“The best shot of the day was the one we almost didn’t have time for.”
Some shoots are planned down to the minute. This one was planned down to the only thirty minutes we had before security caught on.
The Westin Bonaventure Hotel & Suites is one of LA’s most photographed buildings for a reason — that spiraling, brutalist concrete architecture with the circular balconies and burgundy leather booths feels like it was built for a camera, not a hotel stay. It’s been the backdrop for sci-fi films and fashion editorials alike, and once you’re inside those curved atriums, it’s easy to see why. But it’s also private property, and private property means a clock starts running the second you walk in.
So we moved fast. No test shots, no reshoots, no standing around chasing the “perfect” angle for ten minutes. Just in, shoot, out — all captured on the Leica SL2 with a 35mm rangefinder lens, a combination built for exactly this kind of run-and-gun shooting. The 35mm’s wider field of view meant we could work close and still capture the scale of that concrete spiral without backing up thirty feet we didn’t have time to walk.
The best frame of the set came almost by accident — shooting through palm fronds in the foreground, catching our subject small in the frame against the massive curve of the balcony below. That shot wasn’t staged patience, it was necessity: shoot through what’s in front of you, because there’s no time to move it out of the way.
There’s something about working under pressure like that. You stop overthinking composition and start trusting instinct — you already know what makes a strong frame, so when the clock’s against you, you just go get it. Thirty minutes in, and we were out the door before anyone asked us what we were doing there.
“We got out before security found us. The shots stayed behind to tell the story we didn’t have time to.”