JUSTIN L. STEWART PHOTOGRAPHY: 2020

Friday, January 24, 2020

LA Pride Parade 2019

This post apparently got buried by other work and life. I just stumbled across it in my drafts. I felt so frustrated on this self-assigned shoot. Photographing parades has always been a struggle for me. I didn't feel confident about any of the images I was making and I walked home unhappy with what I had done, sure I hadn't made any good frames.

Fortunately, when I got home and got to work on my photographs, there were frames that I was actually really happy with. Things had gone a lot better than I had previously thought. It was a great reminder of how hard so many of us photographers can be on ourselves and our work and the need to just cut ones self some slack.

Not all these photos are amazing or great, but I'm glad I got myself out there to make some fun frames and, through the frustration, I forced myself to experiment and get weird in an effort to make something worth looking at, and that was an experience and learning worth having.

So here's my super delayed posting of photographs from the 2019 LA Pride Parade in West Hollywood:

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One Year Ago: A Sister's Wedding in Abu Dhabi

For context, my sister is a teacher in Abu Dhabi and has been there for the past five or so years.

A year ago, my sister was married in Abu Dhabi. In fact, I was the officiant of her wedding. I spent two weeks in Abu Dhabi, helping prep for the wedding, being wheeled around town and introduced to different foods and seeing new things while battling some ferocious jet lag. It was an overwhelming, bewildering, fantastic experience.

The new family was so kind and inviting and generous - I've never felt so welcomed or accommodated. Their only complaint is that we weren't spending an entire month there with them. They asked if they would end up on this blog and if I'd write about them. I told them I certainly would. It was only when I got home that I struggled with the reality the intense photo laws in the UAE and worried about how sharing some photo that may seem innocuous to me may have larger ramifications, especially upon any return visits to see everyone.

It made me freeze. I felt hamstrung and stressed about sharing anything. But I'm over it and these photos are largely of just family anyway. I feel bad for having withheld them for so long.

So, here's a selection of photos from that trip.

Jet lag was brutal - and the clocks could be a little confusing.

Qasr Al Hosn, the oldest building in Abu Dhabi, lies in the heart of the city among all the skyscrapers.

View from a mall food court in Abu Dhabi.

Choosing a goat for our celebratory meal.

Islamic Law wedding day, outside the courthouse.

Families meeting portrait.

Abu Dhabi, UAE.

Street kitty napping in the shade of a car.

Heavy laden makeup removal.

My sister playing with her wedding cape.

Arabian Nights Village, where the western style wedding ceremony was held.

Gold pacifiers in a jewelry store - one for a boy and one for a girl.

Store mannequin with a halloween knife in her head - reason unknown.

Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, memorialized throughout the country and remembered, among other things, for helping unite the tribes to create the UAE.