This is one of my favorite shots. It's of Normandie and Slauson where someone is waiting to make a turn. The angle of the muffler shop, those cars, the telephone poles, the foliage: it kind of all blends into these altered horizons. 

This is Adams and Western, where the Golden State Building is. It's a big insurance building that was built a hundred years ago now. The image is capturing the angle of that building in relation to telephone poles, the street, the cars going in a few different directions and creating more angles. It's a very iconic building in Los Angeles, so I caught it at this angle to present some depth: the depth in the way I shot it, the depth of the community, depth of what it's all presenting.

This is an auto body shop off of Slauson, probably. We knew all these guys. You can see a lot of the stuff that he's set up in the shop, which I framed with the cars sitting there and the iron gate business next door to it. 

This was a little store, owned by a gentleman who they always called Little Man, because he was a smaller gentleman. We used to walk in there all the time, he had all kinds of stuff in there: snacks, soda, whatever he could make a buck off of. It shows some apartment buildings above him, the bazaar place. That was a clinic right there on the corner, that guy did several different things. Rosa was from Belize and clothing and any type of knickknack you can think of was in the bazaar, the place was kind of like a thrift store. She was an interesting character playing off of Little Man. It was a collective mix of business people, you get the depth of the neighborhood in this image.

This is somewhere on Western. The laundromat is in the background, but you can't really see it. You can see it says coin and the rest is covered up. The layering of the trees and the angle of the sidewalk and cars, this is what I was trying to accomplish, more depth than just shooting it straight away. There’s a light and dark contrast. The light sky is the deepest part of the background, but then the trees are kind of dark. The asphalt has its own coloring, and so does the sidewalk in relation to the cars, to the trees, and in relation to the building.

So I started to walk through a couple of these alleys again to get some different framing. That's actually the eastern part of that laundromat. The alley was set up that way, it didn't go straight, it had an angling system for water when it rained. That was interesting to me, it kind of splits this alleyway into two pieces. But if you look, if you keep going all the way back to where the telephone poles are, you've got a lot of trees and foliage, and as your eye comes back up you see another large bush, a telephone pole and then that asphalt just adds that depth and angle… It's almost nature and foliage versus the asphalt and the concrete in the buildings.The symmetry between all of these elements is what crafts the photo.

A picture of my neighborhood. I caught this car making a left turn, just entering the picture. The building in front, right next to him, creates a frame. You can see some horizon going down that walkway above where the car is coming out. What I was trying to do is layer a lot of these different elements into this one image.

I started shooting more straight on when I encountered people walking across streets. The lines you see in the street here give that same depth to the image. If you look down the horizon, this gentleman could be going anywhere. He could be going across the street. He could be going to one of those restaurants. He could be going anywhere. I caught him just coming off the curb so it looks like he's just getting ready to start his journey.

This is one of my favorites because of the way it came out. This is a locksmith, his shop is behind that sign that says cleaners, those two businesses were back there. The sun was hazy that day, so it doesn't give you the same depth as some of the other pictures. In the horizon you can barely see the boys market sign, it almost looks like it has a ghostly quality to it. The cleaner sign is highlighted, but everything else is a little lighter than the truck.

This is Western and Slauson, so back in my old neighborhood. You're looking north and there's a lot of stuff going on in this shot: the cars, the sign, donuts, auto glass. You have this odd little cart as the focal point. This was a cart somebody left there and this is 40 years ago, but you see these types of carts all over the place now, you didn't really see that back then.

Here’s one of the rare ones, too, where I captured people walking away from the shot. There's depth in the buildings in relation to the street, the cars. But if you look along the horizon there's more foliage, there's more telephone poles. There’s a clear divide of the shadow and the light.