Archive for the ‘Promotion’ Category

Speedy

Sunday, January 24th, 2010

And because it’s Sunday and I’m doing a bit of tidying up around the JLP office, I thought I’d make virtual note of a couple of changes to the website, most important the launch of a new version of the JohnLoomis.com website: the SPEEDY version!

Made using the very cool Indexhibit, the SPEEDY version was created specifically for our low-bandwidth visitors and is built on a HTML/iPhone-friendly template, but of course features the same photography and information as the (newly coined) DELUXE/Flash version. We hope that the new version is helpful to those of you who reach us on a slow connection or who just like zipping through my work as fast as humanly possible – thanks Mom.

Also newish on both versions of JL.com (that you might have missed) is a gallery of my personal work from the Galapagos Islands, including this image of a diving sea turtle that I swam with for about 20 minutes.

And lastly the first JLP newsletter of 2010 went out this week to clients and fans. There will actually be a lot fewer e-mail promotions this year as attitudes towards newsletters and e-mail promotions in general have certainly cooled. It’s all good and understandable, even more so because I’m a lot more interested in a more personal approach these days. So look out for quarterly newsletters this year, and of course if you want to make sure you receive yours you can always sign up here.

2009, Best of

Tuesday, December 29th, 2009

The year that was… looking back it’s a blur. There were lots of portraits I’m pretty sure, a bit of travel, some strange little bits I shot for myself, several compelling stories and failed experiments, some work on personal projects, and yeah a bunch of portraits, of athletes and authors, executives and educators, scientists and seniors, divas and the indebted.

Last year I spent a lot of time thinking and looking at scale and felt very strongly that I wanted to incorporate a more removed, grander, almost reverant/classical perspective to serve as a counter point to my portraiture. This year my portfolio has several pieces that definitely are moving in that direction, either in landscape or numbers, and it’s been a really nice challenge and motivation.

In portraiture this year I think that I found a rhythm and method to my lighting style, though that was completely left behind or stripped back when it didn’t fit a particular subject. In some ways I was going at two opposite directions, using a more direct approach with a lot less that had “fingerprints” all over it, and then also building up a whole lot more to create some sort of unmasked ideal. God love my subjects this year who all endured 30-50% more set-ups than I might have insisted upon in years past… I definitely threw more spaghetti/ideas at the wall, which will continue and expand in 2010.

Here then are my (released) favorites, several of which you may have seen:

johnson1

ares12

mascot10

fiolek11

norman6

brown2

jordan1

galapagos4

Curtain call

Wednesday, December 9th, 2009

bwsb1

Well if there wasn’t for bad luck we wouldn’t have any luck at all… or something like that. I was pretty busy in November for Business Week’s SmallBiz magazine shooting for freelance photo editor Jane Clark (rumor has it she has now moved on to Smart Money). Just a week after I rushed in my final files for the new Dec/Jan issue seen above and below new owners Bloomberg shut the door on SmallBiz; thankfully no staff was fired.

cerbone2

cerbone3

platinum1

First up I shot a package on corporate diversity in the NYC area, visiting the fine folks at Neil Cerbone Associates and Double Platinum ad agency, both gay-owned businesses certified by the National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce. Despite taking place in boring offices we managed to find some fun and weird elements to incorporate into each shoot and the subjects were a great pleasure to work with. And fair warning out there: if I find a giant roll of packing bubbles I’m going to use it!

bwsb4

After the success of the first two shoots I was called back to shoot the cover for the issue down in FL on a story about business financing during the credit crunch caused by the meltdown. Honestly I’m really upset with the pre-press/toning for this cover (my final file is above right) which is completely off from what I shot and delivered (the image of Neil Cerbone got abused as well), but c’est la vie.

The cover feature was for a story that had already been shot once, but they now wanted a different look. Unlike the vast majority of my work, the editors and art director had a very clear idea of what they wanted (background, props, etc) so I tried to make a mark on the details & lighting. We still managed a few different ideas and had fun, but it was a crazy shoot because the whole thing took place inside a refrigerated room at Field of Flowers florist in Davie, FL. That’s right, cover shoot inside a flower freezer… it was cold.

Big thanks to the subjects and my buddy Matt who assisted me for their energy and endurance. Here are a couple more of the Flipse family that I liked:

bwsb3

Dirty 305

Sunday, November 29th, 2009

popphoto1

As most of you know — because who doesn’t read Pop Photo & PDN cover-to-cover every month, right? – - John Loomis Photography was featured in both industry mags’ December issues.  First up, Popular Photography asks me “How to” (click on the image above to see it larger/clearer) in a re-cap of a Men’s Health assignment that I shot in Quantico, VA on evolving real-world training methods for the Marines.  The original concept of the how-to was to show my select and then a bunch of crappy frames (I make a lot of those) which missed the mark, illustrating how-not-to, but they instead wisely chose a direct approach.  Important tip included in the story: I get dirty.  Thanks to Pop Photo’s Debbie Grossman for reaching out to me, and to Men’s Health Michelle Stark, for giving me the job (and excuse to get dirty) in the first place.  For those interested, the rest of short piece is below:

popphoto2

Next up is Photo District News, who delivers an updated City Guide on Miami in their new issue, in which I’m quoted a few times – the most honest of which are not attributed, thanks Conor!  I haven’t seen the print edition yet, but if its fun and/or has a sweet pic by yours truly in there, I’ll update to let you have a nice chuckle.

Working in Miami continues to be love/hate for me, but I do appreciate it a bit more now that I spend most of my time in NYC.  The people, attitude, traffic, pretentiousness, and $$ are hard to deal with… but the weather is insane and local color & backgrounds can be fantastic if you know where to look, plus I like pork sandwiches a lot.  Purely photographically-speaking it’s not an easy place to be for any thing other than catalog or fashion shoots.  The local clients mostly pay terrible and demand the world, the pool of assistants is thin, and the photo gallery scene is non-existent most of the year (at least I’ve rarely seen signs of life outside of Basel).  But as I’ve said many times before, standing on the beach in mid-January, when the weather is a chilly 74, you feel like a genius.

Long live the portfolio

Friday, September 25th, 2009

folio1

After plotting the demise of the printed portfolio most of the summer in favor of a digital version I put the finishing wraps on my new beautiful 11×14 self-printed book earlier this month.  You didn’t read that incorrectly, I did a 180.  After a lot of tinkering and informal research I came to the conclusion that most of my clients weren’t going to get, or even especially like, my digital idea, that the presentation itself just wasn’t dynamic enough yet, and most of all trying to sell editors, ADs, and art buyers on my photography is job enough without adding a potentially vexing technology into the discussion.

So I created a print book, complete with new engraved covers, and it was just as tough and great of a process as I’ve recounted on this blog a couple of times.  But instead of turning my back on the digital version or putting it on the back burner to fight another day, I decided to make it a co-star in the form of custom USB flash drives that I’m giving away as my “leave behinds” to all of the fantastic people who have made time to see me.  I’m thinking about it as softening the ground for an eventual full-on move into digital, but at the very least it’s pretty cool to play with what is possible, and thus far the flash drives have been well-received.

folio2

Previously promising myself and my rep that I wasn’t going to present another portfolio with those awful poly plastic pages, I had little other choice than to go back to Epson (the 2880) and work with a fantastic, thick double-sided paper (Museo II 365).  The new Epson worked exceptionally well though the process is of course a massive pain (in the end I chose to punch holes, and score/fold each pages myself… not fun).  But I’m really proud and excited for the book and of course because I did the entire thing “in-house” I can update it at will.

folio3

The USB drives will be a constant process of tinkering and perfecting flash drives for each of my clients (one of the cool things about using digital).  Right now the drive contains multiple digital versions of the book (Quicktime formatted, self-playing movie, iPhone-ready version of movie, and a PDF version of the portfolio) as well as extras such as a digital Tearsheet book (another self-playing movie), links to websites, rep, blog, twitter/facebook and more.  Eventually the USB will include more behind the scenes and fun stuff that shows how and why I shoot.

One of the major reasons that I decided to stay away from the print book was of course cost, and absolutely this new book wasn’t cheap (though I saved a whole lot doing it myself, despite buying the new Epson).  But I just wasn’t ready to rely on a Blurb for my main portfolio presentation (though after the awards event for Photography Book Now I can definitely say that I’m impressed).  To me, as I’ve talked about before, photography is a luxury service and must be treated as such from a marketing standpoint.  Especially in a tough economic climate I need to stand apart and hopefully this book and selection of my work will do that.

folio4

Round 2 of the process is coming up fast as I re-configure the first editorial/portrait book seen above into more of a commercial/advertising presentation in time for my rep Leah to head into NYC.  I’m already dreading the scoring and folding, but art is supposed to be hard, no?  Any new or old clients reading this who are interested in seeing the new portfolio themselves… please give me or Leah a call or e-mail and let’s schedule a meeting!