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I want to start by recognizing the still so ever-present fire damage in the LA area. My heart goes out to all that were & still are affected by this disaster. Having lived and grown up in the southern California area, I understand how devastating fires can be.
I think it's important to continue to support the local area (businesses, restaurants, museums, etc.) while rebuilding occurs. Luckily, for my most recent visit to CA, the Getty Villa had recently re-opened its doors for visitors. My partner and I jumped on the opportunity and reserved tickets for a 3 PM entry one afternoon. We had both separately visited the regular Getty and loved it, so we were excited to see what the Villa was like.
Parking was extremely easy and the drive up was beautiful. On that day, I was shooting with my Nikon F3 and a recently purchased Nikkor 35mm f2. To start, I had a roll of Cinestill 400D loaded & was excited to explore.
And as always, the film was developed by The Darkroom, camera scanned by me with my Fujfilm GFX 50R, and converted with Negative Lab Pro in Adobe Lightroom Classic.
I couldn't have asked for a more perfect afternoon. The weather was perfect, the sun was out, and I was spending time with my partner doing something I love (taking photos).
My partner would concur, I'm a very slow & meticulous shooter, especially with film. I'm not fast typically, but for this shot, I had to be. The subject was walking up the hill and the nice framing was going to quickly be lost after I noticed the shot. Luckily, manual focus can be quick if you have your focus already set, which I had. I'm happy that this photo turned out; I think it has some really nice layers.
At this point, we had done a quick lap around the perimeter of what's available to see, so we started to retrace our steps and see what we had missed.
And that's it for the Cinestill. It's pretty hard to take a bad photo at the Getty (Villa or not), but I'm happy with a lot of these photos. I especially like the photo of the worker walking up the hill and the pattern of the stairs.
Up next, I loaded a roll of the underappreciated Kodak Portra 800. Maybe it's not underappreciated, and it's just expensive, but regardless it's always overshadowed by it's 400 speed counterpart.
And that's a wrap on our visit to the Getty Villa. Having gone to both now, I'd recommend the regular Getty first as I think it's larger, but the Villa was spectacular.
After our visit to the Villa, we stopped in Venice for a little shopping, then headed back to Huntington Beach for dinner & a little ice cream treat. We ended up seeing a really gorgeous sunset, so I'll include a few bonus photos from the end of the roll. I hope you enjoy :)
Until next time. Thanks, as always, if you've read this far. I enjoy writing these to catalog points of my life & it's cool that others enjoy them too.
