Nuclear Winter on the Pacific Coast

Posted on June 19, 2013

I went to L.A. in May, and though I took my DSLR I mostly did not use it. I went to the beach with my brother Brendan, shortly after I hit town, and it was pretty glorious. We didn’t really know what beach we were on but it was north of Malibu and south of Oxnard, and when we left I read the sign as Point Mugu.

I did take my big camera, and felt the need to shoot, but most of what I shot was pretty perfunctory. We saw a pair of dolphins swimming together, we looked at rocks, waded up to our hips. I finally started to feel something and took a few pictures that I liked. then I looked down after we left and realized I had accidentally switched my camera to manual and the pictures were eight stops over exposed. I was so bummed out because they were the only pictures I felt at all good about when I was taking them.

They ended up being far more interesting to me than anything I exposed properly.

In the bright sun I couldn’t really see my LED screen when I took each shot so I went obliviously on, shooting insanely overexposed frames.

Anyway..I like these, even though they are entirely erroneous in technique. And I had fun in LA, and with my brother, and you can sort of tell if you look at my instagram feed because I mostly shot with my phone and just enjoyed myself.