What a small little man you are

Don't waste your time and energy worrying about what others are doing. Especially if that someone is a douche bag.
Do the best that you can possibly do.
There is no better way to say FU to those people than by doing well.
So, do well.


TV On The Radio - Dancing Choose

he's a WHAT? he's a WHAT?
he's a newspaper man
and he gets his best ideas
from a newspaper stand;
from his boots to his pants
to his comments and his rants
he knows that any little article will do!

Ideas, ideas, ideas!!!

I haz them.

I had my last panel review ever on Tuesday. It went well. Very well. I left there with a feeling of finally heading strong in the right direction. Next quarter is going to be a really long road, and a short time to get there (we're gonna do what they say can't be done yeah yeah smokey and the bandit). The feedback given to my work was really insightful and helpful. Sure, there are always technical things that I could be better at ... I know this, the people on panel know this. They talked a little bit about the technical things, but mostly about making a better photo ... in the sense of a more meaningful photo.

I'm encouraged. I'm motivated. I'm ready to produce the best work that I possibly can. I had so many random ideas for photo shoots just floating around in my head, it was hard to make sense of them ... so I wrote them all down. Wrote down the concept, possible models, production needs, locations, everything that I could think of associated with the shoot. I now have a list of about 12 shoots that I want to do next quarter. That will equate to about one shoot per week. If I can pull everything off, and to the level that I'm hoping to achieve, my portfolio will completely transform next quarter.

A little late

This is the summer video ... I'm just now getting around to posting it here.


Summer '08 from Jimmy johnston on Vimeo.

The land that time forgot INDEED!!!

So I haven't been on here in a minute. I was actually reading on some other blogs, and then remembered that I had one of my own.

7th quarter now, three weeks left of that ... then I'm on my own.

I've got a few things lined up that I'm excited about. A shoot tomorrow that should be interesting.
A graffiti artist named Lerch. We're gonna have some fun mixing strobe, tungsten, and dusk light with a long exposure.
Then I have some products to shoot .. yay products.

I have some wicked ideas for some shoots ... I just need to get all my thoughts organized and figure out which ones I can actually do.

OH, and I love the darkroom.

the beginning of the end

Actually, it's almost the middle of the end ... but that's not as catchy of a title.
Almost finished with week 9! Wow, where has the quarter gone? Next week is it ... game over. So needless to say the battle for gear and studio space is on!!! I like to think that I won a small battle today. I got the beauty dish. My new favorite light modifier.
But all this fighting over gear stuff is getting old. It's a privilege to be able to check out gear. One that I take pretty seriously. I try to be as considerate as possible when I check out gear ... I think minimal. What's the least amount of gear that I can get away with? I want other people to have gear, because I know what it's like to be left out when it comes to gear. I would hope that other have the same consideration when they check out gear ... unfortunately, this is a one way street that I travel.

Other than that ... lots of shooting this weekend ... hopefully. Assuming all goes as planned, I should be good for next week. But we'll see.

Almost there

It's my pleasure to present to you, bottle+rocket.
The website is about 70% complete, but we're still announcing it to everyone.
What was that, "we"? Yes, we. Noah Culver and I are doing this venture together. It's kinda like tag team photoshooting.
Go check it out. Hire us. Be happy.

to the victor go the spoils

Well I did it ... I managed to pull off what I thought was an impossible shoot.
And it turned out really nice!
I'm still playing around with some different post processing options ... right now I'm kinda leaning towards a Dave Hill kind of post. It makes it look a little grittier. I'm just glad I was able to pull it off. Huge thanks to Denver for doing the hair, and huge thanks to Larissa for being my model for the shoot!

i'm a producer

Being a photographer is essentially being a producer. You have to produce. Find models, get equipment, props, locations, assistants, and all sorts of other things. It can be pretty intense. So far, I've had it pretty easy as far as production goes ... no elaborate sets, no models (that weren't my friends), never really had a need for an assistant, and never had a Harley Davidson as a prop ... a prop that must somehow make it to my location when the owner of it will be out of town, a location that I am yet to find, for the model that I have to yet to find to interact with said prop, all while using the equipment that I have yet to procure. And I have to do it all by Sunday. Wow. It's only week four, but I'm totally feeling some week ten pressure on this shoot!

But oh man, just wait until I finish my super secret summer project ... It's going to be amazing.

it's not me ...

So all I have to ask is this: who's awesome?

You would think that I answer I was going for is "Jimmy is awesome". But it's not.

Jessica is awesome! We did this shoot today ... partly for fun, partly to get an idea for something I want to shoot for school. Either way, it turned out really nice ... even though the particular Hasselblad I was using today was nearly impossible to focus. Get is sharp in the viewfinder, the image is soft. So we had to guess how far away she was, se the focus that way, then tweak it to find the actual focus point. Talk about a pain, so the majority of the images went from out of focus, to close to in focus, to a little closer, a little farther, then dead on sharp. But we did end up with a few good ones. scratch that ... a few great ones!

But I still can't get over these Phase One digital backs, every single time I see an image from that camera and digital back, I actually say "wow" ... out loud ... even when I'm alone. The quality of the images that these cameras produce is unreal. Can you say Christmas?

It's official ...

I hate my Canon 5D.

Well, not hate. But I guess it's relative. I've been using Hasselblads with Phase One digital backs ... they are amazing. It's a 6 megapixel back, and it blows my 12.8 megapixel 5D completely away. No competition at all.
I look forward to shooting with it A LOT.

Oh summer, '08

Did you catch that pun? I'm clever like that.

So this summer is shaping up to be kind of awesome.
School: I have some really cool classes this quarter. The one I'm most excited about is fashion and beauty photography. Our teacher, Greg DuPree, is kind of a great photographer ... not to mention that this is the kind of shooting that I want to be doing after school. He's also requiring us to use Hasselblads with digital backs! Can you say "effing awesome"?
Second most awesome class is Individual Projects, which is exactly how it sounds ... you get to shoot whatever you want. So I have to figure out what I want to shoot there.
Runners up in classes are a Weddings class, basically a lot of business talk bout how to make money and not get screwed. Last, and certainly least ... product illustration. I'm a people shooter. Products are fir someone else, but oh well, I'll learn it.

Oh yeah! I also have to have a hair stylist and makeup artist for my shoots in the fashion class, so I'll be teaming up with good ol' Sommerville for that. Good times.

I'm working on a special summer long project ... look for it at towards the end of summer, I'll keep you posted it's progress.
Here's a sneak ...

"intern"

I like how assholes think they can tack the word "intern" at the end of a job title and offer it for no pay.

Seriously. A person is going to spend their time and use their equipment to take photos for you. You need to pay them. You're admitting that you don't have the skills yourself by asking for someone else to do it. So please, respect these people and pay them.

Nice Glass

So a while ago, I bought my Canon 5D ... a very nice upgrade from my little Nikon D50. I love it, it's most beautiful thing ever ... maybe not ever, but you get the point. The images it produces with it's 12.8 megapixel full frame sensor are truly amazing. Small problem ... with a sensor of that quality, it captures more detail than smaller cameras, and it's quite unforgiving in that aspect. So to counter this you need higher quality lenses.

Unfortunately I spent so much on the camera body that I couldn't afford a nice lens. Right now I have a used (good story) Canon EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 zoom lens. What does all of that mean? EF: just a standard Canon lens. Of course, you know what the zoom means. f/3.5-5.6: that's a shifting aperture. That's part of the problem. When at a wide angle, your maximum aperture value is f/3.5, but when you zoom in the maximum aperture is f/5.6. Without getting too technical, just know that it's not good. In addition to that, the quality of optics aren't as good as the L-series ... the premium Canon Lenses.

Well, L-series glass starts around $1000. I'm sure it goes without saying that I can't exactly afford that on my students budget. So, here it is ...

I'm accepting donations for some nice L-series glass. Seriously. I'll even make it worth your while ... you make a donation, I'll pay you back with photography. Maybe a nice portrait of yourself or family, or maybe a nice 11x14 print of one of my photos, something. Anything to say thanks. I'm serious.

Help a poor kid out!

The Land That Time Forgot

I think I know what the problem is ... I could never find a blogger template that I really liked. They would always have some layout features that I liked but were always lacking somewhere else. Enter the power of Google. Searching around today I found this sick template. I may go in later and change up the graphics and colors to matching my photography branding (assuming I ever get that done). But for now, I think it looks pretty awesome and the layout is perfect.

Speaking of pretty awesome, I found this thing called Pictobrowser. It pulls photos from your Flickr page and puts them in a really nice slide show.



Nice huh?

Time goes by

Wow, so it's been almost two months since I've posted anything. A few reasons ...
Time. I ran out of it.
Money. Same thing. I had this hosted on my website, which I had to stop paying for due to other bills need my money.
But I have since switched it over to host on blogspot, and now I'm back.

What's been going on ... A LOT!!!
I finished the quarter, which was busy, and have some pretty good work to show for it. I'm no longer neglecting my friends because I actually have time (for now) to spend with them! I bought a new camera, Canon 5D, the most beautiful thing I've held in my hands. It truly is amazing.

So want to see some stuff from last quarter? Of course you do. Chances are, I've already showed it to you, but who cares ... here it is anyways.

From a book I made with designer Jeff


Goofing off after the zombie shoot


Conceptual still life








Then I did some other stuff that didn't make it to Flickr, but it was still pretty good ... I think.

Directions

Photo/designer teams class .... we got new designers this week. I consider myself lucky to be paired up with Jeff (krichmar.com) ... he's pretty much an amazing designer. And of course, new designer means a new assignment. Directions. Whatever we want that to mean ... I guess we kinda wanted to say "eff directions", or at least that's how we decided to interpret the assignment.
So, without further ado ... I give you, directions.

Pink is the new bad ass

Today has been one the longest days I've had in a while. I got to The Circus at 9 am ... didn't leave until 10:45 pm! I had one class and then stuck around and did two photoshoots. I shot a giant sandwich (I swear it weighed three pounds) for a movie poster. Then I notice that Noah looked like one of the guys from The Boondock Saints, so I decided that it would be a fun juxtaposition to shoot him on a pink seamless background. Turned out pretty amazing ... in my opinion.
And one my designer finishes all of the copy and type treatment for the Delicatessen poster, I'll have that up here as well.

And tomorrow should be fun, I'm going with Nicole to get her tattoo finished ... trust me, there will be pictures once it all heals up.

Off to bed ... way too tired.

That was quick ...

Ok, so the whole bio thing didn't take as long as I was expecting ... which is good.

The Circus os going to be CRAZY this quarter .. sooo much to do. I'll be posting most of it on here. I should have my poster for Delicatessen shot by Thursday, that's going to be a fun one. And then all my still life and ads for the Zircon i700 Stud Finder!

But for now, Enjoy yourself some Lying Squash ...