editorial
Photographed on Location in Key West, FL, Palm Springs, CA and Adelaide, Australia. Thank you to all involved!!!
This is the third cover I secured in the last week. When it rains it pours, I guess…
This one features lifestyle guru Danny Seo and former model, actress and founder of Weelicious Catherine McCord. We shot this in Los Angeles in Catherine’s kitchen after strolling the Hollywood farmers market for a few hours one morning.
It got a little weird when I received this one just days after seeing the cover of STERN with my younger son and town of heritage in Austria on it. This is my older son on the cover of the main newspaper of Berlin, the city I was born and raised in. Both kids, both places of personal, historical significance for me. Kinda weird.
It allowed me to make a joke about the kids competing for European magazine covers 😂
This photo was shot for stock here in Santa Barbara.
Super excited for this one! German STERN magazine put one of my photos on their cover recently. The image features my younger son overlooking the town of my heritage, Bludenz, in Vorarlberg, Austria. We were on an overnight hike when I took this photo at the Frassenhuette (hut). There may be photos of myself at this age (6) sitting right there.
Having the cover of STERN is amazing by itself but the fact that it not only features my son but also the town of Bludenz is just ridiculously awesome. The cover on the previous issue featured Joe Biden 😊
In the first week of January of this year I photographed Kara Thoms here in Santa Barbara. Kara is based here and operates her boutique from a dreamy A-frame house in the mountains overlooking Santa Barbara and the Channel Islands. I happened to know Kara from a shoot (she used to model) from may years ago for the Walking Company so it was fun to reconnect.
In mid December of 2020 I drove through the Santa Ynez Valley and crossed the ranges into the Cuyama Valley and ultimately into the town of Cuyama to photograph the revived Cuyama Buckhorn. A historic roadside motel the Buckhorn is under new ownership and has been receiving an amazing refresh. Close proximity to the Carrizo Plains, a National Monument containing the largest single native grassland remaining in California, makes the Buckhorn a great escape from Los Angeles, Ojai or Santa Barbara. The drive along Highway 33 between Cuyama and Ojai is one of the prettiest drives and supposedly one of the best areas to view fall colors in California.
And finally I drove down to Chino and visited Eastern Leaf Nursery to photograph their Bonsai operation. The depth of history regarding Bonsai is remarkable and I even received a little gift in form an olive tree Bonsai (I love Olive trees).
You can view all of these stories in the current (Spring 2021) issue of Naturally Danny Seo.
JUNGBLUT2020 - a journal-style selection of my favorite work from 2020 now available.
Read MoreI photographed another cover for Naturally Danny Seo Magazine this summer and it is out now! The cover was photographed in Serenbe, GA. I had to fly out from Santa Barbara, or LAX, to shoot this cover and one of the stories in the magazine. This was right when cases of Covid started to rise in Georgia. Not so comfortable but the travel experience was actually insanely easy. No lines, no waiting. Lots of space on the plane.
Cover photograph for Naturally Danny Seo Magazine by Jonas Jungblut
The portrait of Amy Feezer was photographed virtually via FaceTime. A technique I used to shoot a story for the Washington Post earlier this year which also landed me a cover. You can see more examples of Virtual Portraits in my series APART/TOGETHER.
The story on Anna Getty took me to Ojai, just about an hour’s drive from Santa Barbara. We spent the day at Anna’s house and had a good time. That was a really enjoyable shoot!
To photograph Elizabeth Stein of purely elizabeth I actually drove from Santa Barbara to Boulder, CO, a quick 20 hour drive… I stopped in Salt Lake City and made a road trip out of it which was super fun.
The Modern Farmhouse story was shot in Serenbe during the same trip we photographed the cover of the magazine. Serenbe is a small community outside of Atlanta. I have visited this charming, little gem a few times before but this time it felt like it is really growing together. There are still a lot of houses being built, a lot of them modeled after European villages (I was told the founder of Serenbe literally recreated roof lines from photographs he took of villages in Europe) and it is coming together nicely.
Finally there is a one page story about Ireland. These photos are from my first trip for the magazine when we spent a week in Ireland, stayed at castles, harvested seaweed and got sick from Oysters…
Virtual Portrait of Amy Feezor by Jonas Jungblut
Earlier this year, before Covid-19 had arrived, I did a production for EasyRiders Magazine featuring Carey Hart. This project was a stills and video combo. Stills aren’t released yet but I am happy the video is, so check it out below!
Many Thanks to the team at EasyRiders, Tate Larrick and of course Carey Hart and his team!
I have three stories in the current issue of Naturally Danny Seo Magazine and this one is a odd one. This was the first editorial job I photographed after the shelter in place order in March and nobody could travel or put together photo productions. So Danny came up with the idea of printing out photos of products that needed to be photographed for this story and then placing them around my property here in Santa Barbara. A creative solution to a complicated challenge. Shooting a commercial production like this is a little more nerve-wracking and logistically complicated but for this editorial I was left to play around and just over-shoot it a little.
The below story was shot in Minneapolis and an image from it ended up on the cover of the magazine. Always nice! We shot this right before the Covid-19 shut down and I got back to Santa Barbara before air travel got restricted.
And finally a Yoga story I shot earlier in the year at Rancho Valencia resort in San Diego. We shot this early in the morning and I was wearing a Patagonia Puff Jacket… Erika Gibson (yogi) rocked it in the cold morning air!
Here are two recent covers of national magazines with my images on them. Pretty stoked, I have to say! The Washington Post Magazine cover was shot remotely, via FaceTime and other video chat applications during lock down. When I started my FaceTime portrait project I sure didn’t anticipate ending up on the cover of the Washington Post mag. Another great example of jumping off a cliff, figuring out how to fly on the way down and landing in paradise… I guess. It just shows that sticking your neck out usually leads to something. All the images for this article and my project Apart/Together, which features subjects from around the globe, were photographed while I was at home in Santa Barbara. Times are changing and technology is speeding up that change in a scary way.
The Naturally cover was photographed in Minneapolis. No idea did I have that just a few months later the city would become the epicenter of a powerful resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement.
On that note: I was always fascinated by the change that occured in the United States in the 60’s. People standing up for their rights and changing things. It was part of what made me want to immigrate here. Our current situation reminds of that time and seeing people fight for their rights in the streets as well as in the media again is inspiring!
Susanne Kaufmann at the hotel Post in Bezau photographed by Jonas Jungblut
I am based in Santa Barbara but travel for around 80% of my work. I do have roots in Berlin, where I grew up, and also in Vorarlberg, Austria, where my family is from. For the past years we have spent the summer in Austria and while a lot of it is exploration (aka shooting stock) I always sneak a little bit of assignment work in.
Last year I pitched a story about Bezau local and international brand name Susanne Kaufmann to Naturally Danny Seo Mag, a magazine I work for a lot. Danny knew about Susanne and her high-end skin care line and so I ended up shooting this story in a dreamy, tiny little town in the Austrian Alps, around the corner from where my family has lived for a very long time.
Susanne and her team couldn’t have been nicer and accommodating but the thing that really was just incredibly satisfying was the fact that I was working in my back yard for a US national publication. Not only helping to spread the word about this brand but also supporting the area in general. Being an editorial and commercial photographer means that you get to meet new people and explore new places all the time, and that is fun. When you can feature something that is close to you it’s like the icing on the cake!
Susanne Kaufmann editorial photographed by Jonas Jungblut
Susanne Kaufmann editorial photographed by Jonas Jungblut
Susanne Kaufmann editorial photographed by Jonas Jungblut
In May of this year I traveled to Japan for Naturally Danny Seo to photograph an editorial around travel and food. I photographed portraits, landscapes, food and some industrial/ingredient images, a true travel story. Our journey started in Osaka and via Tokushima we traveled to Tokyo from where we departed (check out a vlog HERE ). We documented Wakame (seaweed) harvests, Mochi production, visited a Umeboshi (plum) farm/factory, a Miso producer and finally a Shoyu (Japanese style soy sauce) facility. This last stop left us with the most exotic experience.
The Shoyu was cured in large wooden barrels measuring a diameter of about eight feet with a depth of at least ten feet. We could walk between the open barrels but they were placed tightly together so that the space between them got very narrow in the middle, less than a foot wide. At first I just thought it was fun balancing in between the barrels but then I realized that the Shoyu was too thick to swim in. If I fell in I would just sink to the bottom. And they were wide enough to where it was pretty unlikely to get a hold on the rim if you actually fell. It became clear that if you fell in, you’d never come out. It would take too long for someone to notice, know which one you fell in and then find some sort of device to pull you out. I stepped a lot more carefully…
Once I was done shooting I asked our guide about it and had my theory confirmed…
I had one amazing short little trail run in Tokushima prefacture (vlog HERE) and of course seeing Mt. Fuji from the Shinkansen at dusk was amazing (and so was seeing it from the hotel in Tokyo). The alleys in Ginza (Tokyo) at night were fantastic and the fact that they shut down the road in Ginza and converted it into a promenade on the weekend was nice to see.
Many thanks to the team and the people of Japan for making this a fantastic journey!
In December of 2018 I traveled to southern Sweden to photograph an editorial story for Naturally Danny Seo Magazine. Just like you are probably doing right now I was asking myself why we were going to Sweden in December but surprisingly it was rather pretty. Not too cold and the light had this late afternoon quality to it all day.
The story is published in the current issue of the magazine. Some highlights from my part: Moelle and it’s National Park. Climbing around the cliffs was amazing and there was nobody there! Just beautiful!
NASCAR at Auto Club Speedway
I am a portrait photographer. I photograph people. Most of the time in a studio setting. Controlled lighting, background, props. But then I also travel quite a bit and shoot editorial stories for magazines. I have been all over the world to shoot editorial stories and photographed while riding an elephant, 60 miles off the coast on a fishing trawler, hanging off a vertical cliff, while having food poisoning, underwater, the list goes on…
So naturally I am interested in the story. I try not to decide what to photograph based on my opinion on the subject matter. Actually, let me rephrase. If anything, I like to explore topics I either don’t know much about or have an opinion on which isn’t based on first person experience. If you really want to learn about a topic dive into it and experience it.
Through a close friend I was invited by Aric Almirola to watch the 2019 race at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, California. Full access to the pits and drivers area. This is how you go experience something you don’t know much about. Now, full disclosure: I had been to a NASCAR race before, in Sonoma. But this one was a track and not an oval. (Yes, both are in California and both are NASCAR races…).
So what did I learn? Well, you can watch the video linked in this post to follow along. Otherwise what I can tell you is that the viewer demographic is rather narrow. And it is what you would expect.
Aric Almirola at Auto Club Speedway in 2019
But there is something else I noticed here and also the first time I went in Sonoma. NASCAR is a racing series that operates like it is the 1970’s. While Formula 1 cars and teams are run by technology stock cars aren’t. They fuel the cars during pit stops by gravity fed canisters and they don’t have much data on the car while it is on the track. What this means is that the driver is mostly responsible to deal with the car. Driving as well as communicating how the car feels and if something may need adjusting in the pits. I call it out in the vlog, it’s good old driving. No readings on the screen in the pits and then a command on how to drive. The driver actually has to feel it out and do it. (Now going around an oval, which is the large majority of events probably doesn’t require as much input as a regular track but I wouldn’t know that… I can only assume. And assumptions can be dangerous.).
Aric Almirola taking off after a pit stop at Auto Club Speedway in 2019.
Sooo… what did I take away from actually going to a race and experiencing it myself? It’s a lot of things that you have to go experience for yourself. You reading my account is just like reading any other. My point with this whole post is that to really learn about something you actually just need go experience it first hand!
You should still watch the video. Do it! It’s fun! It’s entertaining! It’s NASCAR!!!
The idea is simple: climb 29,029′, the equivalent of Mt. Everest’s elevation, in a skyscraper in downtown Los Angeles in one day.
Obviously when one climbs the real mountain there is much less vertical elevation to deal with. But the lack of oxygen and exposure to the elements more than make up for that. Let’s just be clear from the beginning. Climbing Everest is much harder on every level.
Still the idea is enticing so a group of nine men entered a very tall building in downtown Los Angeles one morning after driving down from Santa Barbara and got ready to ascend the 55 floors via the stairwell over and over… and over and over and over again. It would take 40 ascensions to make the 29K feet of elevation gain. There was also a cut off time since the building was shutting down and the security guards who had to be in the building wanted to go home.
I was one of those nine men but I wasn’t there to reach the goal, I was there to document. To photograph the ordeal. Capturing the climbers required me to sit and wait in the stairwell for extended amounts of time and carrying my camera gear up the stairs didn’t help either. At the end of the day I did 10 ascensions and was perfectly fine with that.
One of the unforeseen challenges that started impacting climbers was motion sickness. constantly turning right in the stairwell started really messing with them. To the point of puking. Not pretty but part of the game.
Mid-day everyone had their groove going and in the early afternoon there was a scheduled break so that one of the climbers could propose to his girlfriend on top of the roof. This solid hour of break time would bite the remaining climbers (the newly engaged left after to celebrate) in the end. At 33 ascensions they ran out of time. They had climbed a respectable elevation of 24,000 feet.
