Last week I ended up on a long "weekend" in LA. The primary reason for the visit was to help my buddy Derrick Busch shoot the LA Lakers, but naturally I made the most of my time up there and met up with a few friends as well.

I decided to head up a day early and see what delights LA might have in store for me on a Saturday night. Turns out not much. I met my roommate, Frankie, who was a bit frazzled and in "Tiny Tornado" mode. It was probably for the best, and made for a relatively early morning on Sunday.

The day began with a quick trip to Malibu. I got a couple shots from the beach before hurrying off to meet Derrick at the UCLA Training facility- Home of the Lakers. We built our set, tested and got everything dialed for the shoot the next day.

I linked up with my long time friend Tim Binmoeller (a very talented editor) to get some exercise at Cliffs of ID, climbing gym. I've only tried climbing a couple times in my life, so I was pretty stoked to get a proper session with Tim because he's been climbing several days a week for years now.

It ended up being way more fun than I had anticipated, and I improved quite a lot by the end of our session. I'm definitely looking forward to going back and continuing to improve. After a few hours we went to Mizlala, a solid Greek restaurant nearby.

After dinner, I decided to get a hotel and get some good rest after hardly sleeping the night before. The alarm came to early, as it usually does. The shoot day began with its ritualistic Starbucks run 15 min ahead of schedule.

The days schedule was the o'l hurry up and wait scenario.. call time of 7:30am and talent doesn't arrive till 11. Makes no sense since we already setup the day before, but thats pretty standard.

Before long the players arrived and it was all over in a flash.

After the shoot I went back up to Malibu to link up with Frankie for a sunset session. I opted to shoot in the water despite not having the port/lens combo I would've preferred. The waves were micro, but we got a couple fun shots and it's always nice to be in the water; especially when the alternative is sitting in LA traffic!

Despite having In N Out the past two days in a row (on the way up, and it was catered at the shoot prep day) I stuck with tradition and got in n out on the way home. They say third time is the charm.. "they" say a lot of things.