Downtown Los Angeles

Last week my wife and I enjoyed a quick getaway to Los Angeles. Unlike our past visits to the city, we stayed in downtown this time around.

As we wandered the streets, I generally found myself looking up a lot at skyscrapers.

On our first day there, we stopped into The Last Bookstore. To be sure, operating a brick-and-mortar bookselling shop only gets more and more difficult as time goes on, and I respect any bookstore that can keep their doors open. Still, we were both somewhat disappointed. The shop felt more like a hipster tourist trap than a serious bookstore even in spite of its expansive shop space in an old bank building. Maybe I’m just spoiled by Powell’s Books.

Other stops on that first day included the Los Angeles Central Library, which featured a beautiful rotunda, and the Spring Arcade Building, another gorgeous space that mostly consisted of a long row of cafes and restaurants that appeared to cater to downtown office workers.

The thing I found the most interesting about the Spring Arcade was the way the Broadway-facing end framed the street scene and the folks who passed by.

Similar to our trip to Southern California in April of last year, the main driver for our visit to Los Angeles—and the main reason we decided to stay in downtown—was to see baseball at Dodger Stadium.

Unlike that earlier experience, there was one notable element that was new: Shohei Ohtani. Aside from his once-in-a-generation level of skill, Ohtani injects an international feeling into the game that I've come to love. One particularly excited Japanese fan sitting near us at the game cheered “Ooohhh tah NEE!” every time he came up to bat. I confess that I joined everyone else who had their cell phones up to make a personal record of his at-bats.

The moment you get off the plane at LAX, you get a sense of the extent to which Shohei Ohtani is an economy unto himself. We encountered countless Japanese tourists wearing #17 jerseys or t-shirts. If somehow you arrived in Los Angeles without one, the Dodger Stadium Team Store had you covered. Indeed, there was no shortage of merch to be bought there. This along with every other part of the entire operation was certainly a finely-tuned cash extraction machine.

With camera in hand, I slipped away from the game to spend a bit of time wandering around Dodger Stadium. I looked for shots of scenes or perspectives you don’t have the opportunity to see when you watch a game on TV.

Along with the baseball game and the sightseeing, we also spent time enjoying the rooftop pool at our hotel. As we sat there, a film scouting crew hovered as they assessed the area for a credit card commercial they were due to shoot at the hotel the day we were leaving. Our trip’s timing turned out to be impeccable. As we were leaving, a large crew took over the pool area and in-house restaurant for the filming, and the hotel denied access to those areas by their paying guests. I remember thinking to myself how irritated I would have been had we been staying there for another day.

With a little time to kill after checking out of our hotel but before our late evening flight back home was due to depart LAX, we wandered around downtown some more. We ended up at The Broad and the Museum of Contemporary Art, two excellent venues that are free of charge to visit. The Broad was impressive and well attended. But the photographer in me was more excited to see original prints of all 83 photographs in Robert Frank’s The Americans on display at the Museum of Contemporary Art.

We also stopped into Los Angeles City Hall. This wasn’t the most glamourous destination we could have chosen, but City Hall is such a classic example of old LA architecture I couldn’t resist the draw.

Remembering my experience in Chicago earlier this year, I gave up on the idea of doing some proper street photography. Rather than trying to be an artist, I allowed myself to be a tourist. For the simple reason that it takes better pictures, I still packed my Canon EOS R8 and its 24-105mm zoom lens. But I also wanted to avoid running into problems getting into Dodger Stadium, so I packed my little Canon EOS M50 and its 15-45mm zoom lens, too.

Sure enough, when I was out and about with my R8, I got confronted—politely, I should add in all fairness—by not one but two private security guards on two separate occasions about how I wasn’t permitted to use my “professional” camera—their choice of word both times—in areas they were patrolling. I wasn’t pointing my camera directly into someone’s home. Although they were technically private property, these were street-level outdoor plaza areas of public accommodation that had all of the appearances of a public right of way.

This kind of thing has happened to me before. Although I’m getting to the point where I’m less and less incensed by these encounters, and although I’ll admit that, to a layman, my R8 with its 24-105mm zoom lens might look a little formidable and even intimidating, it still frustrated me. What exactly constitutes a “professional” camera? Is anything that is not a cell phone camera a “professional” camera? Where is the line between the two?

When I’m on vacation, I don’t really want to be having these kinds of encounters. Although it performs better, I may very well leave my R8 at home the next trip I take. Maybe my little M50 is that inconspicuous camera that suits me best for travel.