Handcuffs and Portraits

I am starting a new series of pictures I am calling for the time being, "The Faces of Music." It is basically going to be a series of portraits of musicians. My first such shoot for this was with Nik the Dick, who plays guitar in C.O.P. and drums in Bad Reaction. Two very good old school hardcore, thrash, punk bands.

I drove out to West Covina for the afternoon to hangout with Nik and takes some photos. We skated a little, ate fat burritos and took some candid photos and what not. It was all going so well until Nik recommended a spot he remembered going to back in high school. Of course, we had to hop a fence to get to the spot he was thinking about. The spot was basically a wash area in Monrovia. We were there maybe 10 minutes. We had just found this dry lake bed and I was just about to start breaking out my camera gear when I noticed someone walking out of the corner of my eye. Yep, wouldn't you know it. It was a cop. He told us to sit down and then he had Nik walk backwards to him up this loose gravel slope. I was thinking we would just be asked to leave, but then I saw them put handcuffs on Nik. Not looking good at all. Next they had me walk backwards up the loose gravel slope, put my hands behind my back and then I felt the cool steel of handcuffs. Now, I have had my fair share of police run ins, but I have never had handcuffs put on me. It is not something I want to go through again. It was not a good feeling at all. Nik had never been handcuffed either and he didn't like it much as well. The police searched my bag looking for spray paint. The report they had received was that we were tagging and then taking photos of it. It didn't take much convincing that we weren't and I even told them how to turn on my camera and look through the photos we were taking. We were still sitting on the ground, handcuffed. Not a very comfortable position to be in. They took down our names and addresses and then finally undid the handcuffs. With a stern warning, they let us on our way. They sent us out on the opposite side on the wash from my car, so we ended up having to walk all the way back around through residential streets. We finally got back to the car just in time to see the cop who busted us drive away. I was half expecting to see a ticket on my car. Thankfully, we got off with a warning, but it could have been a lot worse.


We went back to a tennis court that we had passed that I wanted to go to instead of the wash. We set up my lights, while two guys were playing tennis on the court next to us. We got a few weird looks, but soon got over it. After tweaking with the lights and settings, I finally got the photo I wanted.

NIK THE DICK

Nik actually saw the cop that busted drive by the tennis courts as we were unloading the car, haha! They were following us. We went back to Nik's where we did some shots of him playing the drums and then some in his room. I might post those later.