I Wanna Live

I wanna live a life way beyond myself.

• Way Beyond Myself (song)
• The Only Thing (song)
• I don’t want my life… (tumblr)

Gym Stardom

An un-average day in the life.

I’ve never been to Gym Stars before, so it was a blast to finally get out there.  It gave me a chance to hang out with some great people, hone in on my untapped gymnastics-pro potential, and… take some neat pictures.  =)

Carey taking some photos of the action.

Foampit dwelling mammals.

The cool kid 80′s crew.

I had a fun time with Ashel getting some sweet pictures.  I love going for different pictures and getting something new.  Success.

Action shot!

There you have it.  It was a fun time.  I managed to get some rug burns, scrapes, and bruises.  (camera to shin doesn’t feel good) But of course I’d do it again.  ;)

Cheers,

~ Jon

Water splash self portraits

Sometimes in life, you just gotta do some crazy.

Once in a while I get these urges to go on crazy photographic adventures. I have these ideas to try new things. I try to come up with things I’ve never before seen done. I don’t really know what my specific “creative process” is–it seems to change from time to time.  Sometimes ideas just pop into my head at a faster rate than other times.  Sometimes I follow through with these ideas, sometimes I don’t.

Here’s an idea that I followed through.

I’ve been slightly fascinated with high speed water photography.  Using strobes/flashes can really freeze the action of water to create a cool effect.  I did a little project a while back dropping coins [or a candle (pictured)] into a jar of water and then fired strobes to freeze the water splashing.  I thought this was kinda cool, but in my opinion it needs a bit more to be really cool.

Six months later, I resume the splash photography with people splashing photography.  I can think of a ton of ways I could improve this, but I consider it fairly cool.  :)

Step 1: Get a pitcher of water.
Step 2: Dump on self.
Step 3: Repeat steps 1 and 2.
Step 4: Find assistant to dump water on you.
Step 5: Repeat.

The rest in pictures.  A little side note: have you noticed that it’s really hard to show rain in pictures?  Even if it’s raining pretty hard, it generally doesn’t show up very well.  One way to get around this is to add rain in photoshop.  Another way is to add more water!  :)

Trying things out.

Then, I threw the water above me...

My dad, doing good things.

My dad was helpful through it all.  What a supportive guy!  He was willing to go along with my questionable ideas, no questions asked.  Well, maybe a few questions.  He was actually maybe a little too eager to help out…

~ Jon

Why do I do? (spring sing)

Why do I do what I do (spring sing)?

Stuff happens. ;)

Why not to do spring sing:

• I’ve never danced before (errr, choreography–haven’t done that either).
• I don’t like stage stuff, unless I have something important or inspired to say.
• It is opposite my personality to do it.
• I lose man points (even if my brother is the only one to say anything).
• I’ve never worn makeup before, wish I could have kept it that way (related to last point).
• Spring sing eats your life (time, classes, study time, etc.).

Why do spring sing?

• Life experience(s).

And you see which one won.  It’s for the craziness, the experience, because I’ve never done it, because it’s opposite my personality, because it’s different.  Goodnight.

~ Jon

Self portraits, yay or nay?

I’ve always had a little bit of reservation and discomfort about self-portraits. It’s probably something I have to put aside in the name of photography, but it’s just something that I’m never 100% comfortable about. It’s kinda like my fear of “street photography” aka taking people’s pictures without their consent. I feel completely comfortable doing it in a sly manner, but it’s hard for me to just straight up take pictures of people close up.

Another thing that makes me a little nervous is setting up lights and everything in public for a photo shoot. This is something I know I just have to get over, and it won’t really stop me, but it still makes me nervous.

A few influences that have encouraged me to just be a fool in the name of photography (per se), and just forget all this emotional nonesense are the very popular photographers Aaron Nace (some pics), who started off mainly doing self portraits before landing some jobs, and Dustin Diaz, who took a picture a day for a year (aka 365 project), with a good portion of those pictures being self-portraits.

I don’t really have a problem with self portraits, I’ll never have a majority of my pictures be self portraits, and I don’t plan on removing self portraits from my photo arsenal, it will always be somewhere in between.  Exactly where, I don’t know, but I don’t plan on caring about it very much.  I do, however, hope to give up on over analyzing everything and just going to work.  ;-)

Just me being a weirdo. No big. (click for large / uncropped)

~ Jon