Afonso Salcedo
@afonso
Photojournalism / Documentary / Portraits Based in Los Angeles, NPPA member hello@afonso.me · Signal on request
Printed something new for our walls. Acrylic, gold float frame, and very happy with the result. Go print some of your own work this month. Or buy a print from a photographer you love. Either way, get photographs off the screen and into the room 🥰
Postcards from crunch time. My office stays dark most of the day. Blinds down, one thin lamp against the wall, daylight over the top edge. Everything else is monitor glow, but a unicorn duck lives under the Eizo.
Two weeks in and the hardest part of this broken elbow has been not driving anywhere or picking up a camera. The computer work hasn’t slowed down and the reading pile is shrinking, so it hasn’t been idle at least. Looking forward to getting back to the routine.
Staying home this weekend, escaping the LA heatwave and letting the broken arm heal. Reading, writing, and photographing what’s here without holding weight with my arm. Work ramps up on Hexed at Disney this week, so the balance for now is recovery, remote work, and patience until I’m back out.
Getting hit by a cyclist last week left me with a fractured elbow. Three more weeks immobilized, new x-rays mid August. Already canceling client shoots, including a concert this Friday. The calendar doesn’t pause when the body does. Back as soon as I’m cleared.
While I was standing on the CicLAvia route photographing last Sunday, a cyclist ran into me from behind. Second round of X-rays caught what the first missed: fractured elbow. Arm immobilized, ortho Tuesday, shoots on hold. If your body disagrees with a clean X-ray, push for the second look. 👀
A water main broke overnight here in West Hollywood. Most of the water was already shut off by the time I walked down to Santa Monica Blvd, but crews had a stretch closed and silt covering the roadway. LADWP still repairing the pipe. Cause not yet confirmed.
Fourth of July at Hollywood Forever. A DJ warmed the lawn, then fireworks went up past the screen. LA does a summer night well. Hope yours was a good one.
National Camera Day. The camera I trust is the one that disappears while I work, so I can stay with the person in front of me. A decade-plus on Sony Alpha got me there. Mostly though, I just feel grateful for everything a camera has carried into my life since I was a kid.
The final season of The Bear pins a still from Ratatouille above the line, “Anyone can cook, but only the fearless can be great.” I spent months at Pixar on that little film. Seeing it turn up here leaves me grateful and a little undone. Made me feel all the feels.
Scouted the Mt. Wilson Trail for an editorial portrait. First time on it. Location work is half the job, finding the one spot that holds the subject and the story at once. A bench near the trailhead, the whole valley behind it. This will be fun.
Lineage Fire update. Boyle Heights, this afternoon. A week into the Lineage cold storage fire, crews are still pouring water through the walls toward the last hotspots. The gutted freezer sits across from homes. LAFD says it's too dangerous to enter, and expects it fully contained by tonight.
Day four of the Lineage cold storage fire in Boyle Heights. From West Hollywood an hour ago, smoke still rising behind the downtown LA skyline, pale now where Wednesday it was black. LAFD says the smell has reached most of the city. A local emergency was declared Saturday.
The Last Guest of the Holloway Motel: a moving first doc from Ramiel Petros and Nicholas Freeman on Tony Powell, a Norwich City footballer who vanished in the ’80s and resurfaced managing a West Hollywood motel. A quiet study of hidden lives. Worth catching this Pride Month.
Just left an industry screening of Disclosure Day in LA. Emily Blunt is perfect, but what lingered for me was the film’s sense of wonder. The kind of imagination that reminds you why movies matter. Walked out feeling hopeful about art, curiosity, and possibility. Such a great escape from reality.
David Hockney died this week at 88. Sixty years making Los Angeles his subject. Two I keep returning to: the cool 1972 pool painting, and a loose late portrait of his mother built on raw color. He came up through photography, then spent his life proving paint could do what the camera couldn’t.
WeHo Pride parade came down Santa Monica Boulevard today. I caught it from the curb between hosting friends at home, which is the kind of parade coverage I'll take, living just off the route. A few quick frames from the street. Happy Pride 🏳️🌈
Documenting the first Saturday of WeHo Pride. Santa Monica Boulevard shut to traffic, the street fair running from the entrance arch to the Celebration Stage. Worked it as a documentary set, walking end to end into golden hour. A few frames from the day.
Errands in Boyle Heights turned into a walk at LA State Historic Park. Downtown right there past the grass, dogs and slow mornings all around. The detours are the best part of living here.
Happy Pride 🏳️🌈 I’m part of this lovely community, and this is from a studio shoot with the performer Imelda Glucose. Celebrating matters more with so much aimed at us right now. Pride is strongest when we remember to make room for everyone in it, too.
Two painters from Pulling Paint Murals hand-lettering the new Ministry of Coffee sign on Santa Monica Blvd this morning, building the orange mark up by hand. Brush-painted signage is getting rarer as vinyl takes over. Good to catch one going up on a Route 66 corner.
We hosted a ballots brunch this morning. Voter guides and polls on the wall, candidate platforms on post-its, friends who don’t all vote alike. California’s primary is June 2. If you’re registered, your ballot’s in your mailbox. We filled ours out and walked to City Hall to drop them in.
New modifier in the rotation, the Photek Softlighter. Tested it before a client portrait session this week. Beautiful soft light and more portable than expected. I was the only volunteer around.
Capture One’s new beta denoising, tested on this frame at ISO 8000. Fur detail held, eye reflections clean. Impressed so far. (And the dog is patiently waiting for food.)
US press freedom, 2025: 32 journalist arrests. 170 physical assaults, nearly as many in a single year as the previous three combined. Almost ninety percent during protests. Almost all tied to immigration enforcement. Been working on a longer piece for Fonzieland for a few weeks…
Outside LAPD HQ in downtown LA before Tuesday’s Police Commission hearing on press freedom. City Hall, the seat of city government, reflected in the LAPD glass. Ten months into a federal court order prohibiting LAPD from interfering with journalists.
Today is World Press Freedom Day. 2025 was the deadliest year on record for journalists, with 129 killed per CPJ. Solidarity with every photojournalist doing this work where the cost is higher than mine. Showing up and attaching your name to what you saw is the work this day commemorates.
MacArthur Park, May Day 2026. Twenty years since the marches that changed Los Angeles. Full essay on Fonzieland: fonzieland.substack.com
Dario Lee, in black and white. An older portrait I don’t share often. Monochrome Monday had me revisiting the catalog this morning and this one held up better than I remembered. Always fun to look at my library of work.