Process

Santa Monica Boulevard at Edgemont Street, Hollywood

On a few occasions, I have risked a $160 ticket in order to capture a vintage beauty from my own car on the road, as in the photograph above. I’ve also caught one or two while in the passenger seat. But usually, there’s no point—traffic’s moving and the light’s bad through the dirty windshield. 99.9% of my photographs come about in one of three other ways: Sighted While Driving, Sighted While Walking to or from Car, Sighted While Walking. To varying degrees, all of these involve walking, a given in street photography, but which brings something new to interacting with cars.

Sighted While Driving

I’ll be driving along, when I notice a ghost wheel parked at the curb. If I’m not in a hurry, I’ll find somewhere to park, then walk over to photograph my subject. This is the approach that makes me feel like I’m in an L.A. movie. The impulsive desire. The screech to the curb. Anything can be yours if you want it badly enough.

Rodney Drive, Los Feliz. My own car is parked behind.

Sighted While Walking to or from Car

This is the most typical-L.A. approach. I probably get 60% of my shots this way, and nearly all of the parking lot ones.

Goodwill Fletcher Square, Fletcher Drive and San Fernando Road, Atwater/Glendale

Sighted While Walking

This, of course, is the least-L.A. approach but the one most typical of street photography. I often come across multiple subjects on one walk, like on June 7, 2015 in Atwater:

With all the approaches, I’d say an eighth of the photographs are taken after my initial sightings. I mentally map places I want to come back to for a photograph, and I may return a different way than in my initial sighting–spotting a ghost wheel while in my car, say, and returning on foot, or visa versa. For instance, I often noticed a flash of lime green while driving on Allesandro Street at night. The green machine parked in different places, so driving back to find it by day might have called for quite some maneuvering. But on foot it was no trouble.

Whitmore Avenue, Edendale

The return under different power than the initial sighting is when the car-foot divide grows particularly blurry in a way that I find most appropriate to the project.