Pop culture is always evolving and interestingly enough, finds a way to intersect into your life. Since digital photography has been such a trendy form of art in the past 10 years, watching the visual media form collide with social media has brought a whole new level of street photography to life.
The San Francisco based Flaskmob has gotten some major press this year especially in the Los Angeles area. Their last major collab with @conquer_la certainly got the attention of the LAPD when it got shutdown 15 mins after it's start time. Flaskmob is basically a group that organizes photo walks but with an edge. The walks are at night in very urban areas where a handful of male and female models dress up in eerie fairytale-ish costumes and use various forms of smoke bombs, flares, spinning steel wool and anything else that emits lovely low light energy.
This time around, in order to control the crowd, Flaskmob announced the meeting location only by signing up for their newsletter. When we arrived on scene, there was a heavy police presence. The police were not dressed in riot gear so that was a good sign that things weren't gonna get shut down immediately. Figured it was good to have a police escort in that part of town.
As the crowd started to mob, the LAPD were very vocal about people staying on the sidewalk and not breaking any laws and blocking streets. The LAPD helicopter was making sure that people knew what they expected. Since we were waiting for some friends who were behind, we ended up walking at the very tail end of the mob so we missed some good crowd action in the beginning.
Calvin was lucky enough to meet a really cool girl with a boa snake. The first time he had ever held a snake and now he wants one as a pet.
There was a ton of police presence not only cause of the Flaskmob event but also cause of the USC and UCLA football game. It has a collision of events that make it even more interesting. The LAPD had their sirens blaring in the underpass and since it was filled with smoke from the mob, it was like a scene out of a movie.... it was a cool experience.
Below is the very famous Felix the Cat neon sign. It was cool to be able to show Calvin such a landmark across the street from USC.
As the mob gathered in front of the The Shrine, more smoke bombs went off and mini photoshoots ensued. Basically people would find a spot and instaphotoshoot would happen.
A look at a portion of the mob below
@butch_locsin_from_la doing his thing with his smoke drum
We eventually ended up on the USC campus and were setting up for all sorts of shoots in the dorm area. USC students got curious and made the crowd even larger.
A sea of photographers caught the attention of the local news media. KTTV is what I think I saw.
With all of the commotion, there was a generous walk to the local fire station where people dropped toys for the less fortunate.
A few hours in, my feet started to give out since my Chuck Taylor's weren't supporting my feet well. Ended up using Uber for the very first time to get dropped off back to the car.
Thanks to the organizers for putting the event on. I had a chill time and it was great seeing what the photo community is capable of. I wish you guys many more successful events.