The outskirts of san pedro
Before the lifestyle photography, before the session shoots, before the engagement gigs, I was primarily snapping away on a phone. I had a camera, but a camera doesn’t fit in your pocket. With the exception of this first photo, these photos were taken on a few different iPhones over the course of a decade. It’s a trip what a little editing can do despite the pictures not being taken with a prosumer camera. What comes after a phone camera? Will we be taking photos with our eye contacts?
Taken past the seemingly secret trails and pathways off of Stargazer back home in San Pedro, CA. The perspective is deceiving as that is a sheer drop of at least 100 feet past the bushes. That wave rolling in is actually big enough to knock you down and slam you into some major damage.
In a neighborhood at both borders of Los Angeles and the Pacific Ocean, there is a metal gateway that never seems to shut despite the chains and locks hanging from it. They’re probably picked, snipped, and broken anyway. This gateway is nestled between a luxury mobile-home park and a residential area. Despite it being in a rich part of town near the outskirts it’s still a place the locals from out of that neighborhood have access to. It’s a pocket for everyone. Get a little further north and some of those beaches are private. One of them’s a nude beach. The insanity of having a private beach.
Sometimes the path’s clean, sometimes it’s not. Empty and faded 40oz bottles of Mikey’s, Modelo cans, and zig-zags. Butterflies, lizards, crows, raccoons, snakes, coyotes, etc. The gateway opens to a flat dirt trail that takes you past a few avocado trees and some dried-up herb gardens. As random as it is stereotypical.
You don’t expect what you get when you emerge past the bottlenecked trailhead. Majesty. Power. Deep Reverence. Sacred Land and Sacred Sea. These are some nice words to attempt to describe the feeling you get when you see the Pacific Ocean from this point atop the cliffs. They don’t do any justice. Looking out, you see where it all began for us on this rock. It’ll be there until the sun engulfs this Earth. The sun will go on to digest the rest of the solar system. The sun eats until it grows so big that it explodes and the dust floats beyond our galaxy into the rest of the infinite Universe. It’s that kind of feeling. Or, It could be the OG Grandaddy Purp. It’s a lot of things and it's everything, never nothing. Beneath the water is a world we will never know or understand. There are things, natural and unnatural, beneath that barrier that are mind-breaking. I’m talking Humpback Whales, Orca, Gray Whales, Bottle Nosed Dolphins, Otters, Seals and Sea Lions, Pelicans, and on and on. And then there are other less explainable situations below them. If you live near the cliffs then you already know what i’m talking about. More on that some other time.
This road sign is gone now and wasn’t there very long anyway. I imagine that it was once a portion of the road that has since fallen off into the ocean. Coastal erosion pushes everything toward the precipice. There are whole communities lost in recent years because they were built on land that is intently and persistently falling off the cliffs like a conveyor belt. The complete lack of fixity. But again, the view is so beautiful. It’s beautiful enough that people intentionally build houses right up against that borderland between worlds despite slowly digesting all that it comes to touch with. Given that it’s Pedro though, someone could’ve jacked it and installed it there for whatever reason.
The face my wife made when she turned that corner and saw that particular edge of the word for the first time.
Looking up from the bottom of Royal Palms one summer afternoon. Surfers, low-riders, everybody hanging out with Mary Jane, tons of cliff-cats starting you down for food, woodies, school trips, and on and on.
Looking South from a perch overlooking Abalone Cove. That second cliff in the back is where the first picture in this series was taken. There is a nude beach down below. The first time I excitedly went and was met with a diverse bunch of aging military vets drinking Bud Lite and swapping stories. Hanging out.
An OG Volkswagon Transporter. A staple in the area and up the coast. If someone’s driving that then there is sand in the floorboard and flakes of sex wax in the back.Synonymous with surf culture.
These photos were taken out to sea on a harbor cruise. Way past the breakwater and into the deep ocean. Tons of dolphins, and seagulls. Despite a couple arguing while stuck on a boat, it’s an otherwise jovial and relaxing atmosphere. That spray and sun serve your soul right. I was trying to get a photo of this guy because he was so freaking stoked to be out there. As I clicked, he looked.
