los angeles

Janet & Danny Wed....

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It's always awesome to attend a friend's wedding but it's also a huge honor to be able to document their special day. My good buddy got married to his beautiful bride Janet over at http://www.boxeight.com in Los Angeles, CA. 

I know my buddy Danny is a smart dude but this guy surprised me when he told me that this was his second ceremony. The first one from a few months ago was for their parents. If you are married, you know the tension that arises from parent's wanting to contribute their ideas to your special day. So they did a day specifically for them and then this one was for them with all of their friends.... celebrating the way they wanted. I have to give Janet and Danny the award for the shortest ceremony I have ever documented. When I checked the photos, a total of 6 mins from start to end!

It was filled with a lot of food, alcohol, laughter and good times. Just the way a wedding should be. I wish you and Janet a life full of love and lots of happy children!

Flaskmob Nov 2015 in South LA USC

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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.


Porsche Carrera 964 on GMR

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GMR is a pretty famous mountain road out here is SoCal. It used to be a place a lot of young enthusiastic mountain drivers would go to test their driving ability at night.  

In recent times, the road has been getting a lot of attention from the media in which gives a lot of attention to the police. So police have been a bit more proactive about monitoring it for extra curricular activity. 

Last week we had a day with very heavy rain and the next morning, Phil with @handsomeandphilthy called me up to go take photos on GMR. Figuring rain photos would be cool, I agreed and met him up there.  

But the whole time, it never rained although we had very ominous rain clouds hanging right over our heads.  

For this shoot, I kept the editing styles more loose to show some variety in style. I'm happy with the way they turned out.

Hopefully next time around, I can actually get some rain photos and maybe getting someone to drift in the rain would be sweet.

Andrew Manley​
Automotive Photographer​

Conquer_LA, grub Little Tokyo and a walk along 6th Street Bridge in Downtown Los Angeles

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A bunch of us at IE Photo Rentals decided to check out the latest meet up with the @conquer_la guys this past weekend. Leonard Holland (http://www.leonardholland.com), who is one our interns at IE Photo Rentals has been a part of these social media meet ups for some time. 

It was a great way for me to get out there and test shoot a new lens. Today I chose to shoot the newest Tamron 15-30mm 2.8 VC on the Canon 1dx body. All of the images below were shot on it, check it out at IE Photo Rentals Website.

Tamron 15-30mm 2.8 VC

Tamron 15-30mm 2.8 VC

This recent photo meet up was not a photo walk, but more of a gather and shoot event. Since most of us haven't attended an event like this prior, it would of been nice to been apart of a moving group to get a real feel for these type of events but I guess there is always next time. 

We all met up at the Echo Park Lake, which I remember to be a very sketchy area back back back in the day but apparently it has gone thru some serious gentrification probably from the help of some very hard working hipsters. 

The park summed up Los Angeles really well. You had all types of ethnic backgrounds, people of all ages, people hustlin' toys and food, hipsters and families. Although I didn't get any shots of them, the elote (corn man) and churro lady made the day at the park so much more memorable. The fact you can enjoy a day out and experience other cultures is always a win in my book. Look at how beautiful the sun was shiny between the trees....  yea it was a glorious day. 

You can see how happy Leonard is at these type of events. His whole face just lights up! My son Calvin was just happy to have gotten a Batman ice cream which he scarfed down in a few quick minutes. Left me none :(

Here is a shot of Pro with the Sony A7s and the Sigma 50mm 1.4 Art. That lens is no joke, probably the sharpest lens I have ever used. The crowd started to grow as it got darker. 

As the sun went down, the blues in the sky were glowing beautifully. All of these were snapped hand held at 2.8. With the help of the people in the crowd, light was abundant with the help of a few different handheld light sources. 

We hung out for a good 40 mins and decided to head out to Little Tokyo for dinner. We ended up at Spitz, which has amazing fries with gyro meat but I didn't snap any inside. My bad. 

Leonard had never been to Little Tokyo so we did a little tour of the area after dinner. Instead of taking photos of all the cool Japanese decor, we all stood there taking photos of each other. In this photo everyone is photographing me cause I might have flexed my guns or something awesome. lol

Last time I photographed this building, I had my older Canon 1ds Mark II and it's low light struggles quite a bit. With the Canon 1dx, it did a much nicer job picking up the shadow details. The images did have perspective adjusted in post due to the lens having very strong distortion at 15mm. 

The image below is a shot of a popular Japanese gift store. Just thought it was interesting with all of the Marilyn Monroe decor.

Chase bank had crazy blue neon lights going so we ran inside just to snap a quick portrait. 
Across the street, stairs led into an underground parking area. I loved the color and texture of it so I snapped for you guys to enjoy. 

A week prior to my boy's 6th birthday, he contemplates the journey of his life or perhaps he was thinking of ice cream again. :)

We ended up at the 6th St bridge shortly after walking around DTLA. Some of the guys we met at the meet up were meeting up here as well. Some guys climbed up the structure to get the higher perspective but it was a bit too nerve wracking for the most of us. Got some light streaks flowing thru...

Above is a landscape of the tracks that lead to the San Bernardino and Riverside lines. I think OC/SD lines are shown as well. 

We then decided to hike down to the LA River and under the 6th St bridge. It was a bit sketchy at 12am going into a pitch black tunnel but with 8 other friends and a flashlight, it was exciting. I didn't shoot inside the tunnel cause I was probably distracted. SMH

Below you can see the landscapes I took of under the bridge. It was so vast down there and we felt so small under these huge pillars. 

I wanted to check out California Donuts after but since it was close to 1am, most of the group was exhausted and we started to head home. 

Thanks to Leonard for inviting us out. We had a great time!

Til the next
Andrew Manley
Wandering Photographer

Creaminz RWB Widebody 993 in Downtown Los Angeles

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My halo shot of the night. Profile shot of the Creaminz 993 RWB. ©2015 Andrew Manley

My halo shot of the night. Profile shot of the Creaminz 993 RWB. ©2015 Andrew Manley

Southern California is the epicenter of so many sub-cultures and trends, it's no wonder why people keeping flocking to this state. Cool weather, warm beaches, gorgeous mountains, barren deserts... we got it all.

In California car culture, Nakai-san of RWB has gotten a lot of attention and no wonder, if you have ever seen a wide body air-cooled Porsche from behind, you will get feelings in your body you may normally not get when you look at cars. Those wide hips, low stance, beautiful exhaust tips... (sorry I just had a moment) mixed with the unique sounds of ITB's (individual throttle body), you get the same dunzo face from every car enthusiast. Pure sex.... 

So Darren aka Creaminz got his 993 built by Nakai earlier in 2015 and has been seen all over car meets/shows in Socal. I met Darren last year thru Dionne Mascunana when Darren would come to IE Photo Rentals to grab gear for Dionne. Back then, he had a gorgeous Turquoise 997.1 GT3 with a Vollkkomen Kit on it. Recently when he came to grab something for Dionne, I asked him if I could shoot his car as I felt like I could use it for my portfolio. Darren is always down for the ride so we set a date and met up in Downtown Los Angeles.

In a better effort to give you guys better behind the scenes (BTS) footage, I asked fellow car enthusiast and photographer Danny from JDMzipties if he would help out with the candids. He gladly accepted along with fellow car super mechanic, Kristian Wong aka @studytuned who has a great eye for photography. Both BTS are below and will be noted in the description. 

 

Our evening started out with us meeting at 10:30pm. Kristian, Alec and I got to the location a bit early so I could location scout a bit. Every spot I wanted to shoot at had cars coming every 30 secs or so, so that was a bust. Bit by bit, people started to show up which put more pressure on me to perform. So we got back in the CR-V had drove around to see what we could find. 

I didn't want to shoot at a spot that was pretty well known for shooting cars. Why beat a dead horse right? I had a great idea of Darren to be exiting a parking garage but they were either all closed or had security. I like to call them cock blockers smh. So we kept driving until I found this garage that we used to ride our bikes thru years ago. No security, check. Little to no cars, check. Was a win in my book so we headed back and let everyone know about it. 

For the most part, the shoot was almost a straight shooter. Took my Gitzo and RRS BH55 Ballhead out and placed the Sony A7RII and Canon 24-70mm 2.8 Mark II on top of the ballhead. Took a few ambient shots at different exposures and then had Alec hold the PCB B800 monolight with the PCB Vagabond VLX Lithium battery to power the light. Just to have what I needed, we did two types of light paint. First off, we had Alec stand around different parts of the car while I fired the strobe off thru the stripbox. The second round, we ran the hot light of 150watt and light painted with a long shutter speed. The garage bulbs were really bright so Kristian being the gentlemen he is took his sweater of to put it over the light to stomp out the ambient. It was perfect. 

Dionne noticed a nice long perspective between two garages so that is what we used for location #2. Darren told me his favorite part of the car was the front but I had a hard time getting away from her butt. It's just so awesome. So went with what my heart told me to do. Never let me down lol. This location was perfect cause it had nice long lines, had a staircase if we wanted to get higher up and had sky scrappers in the background. Did light painting with the Westcott Ice Light for this shot. 

Last shot was for Dionne mainly. We were going to get freeway rollers. Good thing they brought a minivan cause it was so much easier to get low shots hanging out a sliding door. Dionne had some mad skills poking his body out at high speeds. Life is so fun! Dionne wanted to nail the LA skyline in the background so we made a few different passes on the 110 fwy. Money!

I had others with dominant skylines but I think Socal freeway signs say CA so well, don't you think? ©2015 Andrew Manley

I had others with dominant skylines but I think Socal freeway signs say CA so well, don't you think? ©2015 Andrew Manley

A pearl

A pearl

I want to thank Darren aka Creaminz for trusting me to photograph his car even though he didn't know my skill sets. Thanks for trusting. Thanks to Danny @jdmzipties for being primary BTS shooter, Kristian @studytuned for your captures, Alec for being my very hard working assistant and lastly Jasper for helping out Dionne drive the car. Dionne thanks for putting it all together. 

I hope you guys enjoyed this round up. See you on the next.

Andrew Manley
Los Angeles Automotive Photographer