John Loomis Photography

Give ‘Em a Hand

August 27th, 2010

College Football week at the JLP blog concludes with this portfolio also found in the Aug. 23 edition of ESPN the Magazine. I was already feeling pretty happy to have spent some time with Mark Ingram for the issue when I got a call from photo editor Darrick Harris and DoP Catriona Ni Aolain about taking a trip down to Texas. The idea was to get as many players, mascots, cheerleaders, alumni, staff and fans as possible (school is still out of session at this point) at 5 major Texas college football programs, all of whom have famous hand signs, and try to pull out as much energy as humanly possible in creating a Handy Guide to Texas college football. Through these signs we’d try to showcase the passion and rivalries of yet another state that really, really loves their college football. No kidding I was on board and even turned down a job in Costa Rica to make it work.

What followed was an epic week and road trip nearly around the entire state of Texas, from Austin to Houston out to Lubbock back to Fort Worth and finally next door in Dallas. At each school we shot for hours and hours in the brutal sun getting both environmental and white seamless set-ups, every thing lit. Mad props to my buddy Brian, a native Texan, who worked his ass off to help me make it all happen. Thanks also to our 2nd assistants along the way and of course the staffs, players, and fans of University of Texas at Austin, University of Houston, Texas Tech University, Texas Christian University, and Southern Methodist University. Everyone was truly awesome to work with and it turned out to be a pretty special job for me.

Beyond the initial concept my editors wanted me to shoot off the cuff somewhat with punchy, quirky ideas sort of in the same style as the Penn State mascot feature that had been so successful. In that case though I had 2 days+ with the same guy to keep trying more and more ridiculous stuff. On the TX shoot we had about 45 mins with players to cover a whole lot more ground (literally the entire stadium complexes were given full access to each day) and up to about 25 people to wrangle (and light). Other than the hand sign for each school I didn’t really have any location scouting, know exactly how many players or cheerleaders would show for us, or generally what would happen, so it was back to square one each day and that actually helped us keep pushing.

When I finished the Ingram package the files were delivered on deadline for the issue… well we were now a couple of weeks beyond that (the issue had grown substantially and ad pages were way up). So I ended up having to shoot and edit in the same day, often while traveling to the next city, getting to the random hotel late into the night, exhausted, and in search of whatever might be open food wise. After our first shoot ESPN could tell me what was working and what wasn’t for them, and we could make small adjustments. Turns out that they loved everything and didn’t have any adjustments, but it was a good way to handle an ongoing project that would have to go directly to print as it was being shot (therefore no way to reshoot anything). The bright side of working like this is that by the time I flew back to NYC 8 days later my job was done.

I came back from Texas with a farmer’s tan, a full belly from too much barbeque (by order of ESPN’s Director of Photography) and Shiner, and with a smile on my face. This one was hard but ultimately it was just really fun. It had this feeling to it that there was absolutely no way this package would come together unless I screamed and shouted and asked players to do a bunch of dumb stuff and made them crack up. And I did and they did and it was really fun. Some other parting thoughts: I really hate artificial turf fields (they get SO friggin hot that its horrible), the best BBQ we had was in Lubbock (but the pecan pie at Goode Company BBQ in Houston was absolutely KILLER – the ‘que was pretty bad), Dallas/Ft Worth has a surprisingly solid sushi scene?, the Rothko Chapel is definitely worth a visit in Houston (as is the Center for Photography right next door), flying into Lubbock made me feel like I was living in a SW version of a Rabbit Run novel, the Modern Art museum in Ft. Worth is beautiful, it’s very easy to murder a mascot athlete when shooting in the Texas sun (be careful Hook’em!), Texas Tech’s Masked Rider is super great (she was in the hospital the day before but got out and showed up to our shoot because she was psyched to be a part of it), her horse does not much like me though, it is nearly impossible to find 2nd assistants or white background papers in Lubbock (we used 2 king bedsheets, 2 packs of paper clamps, and a roll of gaffers tape), and I do love college football!

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Hey Ladies

August 24th, 2010

Catching up on a bunch of stuff that slipped through the cracks on its way to getting published in the last few months there are several shoots that involve the fairer sex, which for whatever reason I have rarely been assigned to photograph. I’m certainly no “beauty” shooter but it’s always been a bit confusing how each of us get pegged for this or that along the way. Back in the day I shot a fair bit of stuff for Essence and eventually someone asked me if I was in fact black… “oh I just assumed because your portfolio has black people in it.” Uh, er, um… OK.

I’m just bringing this up as a head scratcher… these recent bits aren’t supposed to set the record straight – if anything the main thread that connects these assignments is how JLP rolls when its not backing up a grip truck. First up is a recent feature for GMC on mother of two Maria Holloway who had the good fortune to be given a car by Ellen Degeneres on her eponymous show. Awesome tidbit about Ellen and how she rolls, not only does she give you a car but she also pays 100% of all of the related taxes, etc. So it’s actually a free car (not 1/2 of a car once taxes on gifts get added). First time shooting for GMC and it was pretty fun and different.

I was asked by Harvard to shoot its alumni Sara Horowitz, director of the Freelancers Union in Brooklyn. Sara would like you all to know that she absolutely hates being asked to smile, but we still got a few out of her on the sly even if the Union’s very cool offices and nearby attractions took off some of the pressure.

Shooting on boats isn’t all that hard, especially if you have spent a lot of time on boats yourself (don’t lock your knees, folks)… but lighting multiple subjects (big flashes, not speedlights) on a boat in the middle of Miami’s Biscayne Bay can be tricky. Luckily Tim and Dianne Thorne, the founders of Veterans Retreat (which gives inspirational and education experiences to American veterans of our modern wars), are very cool and easy to work with. This was shot for Southern Living magazine but never ran I don’t think.

Picture editor Jane Clark working at Smart Money sent me out to shoot part of a story on nepotism and its many challenges/horrors. Luckily I shot the success side, as mother and daughter money managers Candace and Amelia Weir, respectively, work together at Paradigm Capital Management quite well. When asked about how they make it work their immediate joint answer was “brutal honesty.” Candace and Amelia were a lot of fun even if midtown skyscrapers aren’t.

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Tough To Bring Down

August 23rd, 2010

It’s college football preview week on the JLP blog featuring 2 stories in the new issue of ESPN the Magazine… what can I say, they rawk and I loves me some college football so here we go.

First up is a profile of returning Alabama running back, National Champ and Heisman winner Mark Ingram. Mark is rock fucking solid, truly a powerhouse who seems to be instinctually competitive in absolutely any sport, whether he’s ever played it before or not. My buddy, ESPN rockstar writer Alyssa Roenigk saw this in person as Ingram, wearing flip flops and using borrowed clubs, innocently rocketed 300+ yard drives while giving an interview (he was a high school phenom in golf as well). Mark also struck me as a nice, outgoing and thoughtful guy who happens to be right in the middle of one of the greatest moments in his life as The Biggest Thing in a state that cares an awful lot about its football.

Not uncommon for a ESPN shoot there was going to be a video crew there for the network, which though its usually not ideal it’s also not a big deal to me (if I’m doing my job right it doesn’t matter what else is happening). What my editor didn’t mention was that the video crew wasn’t just shooting along side of us doing their own piece on Mark… they were actually doing a behind the scenes on our shoot itself and I would be miced up and talking about my plan for the shoot, etc.. And that’s all good, but give me a head’s up!! As it is I’m totally unshaved, sweating my balls off in 100+ degree Tuscaloosa summer heat (plus insane humidity and a massive thunderstorm threatening of course) and carrying around a 30 lb. backpack (filled with one of my Hensel packs) that made me look like a Ghostbuster. But that’s life and here’s the BTS video featuring me and my assistant Brian:

Because Mark is truly the big man on campus at Alabama our plan for the shoot was to simply follow him around and let his celebrity draw a crowd of fans (hence my mobile Ghostbusters set-up, and Brian manning the mini-boom with a Softlighter II). The only small problem is of course we shot this in June, when Tuscaloosa is basically empty (it was actually finals week of summer session) so there were absolutely zero people on campus (plus its super gross weather). My idea, which was turned down flat by the university, was to send a tweet an hour before our shoot announcing that Mark would be around. We told Mark that idea and he got big eyes saying that would have been a total riot… so maybe it’s better that we didn’t.

Instead we had Mark all alone at iconic Denny Chimes, all the while searching the horizon for any people who might wander past (eventually one family did and we quickly recruited them just as our time was ending and the thunder began). As you can hear in the video I pushed a little on the Heisman thing (that’s my job) and got at least a dozen out of Mark (though I think the magazine wisely didn’t use them). We also talked about lone fumble during last season (vs. Tennessee) and it was pretty cool to see him totally switch gears and talk so earnestly about that mistake and sense his commitment to himself and his team it wouldn’t happen again. All in all it was a fun, sweaty shoot that didn’t at all go how it was planned, which is basically the name of the game in editorial photography.

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Pioneers II

August 18th, 2010

A dispatch from the road… I’m somewhere in the middle of Nebraska working on my “Pioneers” project; loosely following the immigrant trails and therefore the Platte River as it ribbons it’s shallow way ever up through increasingly rougher western terrain. It’s not yet lunch time but because I’ve been waking up long before the sun (we are all slaves to the light) I’m leaning heavily on my fist, one eye shut, sucking down diner coffee and gathering my thoughts before continuing on.

Mostly I’m acting on instinct because it’s the only thing I’m prepared to do since my project is still in rough outline. Occasionally I see something interesting and after passing it in my rental car I U-turn back and decide if it is the right kind of interesting. I chose to follow a section of the Oregon Trail to sort of focus my path and give the trip some structure but the once well trod (estimates of up to 500,000 immigrants before the railroad was connected in 1862) trail is now nearly empty. At the Chimney Rock visitors center this morning I was out numbered by employees 2:1. Chimney Rock is interesting but the light was crap and you can’t get close enough and even if you trespassed the field is filled with rattlesnakes and really pissed off grasshoppers.

The weather is beautiful, actually perfect road trip skies and crispness. The A/C hasn’t been on once since leaving Denver airport. I’m most likely going to burn the crap out of my skull yet again (my recent Texas trip has only recently stopped peeling away).

Thankfully the RZ is beginning to feel less awkward in my hands and loading film into backs again is sort of great. I’m only using 2 films and have been shooting at a respectable clip thus far. Working alongside one of the largest train yards in the country before sunrise this morning I reveled in the slow exposures and minute adjustments to the tripod head. Simple, unrestrained photography.

Aesthetically the project is still wide open – insert either fishing or hunting metaphor. I want to feel the vastness of the west in the pictures, the bleached details and 40-mile visibility. I don’t want the images to be snarky in their promised un-sentimentality, but I have also been sort of cropping out signs of modernity when possible (there will still be plenty hundreds of power lines stretching into infinity) which might be a mistake. This is supposed to be a modern document but the pull to see the west through antique eyes is very strong.

I’m hoping to wake up again far before the sun at higher elevation tomorrow morning and then tack back southwest into Salt Lake City. The only rule is to shoot most of my film and find a way back to board my flight home to NYC on Saturday.

Posted in Creativity, Freelancing, Projects, Travel | 1 Comment

Pioneers

August 5th, 2010

The personal photography project is one of the most fragile pieces of the new freelance landscape. A project must be allowed to breathe and evolve, but many photographers allow only a select few into the developing stages. We are not only protecting our egos (and reputations if the work isn’t any good) but also potentially the project itself as today, just like back in college, there is a small risk that a good idea might be poached by another photographer long on motivation but short on imagination.

I’ve spent most of the last 2 weeks drawing up plans and seeking divine inspiration for a new project that I’m working on. During that time and for the last few months I’ve written this blog post at least a dozen times but I’ve deleted each because it didn’t feel right. But now that a trip is eminent and supplies have been shipped maybe it’s time to talk about the idea (which is at best a rough sketch) and the process itself. Also the fear of purloined genius doesn’t really factor in when the subject of my project is no less than the American west, one of the most well trod themes of 20th century photography.

These pictures here are not the project… they are basically the seeds of the genesis of the project. I really don’t know exactly if the project will look like these or even feel like these, but possible and probably neither.

Pioneers, as I’ve taken to calling my new project, began on JLP’s last trip out west camping our way around the Grand Circle when I got an itch in the back of my brain about the modern west and it’s strange, untamed, emptyness. As an east coast kid we learn in school that the west was won, developed, and parceled out during the gold rushes and manifest destiny of the early to mid-19th century, in the hey day of the migrant trails, most famously the Oregon Trail, known to my generation vividly because of the video game of the same name that made computer lab in kindergarten pretty awesome (maybe my next project will be on Carmen Sandiego?!) But the experience of traveling through the west today is exhiliratingly different than that simplified textbook chapter heading.

The west is essentially a well-fenced desert playground inhabited by the same personalities as those who struck out on a 6 month wagon trip from Independence, Missouri to the green valleys of the Pacific ocean. The landscapes is so vast that giant cities like L.A. and Vegas and Salt Lake feel like tiny dots… and if you drive even a half hour outside of the suburban limits of some of these cities, especially Vegas or Phoenix, you find yourself in another century with little to bring you back except long distance power and phone lines and the promise of a McDonald’s 68 miles down the road.

Essentially my project plan is to travel around the west and trace the historic sites and emigration routes of my American ancestors (metaphorically since my true relatives have staid put on the east coast since 1638, thank you very much) to discover, without sentimentalism, what the modern west looks like and maybe answer the question of whether the west was or ever could be won. Additionally I want to explore visually the way in which the west is sold back to itself to tourists every summer from the comfort of their RVs, reinventing the “pioneer” life along the way.

These images were obviously (to me) shot digitally and that is one of the reasons why they won’t be a part of the project if it’s ever finished. They are pictures of a dozen miles or more and through the digital sensor they feel compressed somehow. Film just has a scope and contrast in the subtle gradients that my digital camera (or personal skills?) just can’t touch. So I recently bought myself a used Mamiya, the 4th of my career, to try to capture that richness and also to change my shooting habits since this project is obviously a little different than what I typically shoot on assignment and I could use the slowing down.

Thus far the RZ feels completely awkward in my hands as I lug it around my new neighborhood working on a different project that will probably not be blog fodder anytime soon. As example yesterday I was shooting near Columbus Circle when Letterman regular and Hello Deli owner Rupert Jee walked into my frame. Not that he would have made it a good picture, he definitely would not have, but I struggled to quickly make a frame but forgot to pull my dark slide. When changing lenses I also dropped a lens cap on the street and it rolled under a large truck so that wasn’t graceful either.

I’m leaving for Colorado next week, first to visit with my awesome friends Jen & Eric, and then to hit the road through Nebraska, Wyoming, and Utah and discover what the new project is all about.

Posted in Creativity, Freelancing, New Work, Projects, Travel | 1 Comment

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