Elevate and Evolve | Cannabis & Psychedelic Culture Blog
Davis Ayer is a photographer living and creating in California who takes a unique approach to each photo he creates. Sometimes he uses trippy double exposures, sometimes he varies the frames, and sometimes he adds psychedelic paint – all of which provide beautiful textures to his work.
Ayer’s favorite equipment is a medium format camera (Mamiya with a polaroid back) and a 35mm (Minolta SRT 200). For digital, he uses a Canon 5D Mark II.
NYC-based Mel D. Cole a.k.a. Village Slum shoots mostly black and white, but whatever he shoots, it’s in-your-face and awesome. His work got attention from shooting Erykah Badu and Common in 2001, and since then he’s become known as the “house photographer” for the legendary Roots Crew and has been pinpointed by Questlove as his favorite contemporary photographer.
Alexa Meade is creating fascinating art, and she’s just getting started. Without any formal artistic training (and a bachelors in poli-sci to boot), Alexa has taught herself how to paint through innovating a new technique.
Her unique style of painting “living portraits”, confounds our sense of space which allows the subject to completely collapse within the photographs of her work.
“In some ways, artist Alexa Meade is a traditional figure painter. But she works on an unusual canvas: the actual human body. And she takes a classical concept — trompe l’oeil, the art of making a two-dimensional representation look three-dimensional — and turns it on its head. Her aim is to do the opposite, to collapse depth and make her living models into flat pictures.” -PBS
I paint representational portraits directly on top of the people I am representing. The models are transformed into embodiments of the artist’s interpretation of their essence. When captured on film, the living, breathing people underneath the paint disappear, overshadowed by the masks of themselves. – Alexa Meade
Van Styles is a visual artist with a focus on streetwear photography, directing and editing. He credits skateboarding for showing him how to look at things differently and always try a different approach rather then taking the easy road.
What makes Van Styles attractive to brands like LRG Clothing and The Hundreds is his style of photographing various subjects and settings and presenting them in a different light. Such is the case of taking well known adult actresses and capturing them in photos that show off his unique vision with streetwear and fashion styles.
The Fairfax and Rosewood area is really popular in L.A. While walking around one day, I noticed this game of s.k.a.t.e. going on and felt it would make a great shot.
This was taken when I shot for the LRG summer lookbook, as well as 2 ads. This was one of the final shots of the day, and Adam from the Workaholics decided to end it with this pool jump.
This is a double exposure shot with Kristina Rose. This reminds me of the beautiful accidents that can happen when shooting with film. It was shot on a Pentax K1000.
I don’t do much landscape shots, but when I drove by these tracks, I had to pull over. This was down in Huntington Beach area — the right place at the right time.
Tony Karr is an up-and-coming skateboarder who is just raw. I happened to be at the Brooklyn Projects ramp on Memorial Day, and he was there.
This was taken at the Paid Dues show this year. After the last set was done, I noticed this couple not caring about anything except each other. It was a real life moment.
Jessie Andrews is one of my favorite people to shoot photos with. I feel like this photo is just really fun.
I like this photo for a lot of reasons, but mainly that I randomly snapped it from my car while driving around downtown Los Angeles.
Gregory Bojorquez has been photographing the people and places within Los Angeles for years. Whether capturing women in Hollywood, his hot lady friends, crime, or musicians, he keeps it raw and in your face.
Take a view of what inspires him to document LA culture in its various manifestations.
Lincoln Heights Park
My friends and I were drinking wine in the park and my friend Michelle started riding a swing. I timed the shot and snapped my Rolleiflex just as she paused at the peak.
No Cruising
This photo was taken at a gas station in Montebello on a Sunday night. Sunday nights in the summer time were cruise nights on Whittier Boulevard, which is about a mile south of this photo. The police started pulling over everybody and harassed them to discourage the cruising. Some of the cops had their guns drawn on the occupants of the low riders as one cop yelled into his speaker that I was in the line of fire.
Snoop
I shot this photo on the street in front of Snoop’s house. He rolled and smoked three blunts in about an hour.
Tony Ward Downtown
I was shooting a suit story of my friend, model Tony Ward for a magazine in Paris that was doing an ‘Icon’ issue. I wanted this establishing shot with the Downtown skyline to tie the spread with Los Angeles.
