From where I can really see.
Today is one of those days where upon completion my initial response is to pat myself on the back for juggling so many projects and responsibilities. Bills paid (some not), invoices processed, expense reports detailed and post production begun along with a litany of other marketing, accounting and organization concerns which constitute running a business, but I find myself missing the pictures.
After two weeks on the road shooting and spending time with family I returned to start right up with long time client Cook Children’s Medical Center on a full day job and off to Houston tomorrow for HealthLeaders Magazine and yet on down/office days like these I miss my subjects and the raw energy of shooting.
From the New York Studio to the rocky mountain altitude all the way to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit of the Medical Center I find myself experiencing great gratitude for the people who support my career.
New York was a powerfully productive trip both in the shooting and the visits. I can’t wait to share the images we produced for the Mac Group, both the crew and the models were sublime and made for an amazing shooting experience. Once our shooting wrapped I made it to see my NY support crew at the Getty Images and Spike TV offices. With both the new faces and familiar faces I left feeling recharged by what they are creating and where we are pushing my presence. The year is half over and so much to achieve.
The return to the mountains in Colorado was such a needed escape. I took my 13 month old on her first altitude hike and with her on my back and the crisp air blowing our hair it was amazing how clear my mind was above tree line. Like the mist and rain crawling across the Rocky Mountain National Forest the doom and gloom over our industry is palpable on a daily basis as we advertise for new clients and diversify our outlets in search of creative and monetary solace. Yet underneath all the rain there is so much stunning beauty filled with trails just waiting for us to walk down. Thinking of the amazing stories and lives I am blessed to visit and the endless creative outlets at my fingertips supported by the most consummate professionals left me buzzing with ideas. Hiking down the mountain with my baby girl asleep on my back I found myself charging down the trail ready to erupt over the edge.
At the half way point of 2009, and stopping to take a breath I can’t say I have created the body of work I want to remember 2009 by. Charged and challenged I step forward into the rest of this year hungry and lustful for more adventures, for more evocative imagery. I will get to the bills eventually but for now I really want to keep pushing the development of the vision up that steep climbing trail.
My accidental ode to Barbarella.
This is not generally the style of photography I shoot and yet for a test/favor I thought it would be a fun experiment. During the shoot while changing backgrounds and lights, looking for a shot, this very 60’s reminiscent image developed. Barbarella Lives On! This was another project created with students from the University of North Texas program and as always I truly enjoyed the experience. In fact there is an Senior Show at the Lakewood Theater this Saturday where all the graduating UNT seniors will have their portfolio work on display for alum and networking opportunities. I am excited to see how Juan, Carol, Becca, and Curtis are doing moments before they march out into their professions. Every collaboration with these students was a pleasure and I’m looking forward to the event and working with them in the future.
Play aside, things are busy around the studio. I recently joined the collective Wonderful Machine and already experiencing great feedback and momentum from their staff. I am also stepping out and joining the collection of photographers at Atedge and looking forward to seeing where both outlets will take me. It is time for new adventures and change is on the horizon. Tonight I am off to shoot the final party for Michael Irvin’s ”4th and Long” reality show and Sunday I fly to New York for a Mac Group project (more on this opportunity when I am allowed to talk about it). With two more Cook Children’s Medical Center shoots on the horizon and several tests on the calender I am enthusiastic about the next few months.
If your in New York and can get together for a beer shoot an email at me and lets make it happen! Looking forward to crashing the Getty assignment offices for a visit and catching up with the Eddie Adams Workshop crew for at least a couple epic nights. To the graduating seniors, Congrats! To the New York posse, see you soon.
For concepts and assignments feel free to call – 469.438.2711 or email – jensen@jensenwaker.com - jensenwalker.com
The Simple things
I admit this image has no bearing on my career. It does not pertain to jobs or clients not even a developing technology but in mentioning her in previous posts I received requests for an updated image. I present my daughter Genevieve to open my week and to remind myself who I am blessed to work for. She is a really cute boss.
Tuesday and Wendsday I am working in the Rose Bowl with SPIKE TV as they prepare to cast and film a new reality show here in Dallas. Right now I have very little information on what we will be working on but I will keep you posted. To all of you, have a great week and remember who your working for.
The Beauty of work slowing down…
…is the ability to take the time to shoot test work, to refocus your marketing, to reevaluate your business plan, to take a breath in your career, to remember what it is you started out looking for and to determine at this juncture if your still in the game. I fully admit, as my daughter turns a year old in a month, I stopped consciously refining my vision and left the development of my eye to chance and accident. When you believe no one is watching or the client is happy and I payed the rent so its all good then complacency in your vision becomes easy. Yet as life is oft to do, I was offered both subtle and sledgehammer opportunities over the last week to wake up.
Monday it was my honor to speak to the Hallmark Institute of Photography’s class of 2009. While it was a growth edge for me to step to that stage I imagine I garnered more from the experience then the audience. The students were gracious and welcoming and it ended up being a blast. Several students approached me thanking me for my time and images and to them I simply must offer, it was my pleasure. However, when I spoke about being true to themselves and to their vision, figuring out what they wanted and creating the measurable strategy to stay focused upon it that I realized I lost mine. I have long known that one of my biggest failures as a viable professional photographer is my inability to relinquish my title as a generalist. This is not to say the ability is not a valuable one or even one which will always serve me, but I have yet to make a claim to the niche or style of work which will allow me to stand out. Rather than hiding behind the generalist title, I think it is time to lay claim. Now the only problem is going to be what it is I want to lay claim to. A good friend of mine once said ” you don’t have to do one thing forever but do one thing amazingly and make your name, make your mark” then take the freedom and change. It is time to find that thing.
In this spirit of growth I also received a reminder this morning to keep my vision sharp and my craft evolving. This time, fittingly, it was from my college professor, Steve Raymer, who recently published an article in the NPPA magazine about the ‘framing’ of suffering in the photographic world. His article is a wonderful examination of the rhythms and cliches we are prone to falling into as photographers. The article challenges our ability to take our craft in whatever form and hold it to a higher standard in the midst of the blurring lines of photographic responsibility. After reading the article I came to realization. At the end of my career, my days or hell at the bar after work when I am asked what legacy I created, I want to be proud of the answer. In less than 24 hours both by an emerging class of new shooters and by a trusted guardian of the craft i find myself charged with reexamining how I create. So for today I leave you searching and will let you know what I find when I find it.
I highly recommend Steve’s Article and would be interested in hearing how or if it the thesis challenges your perceptions.
Slugpuppies
Here we are back to my ongoing practice with airborne paint sculptures. I spent all of Sunday in a dusty, filthy, awesome abandon facility creating images for the local band The Slugpuppies and their upcoming album Emo Therapy. This project was their brain child and yet serendipitously syncs with my testing for an upcoming paint project. As with all tests though, I learned a few things.
In the last test I realized the flash duration on my Profoto Pro7B and shutter speed on my Canon 1Ds Mark II were not truly suited to the concept in mind. Then one brisk day last fall at the Eddie Adams Workshop my good friend Cliff Hausner of Profoto introduced me to the new Pro8a Air. I won’t attempt to define the specs on this new pack you can check on them for yourself. However, to give you an idea I will share this with you, at the farm we photographed a subject on a trampoline with a Nikon D3 at 11 fps at f16 and the camera buffer filled before the pack ever missed a discharge. My inner dialogue shouted “This is the pack for me,” only to discover it is an 11k investment. Thus relegated to renting for now I went out with one on Sunday. To my enraged dismay I discovered that contrary to the rental houses assurance the Pro7b head does not work on the Pro8a Air pack and so returned to 1… 2… 3. GO. One action, one spray, one shot, all said and done though we created some nice frames.
The band showed up with paint shooters, 15 gallons of paint, suit jackets, even craft services and we spent the better part of the day going for it. I think their album and promotional art will look amazing and look forward to seeing them perform in those jackets. On the back side of the test I realized I am going to have to really take a long look at the lighting style and paint deployment to make the next one sing. For now I celebrate the joy of airborne color and simultaneously realize the images lack the sense of organic subtly I want out of the final project. Till next time.
In the sink
In a world saturated in Hi Def and Hi Pass sometimes it is nice to simply make images that remind you of the pictures of your childhood. These are images of Genevieve at her Grandmothers in San Antonio.
The Three Reasons
A young man on the day he is preparing to leave the Hemotology/Oncology Unit at Cook Children's Medical Center
I spent this last weekend in a padded room, two foot by 8 foot, listening to their voices over and over again. In that room I stared at the same people in the eye for over 48 hrs, never engaging them. I sat in that room alone and slightly nervous, listening and watching and ultimately finding myself in a place of illustrious gratitude.
I have a very good friend who once told me there are only three good reasons to take a job: The Creative, The Money or The Relationship. Yet, as I edited content all weekend from the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, Epilepsy Monitoring Unit, and Deep Brain Stimulation surgery of Cook Children’s Medical Center, I can’t help wondering if there is not a fourth reason, The Heart.
Initially, I started my career in photography as a high school student who loved the adrenaline of the chase, the all access pass and the totally legitimate reason to go up to the hottest girl in the room and start making her picture. Quickly, however, those reasons gave way to the desire to connect with people, to tell their story, or to capture the expression uniquely theirs, in a moment written for them.
Somehow, somewhere along the line though, I discovered I had to pay an electric bill, and as much as I hated the idea of a phone, I was going to have to pay for one of those as well. So here I am 31, married, a father and paying the electric bill. With this epochal shift come the jobs that don’t always make the portfolio or imbue me with a sense of change or impact. That being said, for every quick in and out corporate portrait, I know I get to shoot for the medical center soon.
Cook Children’s and I have worked together for almost a year and half now and we are now starting to create new avenues for the content. However, during the multimedia editing this last weekend, it was not the video, audio or even the images that captured me; it was the people looking back at me.
The patients, the nurses, the doctors, the volunteers, even the security guard, who hugs me every time he sees me, have all opened their world in a way that says: we love these kids and if you love them too… come help. Families have granted me access to areas spanning from isolation rooms, brain surgeries, and bone marrow transplants, to playing on the floor with big foam blocks in the playrooms. The gift though, is the chance to connect with the kids, the families, and the health care professionals. It is so hard to measure the value of a mother hugging me after a surgery, or a child going through chemotherapy who lavishes the room in the most unabashedly childish giggles. These are the gifts that I cherish with this client.
I spent the weekend in that editing room visiting with families and medical center staff, watching and listening to joys, fears, challenges and triumphs and I would like to say thank you to all of them for giving me a privileged glimpse into their lives; it has and continues to be my honor.
Tactical
Friday on assignment in Shreveport, Louisiana, I came across an object that when brandished, filled me with such visible embarrassment and palpable excitement that I internalized a roaring self-deprecating laugh. In all of its absurdity, I felt the deep photographic nerd urge crying out…. I MUST HAVE ONE.
As a photographer, I would love to subscribe to the image of a young dapper Robert Capa on assignment in the gentlemen’s tradition or the Hollywood portrayal of the fashion photographer, sexually charged and dangerous abiding by no rules for “art.” Maybe even a dashing combination of both. The reality however, is of course, far different. Photographers, to the largest extent, must own up to being in one of the geekiest professions around. We love and obsess over our tools, software updates, action scripts, light modifiers, grip gear, and of course our bags. Be honest, how many of you have a closet full of bag from hip pouches to backpacks and even if you don’t want to admit it, one or two tactical vests? You get a group of shooters together and two conversations are likely to erupt. The first will touch on the philosophical and moralistic issues facing the industry, and the other is more often than not, a full-scale trade show and debate on the benefits of using one camera system over another. To work in this profession, a grasp of the trends and technology will keep you on the cutting edge. Lets admit it though, what photographer doesn’t want a tight rig? So for all of you missing that one piece of gear to set your kit apart from the crowd, I offer you the Bushhawk!
10 Weeks Old
[Gallery not found]Genevieve is 10 weeks old this Saturday and it was well past due I put some other images of her up. She is amazing I love being her father and I can’t wait for more of her. Enjoy her cute cheeks and chubby legs and I am sure there will be more to come.
Gun, Knife and Beer Tour
[Gallery not found]In an attempt to get back to the blog I offer you these images from a week long adventure embarked upon with my good friend Evan Parker. The images are meaningless and serve no obvious purpose other than the product of a bunch of guys with cameras, gear, and a buzz.
Genevieve Marie Walker
It’s official, somewhere around the 12th of April we will have a Girl! Took me a min to scan these images in but wanted to share with you all.
Smoke Without Fire
[Gallery not found]This is a collection of images created in conjunction with the Highland Park Fire Dept. during a life action training. I sat on these images for about two months but figured I needed to get them worked prior to vanishing into a hard drive to be serendipitously discovered by future generations. A hearty thank you to Highland Park I had a blast out there and look forward to working with your crew again.
The Heartbeat
While not career or professional in nature, this post is for the many of you whom I work with and consider my close friends. However, lets be honest, it is also a shameless manifestation of my growing excitement and pride at my upcoming role as a father.
Wednesday we visited the midwife to hear the heartbeat for the first time, to hear the freight train 150 beats per minute of Biscuit (the affectionate nick name we have given our child as we suffer through the bitter impatience of not knowing the sex) in all its proclamation and viberance.
When the midwife placed the doppler the reverberation of Biscuit’s heart filled the room instantly with such assertion we assumed it was Jean’s heart we were hearing. The expression in Jean’s eyes is the joy, the tactile realization of the life within her and while you can’t see my mouth ajar we both shared this moment of surreal awe. Something changed and while it was just another benchmark in the process it was also a thrilling proof of life, of promise, and the ensuing adventure.
Radio silence is broken, I had my first communication, and Biscuit and I talked. Granted, it was a one way conversation yet I find myself content simply with the beginning of our relationship.
The Engagement
[Gallery not found]Traditionally I shy away from wedding, engagement, or bridal portrait photography. That being said, for those whom I think the world of and for those wanting to play I am always available for an adventure.
These engagement images were created for Justin and Julie my two amazing friends who are getting married in October. The brief for the shoot began as “Justin and Julie sitting in a tree K.I.S.S.I.N.G.” and ended in a Star Wars type battle of leaping love.
An Ipod Adrift
This is a story of profound loss, one that lasted three full days and yet a kind of loss so geeky, so irrational and so absurd it is almost hard to own up to. It was one of those accidental losses on the back slide of a series of unfortunate choices, the kind that leads to such an onslaught of guilt and anger as to force you to revisit the scene of the crime. This is a story of an iPod left behind, of an iPod half-buried in mud and water, of my iPod that once pried from my belt was forced to endure three days of thunderstorms, hail and Texas summer sun.
The Bog
This story in two acts… Yes, this is in honor of This American Life because along with leaving my portfolio, interviews, music from Oakenfold to Outkast or Led Zepplin to Les Nubiens, and the entire cast of a season of Lost (no the irony is not missed) I also left some forty or so podcasts of This American Life. It was as if I had single handedly made Ira Glass a POW of the wildflowers and fire ants of the Texas Hill Country and there was no rescue on the way….
Act I The Loss: The story of how a simple traffic stop led to a three-hour mud bath and showed me both how quickly a day can fall apart as well as how rare it can be to get help even when you are thirty feet from a main road.
Act II Search and Rescue: The story of how after three days in the rain, mud, sun, and no hope that the iPod was still alive, I could not leave it out there. It had to be found.
Act I The Loss
I was driving with the windows down, Spoon cranking “I turn my camera on” and my boxer/pitt mix, Akira, in the back seat on one of those days where you feel compelled to say things like “It’s days like these when I love Texas.” Wildflowers painted the shoulder of every road and the sky was a crisp blue with clouds more for texture than function. No rush and no need I locked the cruise control in at four miles over the speed limit – hey the wind comes in so much nicer at 69mph than it does at 65mph – then I got a phone call. In the minute or two I was on the phone I missed the 55mph sign. Officer D. Thomas of the Bertram Police Department did not. A quarter mile past the sign I got the ticket.
I was working so hard not to punch a hole in my dashboard in rage, the day now fully tainted at such an early hour. It took a good 10 minutes before I was willing to pull back onto the road. I was looking for a way to calm down when as I passed a pile of rocks and decided to stop to get some for the garden. Get outside, get some physical exertion and maybe even break a rock with Officer Thomas’s name on it. Seemed like such a good idea as a backed my car up to the rock pile. I stepped outside and sank two inches into bog. As my toes crushed mud and the field of flowers mocked me with their carefree dance in the breeze, my heart sank. When I got back into the car and tried to pull forward, the battle of the bog began.
Reverse! Forward! Reverse! Forward! All the while the tires were spewing friction-heated mud into my left shin, adhering to my hair and punctuating the futility. Two hours of this angry mud-slinging ensued and the mud attacked everything from my steering wheel to poor Akira’s face. I jammed cardboard, my trunk liner, rocks, flowers and anything I could get under the tire, something for it to grab a hold of. Like a grime-covered Roman road builder I even started to pilfer a refuse asphalt mound on the side of the road to lay my own ramshackle highway. Nothing was working, so I stood there in utter desperation, watching Ford F150 after Dodge Super cab speed by me and feeling incredibly sorry for myself. I even went as far as standing on the roadside covered head to toe in dirt looking utterly pathetic in hopes of evoking a sympathetic reaction from the autobahn in front of me.
Having retreated once it would not happen again and I got back in the car for a full-on assault. Heat roared from the vents and the mud flew, I continued to lay my road and change the materials under the wheel as if it were a science experiment. The perfect combination of materials would certainly create freedom, right? Then on one of my many trips to the front-wheel drive I bent down and split my shorts from crotch to belt line. Curse after profanity after expletive roared forth as if I were challenging God to a duel. Looking back I must have looked like the Swamp Thing rising from the wild flowers. I hastened the material switches and SNAP my earphones were ripped from my ears. I was in such a rush I just threw them into the car not noticing that in the same violence the iPod was abducted, a payment for my release. I got behind the wheel squealing through the bog in blind perseverance. The tires caught and the fishtail began. Inch by inch I hissed, slid, and groaned forward to freedom.
A mile down the road I realized the Ipod was missing and went back digging in the mud, ants and brown water to no avail. I had no fight left in me and so head dropped in defeat I got into the Swamp Thing mudmobile and headed to my friends’ house in utter silence.
Act II Search and Rescue
Over the next three days the Austin area fell under siege. By day the summer heat rolled in and by night the city hunkered down under massive thunderstorms which reverberated through the sky like 155mm Howitzer shells landing on 6th street. Torrents of rain and even hail fell for two nights and all the while I kept thinking of my iPod exposed to those elements. At this point I was fully aware of the geek response I was having to losing a simple electronic devise and yet I could not help thinking I had made a mistake.
I know I am not alone in admitting I have a relationship with my iPod. We all have those days when we are jonesing for some Death from Above 1979 or some Wolfmother and all your iPod will give you is Mazzy Star or Buddha Bar and you both make a compromise on John Mayer or maybe even some Peter Gabriel. In that Ipod I have my entire portfolio, all my contacts and calendars, interviews and seasons of The Office and 24 for airport layovers. In one sense if you picked up my iPod and scrolled through it you would not only see a list of music and entertainment but a bookmark of my pop culture IQ, a glimpse of where I have been and where I may be going. It all seemed so intimate to just leave to chance under a violent sky. So on my way home to Dallas the next day I vowed to find the iPod. Dead or alive did not matter I simply could not abandon it.
The next morning I got back into the mudmobile and drove north listening to the dirt falling out of the wheel wells. When I arrived at the scene of the crime the evidence of the struggle was still obvious. The gashes I left behind in the earth had settled and filled with water and many of the trampled flowers still had not recovered. I stepped gently making sure not to disturb any of the evidence, surveying everything before moving forward. I made this slow circle of the site for almost an hour and was losing hope. Maybe it was buried in the disembowelment of soil, sod and flowers. I turned over anthills and dug my hands through water-filled trenches – not even a hint. Then I turned over a mat of flowers and there it was face down. I stared at it for a minute wary of disappointment; to be honest, I still had hope. I reached down, turned it over and pressed Play. Then it did the most miraculous thing! It lit up playing DMX’s “We Go Hard.” Hell ya! You go soldier!
I stepped out of the bog with a sly smile on my face and got back on the road. I stripped off the iSkin and placed the iPod on my lap so the sun streaming in the windows could burn off the bit of moisture caught in the screen. I let random play whatever it wanted. No compromises needed today.
Dave Adams – The End of an Era
On our way back from a plant trip
Last Saturday was the end of an era as graduates and current students of Indiana University student publications lost a Media Director who supported, challenged and most of all, loved the journalists he worked with for almost twenty years. Dave Adams year-after-year took the Arbutus Yearbook and IDS Newspaper to national awards and recognition, always allowing the students to lead the charge and always with that great, proud, paternal smile. If you worked with him you know the smile of which I am speaking.
For those of you who knew him and have not heard:
“Officers on Saturday night found Adams lying face down in a small pond outside the Bloomington home he shared with his longtime partner, Chunming Chou. There were no signs of foul play, said Bloomington Police Sgt. Faron Lake.”
I worked with Dave for a few years but it was not until 2000, as the Editor in Chief of the 2000 Arbutus, that I truly got to know him. Trips to the publishing plant, budget meetings, award ceremonies, the daily grind and of course his daily requests to “turn down that rave music.” Through all of it, he was such a champion of the students, our passion and the publications. He was always willing to take the risks both in our content and in us. I always loved him for that. No matter how tense a situation or irrational the emotions of a situation, he was there to facilitate our creation.
I remember sitting in the back of award ceremonies making jokes with Dave like two little school kids, or, after a long night of clubbing, meeting Dave at the airport to head back to school and falling asleep on his shoulder; even sitting at a bar in Kansas City after a full day of working in the publishing plant talking about his son and family and where he thought life would take him next.
So now, as students begin to show up at his viewing and funeral, as speeches are being written for his memorial and as alumni begin to fund the new scholarship in his honor I am looking back at a man who loved us all and who supported me when so many others doubted and give back that same smile he gave me day in and day out no matter what.