Kings of California Chess Photos

[Guest post by Tyler Fraser]

It all started in 2003 when I was in San Francisco. I played chess constantly with my friends at home and began to go down to Market St. and Fifth St. to play. At the time I was not very good and would get killed in no time at all. But I started to get better as the years went on.

During this time I was taking lots of photos of the city, bridges and people; in 2008 I thought that I’d like to photograph these "Kings of California" in San Francisco and Santa Monica. So I went down there with my camera and would play a bunch of games, take some pictures and play more games. Normally we’d sit down and play, I’d wait for them to be thinking about their move and start snapping photos. I’d usually have the camera accessible so I could pull it out at the right time and shoot a couple photos. I think this was pretty important. I was down there for hours, playing games; so I was on the level, not just walking through and snapping shots.

Whenever I was playing a game I would ask if I could take their picture. Because I had a relationship with some of the players, they were not too worried about me taking photos. It’s so easy to get people angry by taking their picture, especially while they’re in the middle of chess. Since then the tables have moved from Fifth Street towards Seventh St, which is a more dangerous area. One of the main reasons is because the man that would bring the tables, chairs and chess sets died of cancer. The area became a little more dangerous and the city just pushed the tables further up Market.

Some of the photos are also of Santa Monica Chess Park. The photograph in this post is of the Great Carlini, one of the best players down there. I shot Santa Monica because I was raised in southern California, before moving to San Francisco. This Santa Monica chess scene is A LOT different from San Francisco. It’s an established place, where no smoking or drinking is allowed. It is actually in a really nice part of the beach, right along the pier and on the sand.

I hope you like my work.