Antique Shop & Diner Photo Shoot with Rachel Johns

Earlier this month, I did a little antique shop and diner photo shoot with my friend, Rachel Johns! I hadn’t seen her in over two years, so it was great to hang out and take photos again! She’s also a photographer and a certified personal trainer, so hit her up! This was my first portrait shoot back in California, and I was a little rusty with posing, but Rachel’s a pro and never needs much direction.

We decided to meet up at King Richard’s Antique Center in Whittier at 10am on a Saturday. It’s a massive space with multiple levels, and they’ve decorated little areas to make their own rooms, kind of like Ikea. It was nice because we could get a lot of different aesthetics and props without driving to different locations.

First, we walked around to get a sense of the place, then we went back to the parking lot to figure out outfits. We started with this section that totally looked like a record store, then just moved around. We went back and forth to the parking lot where Rachel would change clothes after shooting in a couple of spots. The hardest part of shooting at King Richard’s was that there weren’t many windows for natural light. Most of my photos looked like the photo on the left, so I had a lot of editing to do in Lightroom and Photoshop.

Rachel has shot there before and said that the store often gets new inventory and updates the layout. We shot in early February 2022, so I bet things have changed since then and you’d probably get completely different photos from me! King Richard’s is pretty active on their Instagram account and almost encourages people to come in and shoot. If you do go, have your model bring several different outfits and styles.

There weren’t too many actual customers in the store at 10am, but it was definitely starting to get more crowded by the time we left around 11:30am. The parking lot is small, so I would recommend coming early if you want to shoot.

Our second location was Frisco’s Carhop & Drive Thru, about 5 miles down the main road. It’s not exactly a diner, but they sell diner food but the waitresses wear rollerskates. We ordered milkshakes and fries, and then took a few photos. The food was good, not anything too special, but a fun option if you’re in Whittier.

It was a little busy since it was prime lunch hour, so the cute pink booths shaped like convertibles were all unfortunately taken, but we still got some good shots!