Los Angeles, California

Photographed on 10/14/2022 - 10/17/2022

Published on 3/12/2023

These photos are from a four day trip I took with my aunt to Los Angeles. We had been planning the trip for quite some time, since I graduated high school, but due to poor planning on my part, and a pandemic starting in my freshman year of college, we ended up pushing it back to my senior year of college.

I've always been fascinated by the western United States. As someone born and raised in the southeast, I haven't traveled or seen very much of the US outside of the east coast. My family took a trip to Colarado for spring break in my junior year of high school and it had a big effect on me. Seeing the big mountains, the different geography, the slight differences in how people acted, it all filled me with wonder and joy.

So when my aunt asked where I wanted to go, I decided to go further west than I had ever gone before. I wanted to see the birthplace of so much of America's pop cultural influence; Hollywood. We went to a lot of different tourist sites, and even went on one of those bus tours around the city. It was a fun trip and I got to see a lot of cool stuff that I typically wouldn't back home. Spending the time with my aunt was a lovely experience as well.

In this collection you will see a selection of my favorite photos I took on the Walk of Fame, LA County Art Museum, Santa Monica Pier, Beverly Hills, Rodeo Drive, and the expansive botanical gardens at the Huntington Library. I took a lot of pictures over the course of our four day visit (almost 400 in total!) but these were the 25 pictures I felt most proud of. I have never felt more like a tourist than when I was walking the streets of LA in a Hawaiian shirt with a big camera hung around my neck.

One thing I failed to capture on this trip was the more negative aspects of LA as a city. Homeless people lounged outside of group homes and tent camps were set up in front of homes worth millions of dollars. There is a true humanitarian crisis happening in the city, and most cities in America. Rather than capturing this view of the trip, I stuck to my tourist spots. Similar to the sleek pop art I found myself focusing on, I created a polished view of my trip that did not fully reflect the reality of the world around me. Realizing this made me reflect on how I make my photos. It's okay and fun to make fiction, but there is great value in depicting harsh realities as well.

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