The Last Book Store

This post, I’m showing something very different.  Last week while in downtown Los Angeles we decided to go to an old book store known as The Last Bookstore.  I had my Sony NEX camera with me, but a glitch happened earlier and the camera didn’t shut down when left on, so after an hour or so the battery was dead.  No, I didn’t have a back up battery with me either.

This was annoying, especially since I still had to carry the Sony camera over my shoulder the rest of the evening.  Such is life in the battery-dependent digital age.  Being in the mood to shoot this interesting space I decided to use my cell phone, my only other option.  The modern smartphone does a pretty good job at snaps and video for documentation, which I, like many people, use often.  Using it at night in low-light situations was a bit of a challenge, but figured that I’d give it a try.  Keeping the “camera” steady was the difficult part.

When I first walked in, this creative use for old, unwanted books really made me smile.  I knew this place was going to have character.  Barnes & Noble or Borders, it’s not!

.

With chairs like these, it makes you want to snuggle up with a good book and “move in”.  This place is open until 11pm on the weekends and people DO sit and read for quite a bit.  I was there over 2 hours and several people that were there when I arrived were there still there when I left.

.

When I’m in places like this bookstore, I leave myself open to what’s around me.  This is a key to most any kind of creative photography.  I never moved anything for any of these shots.  None of these images have been cropped.  It was seeing and observing what was there and capturing a moment in time.  Above we have a novel about a kinky bisexual man in NYC; a Christmas book; and children’s book illustrated by Ralph Steadman(!); and a book on farm tractors.  It would be difficult to find a more eclectic selection of books on the same display shelf–even if I arranged them myself–which I didn’t!

.

I’ve always enjoyed old globes.  You can usually date it by looking at Africa, since the country names change so regularly.  This one appears to be from the late 60s to early 70s.  Being illuminated, it added a nice glow to the area.

.

The bizarre cover of this art book made me take a second look.  The unusual lipstick application seemed to echo the two back to back red sofas.  Notice the character peaking in on the right, as though she is looking at the viewer.

.

Here is another unnerving book cover that up close makes it even more so.  The cover of a book is its most fundamental marketing piece.  And this one is quite ‘outspoken’.

.

This image has an interesting three dimensional quality to it.  Humphrey Bogart appears to be looking up at the viewer and lit by an on-camera flash from the lower right (it wasn’t).  It’s the cover of a biography on him, but I really enjoyed the juxtaposition of the “Nostradamus for Dummies” book in the background.  Nostradamus, the 16th century visionary, adds more mystery to the image.  Yes, this is is also “as found” on a counter.  I shot this in various ways before choosing this view as my favorite.

.

The mounted mastodon head on the wall is weird enough by itself, but combined with the cover of a book on the monuments of ancient Egypt made it more surreal.  (Of course, there are no real mounted mastodons since they went extinct some 10,000 years ago.)  As you can see, this store is a strange, but photographic environment–at least to me.

.

Here is one more of the strange combination of books.  I don’t know many who would buy this pair of books.  Notice how the brown galaxy appears to be a disconnected part of the dog’s face…

.

There was a huge section of sex and sexuality books in this bookstore.  Much more than is typical.  The history of Casanova is probably a fun read.  I’m curios as to what the spine of volume “9 & 10” would have added to the overall image…

.

The store is in what was an old bank.  This room was the vault and housed the older book section.  I liked all the mounted classic book covers above the door.

.

Here is a typical bookshelf in the “Vault”.  There wasn’t really any order to the books in there, as here are books “Quo Vadis”, “The Prisoner of Zenda”, Chaucer, etc.  Because of the bright light on the books on the right, I had to adjust the camera exposure on the phone.  That was more complicated that it should be, having to go through several menus to lower the exposure a couple of stops.  Sometimes these “Smartphones” aren’t all that smart–or convenient when  you want to do something different.  The main advantage being that I was able to take photos when my other camera died.  It took some 4 exposures to get one that was sharp enough (being hand-held).

.

The Photography section was an eclectic mixture of books, both used and new.  Here I see a friend’s book used on Austin Val Verde.  I would have bought it if I didn’t already have a copy.  I did put aside a couple of books to purchase before I started my photo essay.

.

This charming character greeted you at the front door.  There was nothing in her basket, but she is intriguing, just the same.  A fire truck had just stopped out front and they went into the building across the street.  There is always action in downtown LA and similarly sized cities!  If you enjoy old bookstores as I do, with an avant-garde decor and an excellent selection of books, check out The Last Bookstore on Spring Street at 5th Street in LA.  They’re open late on weekends, and have a great jazz vinyl record section, too.

.

These images were all shot at night with my Samsung smartphone, not that I want to advertise any particular brand, model or type.  Other recent smartphones also do very well, if you are willing to push them a bit.  The ISO was adjusted to the maximum by setting the mode to “night”.  I used the “anti-shake” feature; flash off; sound off (so not to call attention to myself); and I save the highest resolution possible (4128×3096 px) to the SD card.  I have an app that downloads the images via wifi to the “cloud” automatically so they are saved off the phone and can be accessed from my laptop or desktop.

To keep the ‘camera’ as steady as possible, I tried to lean up against bookcases, chairs or other stationary items.  Many of these shots still had to be shot several times to get a sharp enough image.  A few people wondered what I was doing, but I wasn’t hassled in any way.  Cellphone photography has become so ubiquitous and accepted lately, that few people seemed to care, including the bookstore workers (at least at this point in time).  Still, it was a fun exercise in working with what you have, sort of like working with the pinhole camera mentioned a few months back.  It’s good to occasionally get out of your comfort zone!