The mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, used her background in medicine to help a photographer who collapsed during a press conference.

While speaking alongside the Los Angeles Police Chief Michael Moore on Thursday, a photographer in attendance apparently suffered a medical episode and collapsed.

Bass reacted quickly, immediately stopping the press conference and leaving her station to administer first aid.

Video footage captured the mayor crouched over the stricken photographer helping with his care until paramedics arrived.

Bass graduated from the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine Physician Assistant Program and in the 1980s worked in an emergency room as a physician’s assistant.

“The very first person to run to his rescue was the mayor,” says KNX News reporter Craig Fiegener, who was standing next to the photographer when he fell.

Feigner adds that the mayor was orchestrating the photographer’s care — despite all of the police officers who were present.

The first thing Bass did was check his breathing and also took his pulse. An ambulance arrived 20 minutes later and took the man to hospital.

The photographer works for KCAL News which provided a positive update about his condition to KTLA.

“Our photographer is home and feeling back to normal. He expects to be back to work next week,” the station said in a statement.

Typically for a politician, not everyone is a fan of Mayor Bass but online commenters put political aspersions aside to applaud her for taking swift, decisive action.

“Good to know the photographer is doing ok, the mayor responded well, and good on her to have those medics qualifications,” writes one person on YouTube.

Bass has just passed one year in office with the Californian city’s homeless crisis topping her priorities. She has spent $76 million on the “Inside Safe” program which aims to permanently house those with no fixed abode.

When I was eleven years old, I did an unforgivable thing: I set my family photos on fire. We were living in Saigon at the time, and as Viet Cong tanks rolled toward the edge of the city, my mother, half-crazed with fear, ordered me to get rid of everything incriminating.

Obediently, I removed pictures from the album pages, diplomas from their glass frames, film reels from metal canisters, letters from desk drawers. I put them all in a pile in the backyard and lit a match. When I was done, the mementos of three generations had turned into ashes.

Only years later in America did I begin to regret the act. A few pictures survived because my older brother, who was a foreign student, had taken them with him. But why didn’t I save the rest, the way I slipped my stamp collection in my backpack hours before we boarded the C-130 cargo plane and headed for Guam? For years I could not look at friends’ family photo albums without feeling remorse.

Then last week I had a dream that was so instructive it left me with a different estimation of that loss. In the dream, I find myself once more in front of my old home in Saigon. I walk through the rusted iron gate to find, to my horror, the place gutted—an empty structure where once there was life and love.

What I failed to retrieve in the dream survives, if only as an exquisite longing.

Immediately, I start to rummage among the pile of broken bricks and fallen plasters, finding, at last, a nightstand that once belonged to my mother. I pull at its drawer and out spill dozens of black-and-white photos. I am ecstatic. The photos are intact.

They are exactly as I remember them. Here’s one of my brother when he was twelve, wearing his martial art uniform and bowing to the camera. Here’s one of my mother as a teenager, posing next to the ruins of Angkor Wat. Here is my father as a young and handsome colonel, smoking a cigar. And me and my sister holding onto our dogs—Medor and Nina—as we wave to the photographer, smiling happily.

Suddenly a little boy appears in the dream. “This is my home,” he yells, “and you’re trespassing.”

“But these are my photos,” I meekly protest.

The boy looks at me with suspicion and shrewdness and changes his tone. “Well,” he says, “how much would you give me for these photos?”

But before I can find the answer, the boy laughs and snatches the photos out of my hand. I try to grab them back of course, but it’s too late.

I woke to find my arm still reaching out over the blanket in a gesture toward the pictures, still trying to retrieve them. Confused and astonished, I stared at my own empty hand for what seemed to be a long, long time. In that salty dawn with the cable cars rumbling up the hills and their bells clanging merrily outside my window, I saw what I hadn’t seen before: that nothing was ever truly lost.

What I failed to retrieve in the dream survives, if only as an exquisite longing. If words and language, as the poet Rilke tells us, can be made into a thing, mute as the statue of an orator, the reverse is true also.

Precious things lost are transmutable. They refuse oblivion. They simply wait to be rendered into testimonies, into stories and songs.

–Andrew Lam

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Ambush in the Leaf, 2007 © Binh Danh, from Binh Danh: The Enigma of Belonging © Radius Books.
Untitled #4, 2009 © Binh Danh, from Binh Danh: The Enigma of Belonging © Radius Books.
Waiting, 2009 © Binh Danh, from Binh Danh: The Enigma of Belonging © Radius Books.
Archival Family Photograph, c. early 1978 © Binh Danh, from Binh Danh: The Enigma of Belonging © Radius Books.
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Archival Family Photograph, c. early 1978 © Binh Danh, from Binh Danh: The Enigma of Belonging © Radius Books.
Archival Family Photograph, c. 1966 © Binh Danh, from Binh Danh: The Enigma of Belonging © Radius Books.
Archival Family Photograph, c. 1981 © Binh Danh, from Binh Danh: The Enigma of Belonging © Radius Books.
Immigration Paperwork, c. 1979 © Binh Danh, from Binh Danh: The Enigma of Belonging © Radius Books.

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From Binh Danh: The Enigma of Belonging. Photography by Binh Danh. Texts by Binh Danh, Boreth Ly, Joshua Chuang, Isabelle Thuy Pelaud, and Andrew Lam. Copyright © 2023. Available from Radius Books.

A common question is what light painting tools I recommend for light painting for night photography. Here’s what I recommend — and why.

I’ll start with the most inexpensive light painting choices and work my way up.

What is light painting?

Light painting is a term that is often used loosely to describe any addition of light to a night photograph. Really, though, light painting is a technique that uses a handheld light source to illuminate a scene during a long exposure. You are quite literally painting light on a subject. Your light source is your brush. Night photographers have used this technique for many decades.

Inexpensive but high quality options for light painting

I also wrote an in-depth article about purchasing light painting tools for cheap. I encourage you to read this and see why I recommend what I do.

For white light only, I would recommend the Wurkkos FC-11 (review here). It holds detail well and has a pleasing warm white light.

What if I want color?

Use some gels from a $5 Roscolux Swatchbook sample booklet. Simply put these in front of your flashlight. Bam. Done.

Another option is the Colorshine light. I have never used this, but hear that it produces good results. Best of all, the light typically sells for under $33. It produces “10 different LED colors with flash and smooth color-change modes” which they describe as “red, green, blue, orange, turquoise, purple, yellow, cyan, violet, and white.”

Read about more inexpensive color options for light painting lights here.

RGB LED Panels for light painting

Another possibility is to use an LED panel instead of a flashlight, simply using it as a handheld light instead of a stationary light (which isn’t really light painting anyway). I use a Lume Cube RGB Panel Pro 2.0, which has a high-quality light and holds detail well. You can read an in-depth review of the Lume Cube RGB Panel here.

This is a high-quality light that you can use for handheld light painting. You may need to wrap black Cinefoil or something similar around it to prevent the panel from shining into the camera lens if you are walking through the scene.

Another possibility is a Luxli light panel. There are some that have accessories that surround the light, similar to what you are doing with Cinefoil, so it prevents you from inadvertently shining the light into the camera lens and causing giant streaks.

High-quality LED RGB flashlights for light painting

Currently, the highest-quality LED flashlight with RGB that I know of is the Ants on a Melon RGB Critter 2.0. It has a high-quality light and holds detail well. You can read an in-depth review of the RGB Critter 2.0 as it pertains specifically to light painting here.

The challenge of the RGB Critter is that the user interface is challenging. It involves either pressing buttons simultaneously or pressing a sequence of buttons to change colors, brightness, and functions. It produces 39 colors, all rich and vibrant. However, you have no control over the saturation. You cannot produce any other colors besides the 39 colors. Still, though, those 39 colors would be more than enough for most people. The challenge here is primarily the confusing user interface. This also includes through the colors to reach another color instead of going straight to it.

The highest quality LED RGB flashlight for light painting

The light that I use, as well as the one all the Nightaxians use, is a ProtoMachines light. It’s meticulously designed for light painting scenes and subjects. The ProtoMachines light offers easily accessible, on-the-fly control over saturation and brightness from 1-100%, a timer, user presets, and more. The form function is perfect.

Before you get too excited, there are two issues.

One is that they are not cheap. Their products range in price from the Radium LED light wand at $249 to the LED8 at $559.

The other is that, as of this writing, they are currently not available.

They are worth every cent, in my opinion. The form factor, quality of light, and ease of use inspire creativity are second to none. They are, in short, the best.

They are so good that I would encourage you to ask to get on the ProtoMachines waiting list so you can be notified when they release new products. Many of us are hoping for this.

Do you have any light painting tools that you would recommend? Please leave them in the comments!

Due to the spontaneity of the shoot, the 28 images have an authentic, off-the-cuff feel to them. Trying to be as “unobtrusive” as possible, Angela lent into the natural light of the hall, which she says helped to “set the tone”: the beige colours and low light from the blind-covered windows create a muted palette that contrasts with the palpable warmth of the people and relationships on show. “I focussed on the participants, with the simple hall backdrop highlighting their interactions and the essence of the game.” Players are shown chatting away, sat at a long table waiting for the game to start; a digital number randomiser glows red, its operator sat proudly behind; and an array of chocolates and homeware are all labelled, ready to be snapped up.

A particular image that stands out to Angela is one of her nan and two friends taking a break, making a cup of tea and grabbing a few biscuits. Framed by the hatch that opens into the kitchen, the image has a satisfying composition, each figure at a different stage of the tea-making process. Depicting what Angela describes as a “very simple, yet very British moment”, the image fittingly won an award in British Journal of Photography’s Portrait of Britain 2022 and was displayed across the UK on screens and billboards, a fact that made Angela’s nan “very proud”.

The series gained new relevance in 2020, when the Covid lockdowns put an end to such gatherings. “This halt was especially poignant, considering the effort community members, like Janet and her late husband Karl who passed away during the pandemic, put into these games,” Angela says. “It wasn’t solely about bingo, it symbolised community building and provided a haven of joy in a town with limited recreational activities.” Through the series, Angela wants people to recognise how important such gatherings are, especially for elderly individuals who often rely on such events to keep loneliness at bay. Now, the photographer is preparing for Church Bingo to be displayed at a public exhibition in Heywood’s first outdoor gallery. In the wake of Covid, she hopes such exposure will push people to again start organising local recreational events, bringing communities together once more.