Staying to Look

Los Angeles 2025

The anticipation for this trip was immense! As with any place I get to go to, presumptions and research rule the time prior to packing and hitting the road. But with L.A., the city of angels, I’d seen over and over again in movies, documentaries, photographs and books, things were very much different. For one, I never anticipated I would have the opportunity to travel there as part of the Affinity and Canva team, for whom I work full-time. Second, although it was a work trip for the annual Canva Create event, I was blown away by the opportunity to join the active Affinity pros on a trip around the most famous parts of the city — something that would take quite a bit of planning and undertaking, all beautifully sorted by my colleagues. Finally, there was the day I got to fulfil my childhood dream and visit the Venice Beach skatepark, which I first saw in Baywatch when I was around 13. And man, what a great experience that was! This was on the first day after I landed, and which I had to myself, and where I think I made some of my favourite photographs ever.

Let’s talk skating for a moment. As a young teen back in a small town in Poland in the 90s, skating wasn’t hugely popular and we certainly didn’t have skateparks like the ones you can see in the UK, where I currently live, let alone bigger outdoor ones such as the one at Venice Beach, CA. But we still skated and tore the elbows and knees’ skin more than enough to have the connection to the culture and everything that comes with it. My friends and I were somewhat connected by it, as you’d expect, but what we didn’t realise was that this activity would shape us for years to come, whether we’d skate in our adult life or not. It all came from there: the passion and drive to stay fit, the interest in sports (not only the extreme ones), the music – oh man, the music! – and the films we loved and watched tens of times. (If you’re as old as I, you’d remember “Airborne” from 1993 and “Gleaming the Cube” from 1989, “Point Break” from 1991, to name just a few. I still occasionally get an itch to watch them again, I don’t think that’s ever going to go away.)

Venice Beach Skatepark
Curving like concrete sand dunes, shimmering with light as it hits the bends, all to the soundtrack of heated convos, applause, the ocean and loud hard rock tunes, of course, the place is not simply a skatepark – it’s a place of connection. It’s where you connect with the sport, the people, the skill, but most of all, it’s where you connect with yourself. Often looked at with a weary eye, the skating culture is sometimes perceived as threatening, like punks are, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. If you’re there, whether to skate, to watch, record or simply chat, you’re in and you feel welcome and appreciated for whatever you do and whoever you are. I am aware this may sound superficial, but I honestly felt that and walking around the skaters, mingling, talking to them while taking photos has never felt more natural. Everyone is open, ready to get to know you and find out more about you — this is the real skating culture!

From a technical standpoint with the gear of choice, I was starting at a lost position: my trusty manual Leica M10 and Zeiss 35mm f1.4 Distagon ZM doesn’t leave my camera and whatever it is I approach I am committed to this limitation, albeit a fabulous combo that travels with me wherever I go for a reason. My colleague who was shooting alongside me sported the Sony A7R IV with a zoom lens and inevitably captured more shots per second than I could – the M10 captures 5 frames p/s on the continuous mode, and you need to be proficient in zone focusing to be able to get the shot. For many, this is beyond comprehension and a natural choice for this type of photography. For me though, it’s a challenge I love to dive into, as returning with the material I had makes it ever so much more satisfying.

Perhaps another problem encountered was that I got there for 11am. Not ideal! The sun was approaching its highest point, and typically I avoid shooting between 11:30 am and 14:00. Sometimes though, you gotta go with what you get, and there was no way I would have waited until later to come back, so I jumped straight into it! You can tell from the photographs that the conditions were extremely bright, but hey, it’s California after all! I set my lens to f8 and zone focused for anything between 3m to infinity while leaving the camera’s ISO to automatic (I recommend setting the base ISO for the M10 at 200, not 100 as the sensor is very prone to blowing highlights beyond recovery at that setting in particular) and off I went.

Again, touching on the culture of skating and Venice Beach, you’ll have absolutely no problem hovering around the skaters and taking photos. Everyone’s open to it and as long as you remain at a safe distance, you’re good to go. I also managed to try different angles: low, eye level (I’m quite tall, so those may appear slightly higher), as well as from the hip. I know my lens and the focal length, which helped a lot. I’ve spent over three years very rarely switching to 50mm, and so 35mm is definitely my go to for all there is to capture. Would it be great to have a wider lens, or a fish eye for this type of photography? Sure! However, I love the consistency of the material I bring home, and the 35mm has never disappointed me; as I said, I know my feet and how to zoom with them, and so this is my all-time favourite way of seeing the world.

My plan for the day was to shoot at the skatepark, of course, but I also wanted to see the Santa Monica pier, where the infamous Route 66 ends. I highly recommend not only taking that walk, either on the beach or via the broad walk, where you’ll encounter plenty of characters and activities amongst which you could easily spend most of the day documenting: basketball, rollerblade dancing, the outdoor gym, surfing, the arts, etc. I would also highly recommend taking a peek into the back alleys every so often. My favourite was one where I spotted a truly great wall art portrait of Marilyn Monroe and Jim Morrison, which blew me away!

Once I got to the Santa Monica beach, I shot there sparsely as I’m not a landscape photographer and theme parks aren’t my thing, so I grabbed an iced coffee and walked back to Venice to complete the trail with some more photos of skaters, now in the early evening.

The LA tour
I’m not one for organised tours and usually avoid them like fire–I prefer to figure things out myself, even get lost to discover things I wouldn’t normally. However, I embraced the fact I was able to go with the group and be both shown and explained some background knowledge of locations, culture, people and, of course, the movies. L.A. is such a varied location–I don’t think I’d be able to get it all in unless by joining this organised tour. The locations covered were: the Santa Monica pier, the Griffith’s Observatory, Beverly Hills, Hollywood Blvd and the Sunset strip, as well as a popular marketplace nearby the Warner Bros. production studios. If I were to recommend one that impressed me most, I’d definitely advice a visit to the observatory, either at sunrise or sunset. Sadly, for me, it was an early afternoon but it was fantastic nevertheless and I could definitely see the potential in the location at either blue or golden hour. I was also told that live gigs take place there and it’s something music enthusiasts should definitely put in on their itinerary.

European in the U.S.
When you’ve spent all your life in Europe, coming to the U.S. is an adventure! Inevitably, you pack in your presumptions, things you’ve seen and heard on the news, the movies, radio, printed works and rumours. Some of it may come with a tangible level of fear even–depending on how strongly the resources that influenced your opinion were at play. For me, someone who was raised on what Hollywood fed us over the years when I was growing up in back then developing, post-communist Poland, this couldn’t be more true. The moment I landed in L.A. I started to look for clues, evaluating the surroundings and scanning this new matrix to form a new opinion. Result? Initially, everything looked to me like… well, Spain or Portugal! It didn’t feel that different from a country in the Meds– palm trees sprucing up wherever you looked and the blue sky creating a beautiful and fresh, oceanic skyline. Then, I was quickly and pleasantly reminded that I was in California, where people are relaxed, friendly and approachable, plus a quick glance at the automobiles on the roads, and I knew I was there. My kinda place!

Then came the feeling of being somewhere familiar. Wherever I looked, I could connect the canvas to locations and characters I watched in films. This made me feel strangely at ease with it all, creating this illusion of a place that is known albeit naturally and completely alien at the same time. My evaluation was brought down to a simple conclusion that L.A. will align to your perceptions: if you’re chill, you’ll certainly find it here.

I really hope I get to go back to this city of angels in the near future, as there are so many ideas and concepts that were born in my photographic mind while on this first visit. I’d love to stroll around downtown L.A. more and photograph the life on the street around the Hollywood Blvd where I could only take a limited number of photos from the seat of our tour bus. I’d also love to return to Venice Beach at sunset and sunrise to capture the activities in a more subtle and dispersed light. Finally, it would be a dream to hook up with other photographers who often shoot in L.A. or are in fact based there and who have created an amazing community online, which certainly provided the inspiration for this material. All of this I really hope is coming next year (or maybe even earlier). Fingers tightly crossed!