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The accidental travel photography of L.A.’s most notable tourist

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Martin Schall isn’t a professional photographer. You probably can’t learn from him how to photograph architecture, or how to take better travel photos, or even how to get published. Yet he does all these things amazingly well. The main thing you can learn from Schall is how to photograph what you love, for nothing but immense personal satisfaction.

Schall is an oil and gas engineer who photographs buildings for fun. He lives near Stuttgart, Germany, but his muse is the modern architecture of Los Angeles, Calif. He has traveled there, almost annually, for more than a decade, and he publishes his photographs online at you-are-here.com—a website he started expressly for this purpose. His portfolio of about 2,000 images is continually growing. The Los Angeles Times called it “the ultimate online collection of photos documenting the city.” Schall just calls it a hobby for which Los Angeles is perfect.

“Today it’s a mix of many objectives,” he says of his photographic visits to L.A. “A lot about ‘collecting’ architects and their buildings; getting streets like Sunset Boulevard covered; seeing the latest buildings. Los Angeles is perfect for photography—great architecture, great light, wide streets. The city is practical for what I do because it’s a modern city and a big city. There’s always something new.”

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