Leucadia Barbershop

Best Barbershop in North County

San Diego Barbershop

Spent some time back in San Diego last month and finally got around to photographing Emiliano Zermeno at his new Leucadia Barbershop location - a five minute drive from the house I lived in for 7 years. Funny concept when you think that this project encompasses all 50 states!

Last time I saw him was during COVID when they were forced to give haircuts in the parking lot outside. As you can see he has tattoos up to his chin. We talked a bit about his interactions with tourists coming into the shop that aren’t used to seeing people covered in tattoos. Emiliano is very kind person, but first impressions can be misleading, so sometimes it’s necessary to go the extra mile to make people feel welcome.

The shop has strong family history that began when his parents opened up in 1996. Like so many long time barbershops that have to deal with landlord issues, they unfortunately had to vacate that location recently, but that led to the beaut that he’s in now. A place that is a direct reflection of the barber himself (skateboarder) and the southern California culture he grew up in. It’s obvious when talking to him that family is a huge part of his life. As is continuing on what his parents worked so hard for. He’s also part of the Uppercut Deluxe crew, so you know his cuts are top tier. Head over to his shop’s website to learn more, and if you’re looking for a great haircut in north county San Diego, Leucadia Barbershop is the spot.

Click HERE to check out my photography book of barbershops in all 50 states of the USA.

And there are barbershop prints from this series available HERE. For all other print inquiries please contact me directly.

Emiliano Zermeno - San Diego Barber

Leucadia Barbershop - San Diego, CA

Good Haircuts - Bad Advice

Best barbershop in north county San Diego

Black and white photograph of a barbershop in San Diego, CA

Barbershop in Encinitas, CA

San Diego Barbershop

Traditional Barbershop in San Diego, CA

Johnny Lovato’s Barbershop

Back in 2011 I began photographing traditional barbershops as a way to preserve a dying piece of American culture and cornerstone of every local community. These relics were all going away due to the barber passing on, retiring, or being pushed out of their shop to make way for a higher paying tenant. Last week I drove by Johnny Lovato’s Barbershop in San Diego and was sad to see that it had changed hands, been gutted, and reopened as a soulless salon. No offense to the current owner, but it’s sad to see decades of memories stripped away. A barbers shop is his second home and a place that he’s spent a life forging relationships and community. And that’s what this body of work is all about - documenting these time capsules so their legacy can live on. These photographs are from 2011 when Johnny was still cutting and later in 2019 when his son had taken over. I remember Johnny being a very kind person. He loved the bird in his shop and got a lot of enjoyment from feeding it Cheetos.

If you’d like to support this project you can do so by purchasing a copy of my photography book on traditional barbershops in all 50 states of the USA.

And contact me directly if you’d like a photography prints of any barbershops from this series.

Johnny Lovato's Barbershop - Point Loma, CA

San Diego Barbershop

Johnny Lovato - Barber

Portrait of a San Diego barber standing behind his chair

Rotary phone in a traditional barbershop

Photograph of an old school barber in San Diego, CA

Photograph of a customer getting their hair cut at a barbershop in San Diego, Ca

University Club - San Diego

University Club - San Diego, California

Recently had a great opportunity to present some of my cowboy photography to members at The University Club in San Diego, California. Sitting on the 34th floor of the Symphony Towers, the club has the best view in all of America’s Finest City! It was a pleasure just being up there, but even more so presenting work along a couple other photographs that I’m lucky to call friends - Nick Nacca and Gary Allard as well as APA San Diego. It was a great night all the way around. The three of us had fun presenting our work and everyone in attendance was very engaged during and after. I’m grateful for the opportunity to share!!

Go here to shop my fine art cowboy photography prints

Photography presentation at The University Club in San Diego, California

Color photographs taken by Tim Hardy

Black and white photo taken by Rich Soublet

San Diego Fly Fishing

Blacks Beach Fly Fishing

San Diego, CA - Photographs

San Diego’s stunning coastline is a paradise for anglers, and Black’s Beach, located beneath the rugged cliffs of Torrey Pines, offers a distinct and rewarding fly fishing experience. Known for its seclusion, surf, and dramatic natural beauty, Black’s Beach is more than a surfing destination—it’s a hidden gem for fly fishing enthusiasts looking to try their hand at casting for Corbina from the beach.

If you’re looking for a fly fishing guide in San Diego, contact Tyler Vanosdell at Mission Bay Fly Fishing.

Tyler on Instagram - @missionbayflyfishing

Olivia on Instagram - @merlinoolivia

Click here to see more of my fly fishing photography

San Diego Fly Fishing

Fly fisherman in Lajolla, San Diego

Two fly fisherman having fun on Blacks Beach in LaJolla, CA

Fly fishing for Corbina on Blacks Beach in San Diego, CA

A female fly fisherman surf casting in San Diego, CA

Two fly fisherman walking on a beautiful section of Black Beach in LaJolla, CA

A fly fisherman getting hit by a wave on Blacks Beach in San Diego, CA

A girl fly fishing in front of the beautiful cliffs of Blacks Beach in San Diego, CA

Two fly fisherman hiking up the dirt trail from Blacks Beach in San Diego, CA

American Photographic Artists

APA is a great organization for photographers that I’m proud to be a member of. It’s filled with good people that support and help each other rather than looking at one another as competition. I recently did an interview with them which you can read here:

MEET.Rob Hammer

Culture Brewing Company - Encinitas

Feels so good to see the world opening back up. Over the last week especially there has been so much life out on the street and in the local shops, restaurants, and bars. Grateful to have the opportunity to be social again while sharing some work from American Backcourts. So if you’re in San Diego during the month of June, stop on by Culture Brewing Company in Encinitas to check out some fine art prints while enjoying some delicious craft beer in the sunshine.

Street Photography - San Diego

San Diego Photo Gallery

Trying to be better about posting more of all the different genres of my photographs here on the blog, and that includes commercial work. Here are some street photographs made in downtown San Diego over the past few months over several sessions. Still trying to pull this whole project together in a cohesive way. Not sure how to do that as the body of images has grown so large that I don’t even know where to begin. Way back in say 2015 when this series started I was calling it “The Lajolla Poject” because I only intended on focusing this series on the streets/neighborhoods of LaJolla. Now it’s spanned all the way up to San Francisco. Time for a long talk with a photo consultant.

Click here to see more from this project.

Downtown San Diego

Little Italy

Little Italy

Little Italy

Little Italy

Downtown

Cardiff by the Sea

San Diego Photography - Cardiff by the Sea

Like this image as much as any I’ve made over the past couple months. It goes into the category of not being sure what I’ll do with it yet, but that doesn’t matter. The subject or label that has to be applied is of no importance. Making photographs is. And just because they might not fit into a category, what you’re known for, or what you’re hired for should never stop someone from making an image. If it brings you happiness then make the image and figure out the rest later. Shoot. Share. Repeat.

FYI: This is not a black and white.

More HERE from my Southern California series.

Cardiff by the Sea - San Diego, California

San Diego Magazine -Hiking and Biking

San Diego Hiking Trails

Fun assignment a month or two back for San Diego Magazine shooting the cover/feature for their Hiking and Biking issue which seems to be a recurring thing for me. It’s been a great way to get out into parts of San Diego that I’ve never seen before. The cover “model” was Karlene Chavis - Chief Meteorologist for CBS 8. She a big hiker and was awesome to shoot/talk with during the couple hours we were out on the trail. It never gets old interacting with the real person that you don’t get to see/know on TV. I’m not at all implying that she is fake while doing the news, but there is only so much a person can do during their live broadcast. And when someone is on television, the public develops a persona for them and they are expected to always act a certain way. So whenever you’re able to see a newscaster, athlete, celebrity, etc. as just normal, not someone putting on a facade, it’s quite refreshing.

Click here to see more of my adventure photography

San Diego Magazine - Best hiking trails in San Diego

Pasquale The Barber

Life has a tendency to take over. I don’t mean that as a bad thing, but it certainly has a natural way of pushing certain things to the side. Maybe it’s just priorities? Who knows. If the downtime caused by COVID has been good for anything though, it’s been a recalculation of what’s important and what isn’t. For me, I’ve been happy to unearth some projects from the archives that haven’t ever seen the light of day. This doc we did on Pasquale The Barber is one of those projects. It was so much fun in a lot of ways, one being that it’s my first time “directing” a video production. I use those terms lightly though because it was a very small personal production between myself and cameraman Jordan Valente. I’ve know Pasquale for years now, ever since photographing him at his shop for the 1st barbershop book way back in 2011(?). This video was shot in 2018, but got buried on a hard drive when life and other commercial projects took over. The only real downside of waiting so long to put this together is that “Pat” has since retired and moved into a senior home. Fortunately we were able to track down his son who was able to play the documentary for him on his computer at the facility. And I’m told he enjoyed it very much. Cheers to Pasquale and all the other old school barbers still carrying on the tradition.

Click here to purchase a copy of “Barbershops of America - Then and Now”

Swami's - Surfing

Swami’s Surfing - Wall Art - Photography Prints

Garry Winogrand said “everything is photographable” and nobody should argue with him. A lot of photographers get caught up in their “niche” or what ever it is their clients expect from them. That’s fine, but it’s also a very limiting. They think that showing other work with different subject matter will turn off their clients and “followers”. And that’s one of the major problems I have with the photography industry. It wants everyone to fit into a category and play by the rules of that particular category. If you’re a commercial shooter then you can’t shoot editorial. And a photographer that shows in museums/galleries can’t shoot for commercial clients because it will cause the fine art world to lose respect for their fine art work. Bullshit. Shoot whatever the fuck you want and don’t worry about what anyone else thinks. Even if you play by all the rules, you still won’t win everyone over. Not even close. So photograph whatever turns you on and it will eventually attract the right people. Take a look through my website and you’ll see quite a variety of subject matter. Everything from the most famous professional athletes to obscure street scenes without any people at all. How are they all connected? They aren’t. It’s just what I enjoy shooting. Everything on my website is in some way directly connected to my life and lifestyle. What I shoot isn’t for everybody, nor do I want it to be. Either way, I show up 110% on every shoot whether that’s for a client or for images that won’t ever come off my hard drive. I love photography and making images of everything.

For the better part of the last 15 years San Diego has been my home. You would think that at some point surfing would be added to the list of regular activities, but it hasn’t, and probably won’t. In fact, I don’t have much draw to the ocean aside from its obvious beauty and calming effects. As a dedicated backcountry snowboarder though, I have a large appreciation for the sport of surfing and the obvious parallels between the culture and lifestyle of the two sports. So when it comes to photography, it doesn’t matter to me that I don’t surf. There are aspects that draw me to photograph the sport. Like the images you see below. Are these images that my clients want to see or expect from me? No. Do I plan on pursuing assignments in the surf world? Definitely not. But Swami’s is an iconic surf break and I enjoyed making these and think of them as the kind of images I like to see coming from the world of snowboarding. So there has to be a crossover.

Contact me directly to purchase Swami’s surfing prints for your home, office, or commercial space - rob@robhammerphotography.com

Swami's Surfing

Surf Van - Swami's - Encinitas, CA

Swami's - Encinitas, CA

Southern California Street Photography

There’s a long list of things that need improving around here, but organization and editing should be pushed to the top of the list. Although it’s certainly a plus having TOO MUCH imagery in my archives. Creating the images is fun, and sitting at the computer isn’t horrible, although my attention span for it needs help. So what happens is I build these series to the point where editing them down to a usable/publishable body of work is daunting. Overwhelming really. And if there’s one valuable thing I learned from publishing “American Backcourts”, it’s that you should leave the editing to a professional. Collaborating with a professional photo editor is priceless. We’re not talking about someone who edits each file in Photoshop or Lightroom, we’re talking about someone who can unemotionally create a cohesive body of work with your images. They aren’t attached to the work and will give it to you straight. The good ones will anyway. As of right now, I’ve probably got 2-3 more books sitting in my archives. If I was smart, I’d sit down with an editor ASAP to help sort it all out. This street photography series has been going on for about 5 years now. It started in one neighborhood near our old place in San Diego and has expanded all the way up to San Francisco. Sometimes I just walk around my neighborhood with a camera for fun, and then there are the walks during down time on out of town commercial shoots. Regardless of the situation, I get a lot of satisfaction from this style of shooting, and need to stop procrastinating on the archive.

Click HERE to see more of my Street Photography series.

Encinitas

North Park

Marina Del Ray

North Park

North Park

Street Photography - San Diego

San Diego Photography - Cars

Cars are a very obvious thing to photograph. It’s a subject photographers at large have turned their cameras on for as long as cars have been rolling down the street. I have no interest in cars, really. I appreciate them for what they are, but that’s it. I love my truck, only because it allows me to do what I do in a very comfortable way. As far as a vehicle as a status symbol or anything of that matter, I could care less. Still though, over the past X amount of years, cars are something I’ve been inadvertently photographing. And that realization is only somewhat recent. The cars themselves aren’t necessarily the focus though. What’s interesting is their relationship to the surroundings and how they either fit in or stand out. As with all my street photography, there are things like color, line, and texture at play. It’s fun to see cars in “nature” in a place like Southern California because the array of makes/models found here is so vast, as are the environments.

Click HERE to see more of my street photography.

Solana Beach

Del Mar

Del Mar

Carlsbad

Leucadia

Leucadia

Los Feliz

Los Feliz

Carlsbad

Street Photography - Southern California

Street Photography - San Diego

Crazy times we’re living in right now. Shortly after the Coronavirus first hit the news I was in our local Trader Joe’s. What a scene. Majority of the shelves were empty and people were walking around like they just woke up on the moon. It hit me shortly after that American’s in general, but more so those living in places like southern California, are quite privileged. And the notion of not having 1,000 food options at their finger tips is quite mind blowing to them. I’m certainly not downplaying the severity of this pandemic, but the whole scenario in Trader Joe’s was quite sad. And that same thing was happening all over the country. It just seemed like people had no idea what they would do if they couldn’t buy food from a store 8 days a week. I’ve been very fortunate to travel quite a bit. A lot of the destinations have been beautiful and some have been the very definition of 3rd World. Places like India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, South Africa and Haiti where having food everyday is a bonus. They understand it isn’t a reality to have 3 heaping meals on the kitchen table for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. That is, if they have a kitchen table at all. Still though, despite having a high level of desperation amongst those people, they still seems to live with a certain positive and friendliness. Most American’s can’t go ten minutes without their cellphones. I’m guilty of it too, but it’s important in these situations to think out side the box. People here are nervous about the virus for good reason, but it doesn’t help to completely lose all rational thought. There is always another way. And buying out the supermarket of every toilet paper roll is not it. We all need to calm down and adapt to the changes. We’re all in this shitty situation together. What does this have to do with street photography? Nothing really. Except that the streets are what I have to photography right now. Since the quarantine hit, business came to a very abrupt halt. Any shoot that was about to happen, is on hold at best. I refuse to let this whole thing take away photography from me though. The streets aren’t my first choice, nor do they make me money. But they keep me sane and keep me sharp. Just like everything else, you need to practice. I want to practice. Going more than a few days without picking up a camera for me is torture. I turn into a grouchy asshole. So the streets it is. They have always been something I turn to for relaxation. It’s almost meditative being out there with no agenda or expectations. Even if it’s just for an hour or two, it makes me a better person.

Click HERE to see more from this series.

Leucadia

Leucadia

Encinitas

Clairemont

Encinitas

Los Angeles

Solana Beach

Leucadia

Street Photography Southern California

Have been greatly slacking on posts about my commercial stuff, but will get back to that soon. Not sure you can classify the below images as "street photography", but I don't know what else to call them? Either way, this style of shooting is something I have really enjoyed doing in my free time. And think it's very important for a photographer to shoot locally. Most guys put so much emphasis on traveling to exotic places, and that's a lot of fun, but what about your backyard? There is so much character in Southern California that gets overlooked by all the beautiful tourist destinations. Those little pieces are what I enjoy focusing on, and have recently started putting more effort into this project not just in Encinitas (where I live), but in all of "Southern California". It's a unique pocket of the world that is fun to wander around in, and I'm excited to see what this body of images looks like in 10 years. 

To see more of this project click HERE. 

Point Loma

Cardiff by the Sea

Mission Hills

Newport Beach

Newport Beach

Newport Beach

Newport Beach

Newport Beach

Encinitas

Newport Beach

Hollywood

Newport Beach

Newport Beach

Hollywood

Hermosa Beach

Hermosa Beach

Playa Del Ray

San Diego Festival of Books

Just got out of a week in the woods, so I'm a bit late on this post to make it effective at all, but still wanted to talk about it. The San Diego Union Tribune asked me to talk about my barbershop book at the San Diego Festival of Books this past weekend at Liberty Station. Truthfully, until they reached out I didn't even know the festival existed, and wasn't sure what to expect. It turned out great though. All of the panels were in private rooms with about 60 chairs, and every one was sold. I was on the panel with another photographer and the discussion was moderated by a woman from the Tribune. She had some great questions, as did the audience. So all in all it was a fun experience and I hope to do something similar again in the future. 

Click here to check out the book.  

San Diego

I'm of the completely biased opinion that San Diego is the best place to live in America. Not that it's a stretch, but it's still biased. One of the things that comes along with living in such a beautiful place is tons of year round visitors who all seem to make the same pictures. Let's be honest, San Diego is a really easy place to photograph. Go to just about any landscape gallery in the country and you're sure to see a big framed image of Antelope Canyon (AZ), Horseshoe Bend(AZ), and Scripps Pier among many other overly shot landmarks. A long time ago I realized that I have almost no desire to photograph the landmarks. What's the point? They've all been shot a million times over. And I'm certainly not a landscape photographer, so I won't be making any money from the shots. I still think it's important to photograph the place you live though. So over the past couple years, I've slowly developed a body of images made in various parts of San Diego. You're not going to see any images of Scripps Pier or Lajolla Cove in this gallery, but they are still interesting in my opinion. And images that I feel are representative of San Diego. 

PRESS HERE TO SEE THE FULL GALLERY.   

Barbershops of America

Completely forgot to post last week about my gallery show for the Hoops Project in LA during All-Star weekend. Oops. It will be up there at Fathom gallery all month if you still want to check it out.  Also have another show at Culture Brewing in Encinitas for Barbershops of America starting next week.The book won't be ready for about a month, but I'll be showing a bunch of limited edition prints. Come on out to Culture and enjoy a beer. 

Denver Fitness Photographer

DENVER FITNESS PHOTOGRAPHY

STAIR RUNNING-SAN DIEGO CONVENTION CENTER

Stair Running Workout - San Diego

Exercise Photography

Been shooting a lot of multiple exposures lately, and enjoying it a lot. The method of shooting is completely different and creates a whole new batch of challenges. This idea was in my head for a while now. Saturday mornings are usually a great time to hit the stairs at the San Diego Convention Center. There are always a lot of people running, and they all are doing something fairly unique, as you can see.