garrison beau scott

I was riding towards the Santa Monica pier on the bike path when I heard this odd sound, almost a cross between a whistle and a moan. It took me a bit of time to figure where it was coming from, time spent wondering if I was going crazy, until I got closer to a pair of structures set out on the beach some distance. I had made note of these on a few trips past as they are best described over-sized life-guard stands. Much like the chair Lily Tomlin used in her bit as Edith Ann on Laugh-In.

Turns out the backing of these chairs are pipes that reverberate when the wind blows through them. A cool if not subtle and slightly haunting sound if you haven’t had your morning fix of jones yet.

Get your minds out of the gutter. I’m talking about those images we take, that for some irrational reason, delight us, the creators, so.

A good portion of my trip to California was spent hanging with a dear friend at his home in Venice Beach. A few blocks from the beach, it was my opportunity to rise each morning, grab the beach cruiser (bicycle for those of you outside the flip-flop set) and with Holga in hand spend the better part of my mornings riding up and down the boardwalk in search of coffee and snap shots.

Independent from these images and the time spent with good people, the thing about this trip I will remember a few years down the road, will be the light. Pastoral is the best way to describe it. Or maybe pastorally atmospheric. Are those mutually exclusive? Can you have one without the other? It was the kind of light that you’d expect if the sun was a giant ball of lemon salt-water taffy. Still in the wrapper.

But the image, it has to be about the image right? And this one pleases me to no end. Maybe there isn’t a way for me to remove it from the experience and that the taste of salt in the air and the warm friction of sand twixt the toes has as much to do with me loving this photo as anything else, and without those imprints this picture is nothing more than a split second exercise in base image making.

Or then again maybe that’s why I dig it as much as I do.

I’ve just returned to Boston from a glorious 3 week stay in California. I spent equal time in Los Angeles, Newport (where I was born and raised) and in the Oakland Hills where I lived before moving east. (Don’t ask.)

A little business, a little pleasure, a whole lot of family and friends and a few rolls with the Holga, including my first efforts with color. Not one to do things in chronological order, I’ve decided to post one of the very last images I took before I flew home. This was taken on the Newport Pier as my mother and I walked back to Balboa Island after dinner out at Ruby’s, a favorite haunt of ours going back to my childhood.

Over the years, my mom has slowly begun to appreciate my photography and is still my harshest critic. To her credit I think she’s beginning to “get” my aesthetic and every now and then she’ll surprise me by really liking an image I’m sure she’ll pan. That being said, she still felt the need to “advise” me to refrain from taking this shot, dismissing it as some rat with wings.

It wasn’t the first time I failed to heed her advice. Nor will it be the last.

For almost three weeks now, I’ve had the opportunity to chill in California, do some work, be with friends, be creative. Before I left Boston, I took a few images that I wanted to post to this space. In a bout of up-to-the-last-minute packing, I grabbed mostly Holga stuff and some of the anonymous. This image I took specifically because I was going to be back in California.

When I look at this shot, all I can think of is that these people were pros. Here are the fore-bearers of the chill generation doing what they do best. Look at that tan. I make up a story about this being a snap shot of a few hall-of-famers in the locker room before the mixed-doubles championship.