LA LA LAND | TAMPA

When my cousin Erin asked me to capture video at her wedding I immediately thought we should replicate the famous dance scene from the movie La La Land. Not in the video (although that would be rad) but as a themed photo. I should have known but was surprised to hear that she (and Drew) was totally into it because for one she is a dance instructor. For two, this is also one of her favorite films. It’s really a great flick. You should watch it. I knew we’d have to make some sacrifices due to location. Us being on the wrong side of the continent makes for a pretty challenging exact replica for many reasons. Luckily film makers fudge things to their advantage so we can too;) I also knew I didn’t want it to be exactly the same cause what’s the fun in that? So I thought of a few locations and scouted them out. Out of the few Ballast Point Park stood out immediately. Mostly I was looking for concrete and wood parking posts in the foreground. Ballast was a pretty ideal replica of this. It also has a pretty fantastic view of the city. However it seems a bit far away in camera and from the parking lot trees obscure the view. So the background shot was actually taken two miles north on Bayshore. There also happens to be a light post in almost the exact right location at Ballast. Although this didn’t matter much as it’s ugly and we would be overpowering it with a strobe anyway. I did want to put a lamp in though and since Ybor has rather iconic street lamps it was a simple choice to bring one in. So that’s what makes up this image. It’s interesting, up until the end of the project I liked the idea of using the same crop they did for the movie. But after I put the light in and actually cropped the image and compared the two I ended up liking the un-cropped streetlamp version better. Let me know if you want to create one for yourself!