Hero Post: Culture

Being that we had a week to work on this project, for me that meant just the weekend. I had two images in mind both associated with coffee. Colombian and Kona. For Colombian I was hoping to associate the main colors with the flag and for the Kona a Hawaiian looking environment that had no grass skirts or coconuts.
So Saturday I luckily was meeting with friends in the morning and begged one who was running on 4 hours of sleep to model for me at a cafe in Sylmar. I stopped at michaels and grabbed a flower to hot glue to a clip and voila made hair clip. I also picked up some fake ferns to stick in the background.
Before heading from North Hollywood to Sylmar one of my friends did her make up a "natural" look that was well rested and off we went to the cafe.

Makeup by Bella Villeda

As we got there it was pouring rain, the sidewalks were flooded. not so Great so we went inside the walls were blue so I tried some photos inside with a speed light bouncing off the ceiling, but the cafe is so tiny and busy they were looking like candid snapshots.

Buffalo Bruce's cafe interior

So after a bit I went outside while it had picked up to a light rain and much better lighting. I set up the area and then had her sit on my jacket. while I snapped a few under a patio umbrella. She was cold so it did not last too long. A resident kitty decided to make a cameo, he really added to it.

Before edits

Before edits

For Sunday's Colombian Coffee theme I luckily asked my friend who is recovering from a bike accident if she had time to be my model. Fortunately for me she is limited in her activities right now. So we drove down to Boyle heights with a chair and small table. I painted the coke bottles that morning to add the other predominate flag colors of the Colombian flag. We found the sought out yellow wall of the Appetito restaurant and set up next to the musicians. There were these blue blocks where the musicians were seated we tried that but there was a white cloth hanging with a large crucifix and there was some tagging on it. I didn't want too much there to take away from the Colombian colors. We shot for a while the people walking by were walking by curiously. It was a nice change from the prior project where everything seemed to be a problem.

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