 year old New Yorker who now occupies the room directly below him (one of two roommates).  A perfectly polite gentleman.  What’s the problem Matt?  Well, since you asked, here’s the problem.  In the slightly invasive 5 minutes he spent walking through my apartment and telling me the differences between his and mine, he managed to bring up the fact that he’s been living in Hermosa for 16 years.  He moved here when he was a punky little 26 year old, and has been juggling roommates and living the beach life ever since.  A little strange you say?  Well consider the fact that some of his recent roommates were younger than he was when he moved here in the first place.  Jebus.

Old man neighbor is all well and fine, until you smash cut to 9PM last night.  Said 42 year old man is scream-talking to someone about some fight somewhere involving someone he knew.  “Bam! blah blah blah blah…  BAM!  muffle muffle muffle…  Knocked OUT!”

Welp sunset, you were pretty.  You are replaceable though.  The Ghost of Hermosa Future is powerful, and has opened my eyes.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not about rush into a responsible amount of responsibility or anything drastic like that.  I just know that there is more for me out there, and now it’s time to move on.  Hopefully moving on gets me closer to my lady, because she’s the missing link in the evolution of my life…

I hope you like the images below, I risked having my hands amputated to get them for you…

See which one I picked for the Image of the Day Project HERE…