Here are some recent publications in Naturally Danny Seo Magazine.
Photographed on Location in Key West, FL, Palm Springs, CA and Adelaide, Australia. Thank you to all involved!!!
magazine photography
Photographed on Location in Key West, FL, Palm Springs, CA and Adelaide, Australia. Thank you to all involved!!!
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 MoreMy recent editorial piece on one of the most renowned Ayurvedic doctors and experts in the country, Martha Soffer, can be viewed in print in the current issue of Naturally Danny Seo Magazine. Martha operates Surya Spa in Los Angeles where I photographed this story. You'll also find two gems from trips to northern Thailand and Telluride, CO in this issue.
The image on the right was photographed at the Anantara Golden Triangle Resort in northern Thailand on a trip a few years ago. My favorite memory from that place is a teenage elephant wanting to play with me… by running into me…
I produced and shot this short film featuring artist R. Nelson Parrish and custom surfboard shaper Ryan Lovelace’s project FOILS recently. The project was commissioned by the good folks over at Entropy Resins, makers of amazing bio resin.
We shot this at Parrish and Lovelace’s studios in Santa Barbara with a Covid-safe tiny crew and had a good time. Being the two characters they are, we had an entertaining day, including a lunch with Keith Malloy that consisted of a conversation which can only be referred to as unique.
Having documented Parrish and his work for over a decade we hadn’t produced a video/film before except for a vlog type video featuring a project in Berlin, so this was fun!
I’ll let Nelson and Ryan explain what FOILS is all about in the video. Enjoy!
A big thank you to all involved and especially Entropy Resins for making this possible!
Before the shut down resulting from the Covid epidemic I photographed an editorial for EasyRiders Magazine featuring Carey Hart. Maybe you’ve seen the short film we shot at the same time in a previous post but here are some still portraits and action shots.
This was a small crew shoot but we managed to shoot stills and motion of three different scenarios that day. Portraits and lifestyle stuff around Carey’s hangar, some motocross action and some streetbike stuff on his Indian.
Carey Hart being the motocross rider he is, the dirt bike part was just crazy to watch. He has his own track on his property and we followed him out to it, him of course getting there before us. When we came up to it he was just flying over the massive table at the center of it. He then proceeded to jump over a fence for fun. Watch the film for some impressions, its good!
Right before our shoot Carey had finished an asphalt pump track behind his hangar. It actually was so new the edges were still soft, but it was rideable. So my assistant (the great Tate Larrick) and I took a BMX and a skateboard out there and had a fun little session in the late evening light to finish up the day. Amazing!
Many Thanks to the crew at Easyriders and Carey Hart and his team who were incredible nice, supportive and accommodating!
I 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.
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…
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!
A few weeks ago I was assigned by the Washington Post Magazine to photograph 19 subjects across the United Stated. The assignment was for a piece they were putting together highlighting positive stories during the Covid-19 pandemic. I photographed it all via FaceTime.
The subjects ranged from writer Margaret Atwood to Park Ranger Jessica Korgie. From comedian Russel Peters to shop owner Ifat Pridan. An amazing range of personalities and I got to meet them all in their spaces. One on one! Surreal!!! I just dropped in on them in their homes!
Given a somewhat tight deadline the biggest challenge was scheduling all the subjects. I had done over 60 FaceTime portraits prior to this assignment so I felt comfortable once the call was on but getting it all sorted was another story.
A big Thank You to Dudley Brooks at the Post for having the vision to put this together!!!
Take a look here:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/lifestyle/magazine/america-resilient-coronavirus-pandemic/?itid=sf_lifestyle-magazine
Since my last post about my Virtual FaceTime Portraits a lot has happened on that front. At this point I have photographed 80 plus people with FaceTime photoshoots and I am still shooting almost every day. The Washington Post has assigned me with a story for which I had to photograph 17 people across the United States and I photographed a musical Quintet in the Netherlands.
What I keep telling people is that as a portrait photographer I normally move intuitively around the subject. I adjust the cameras angle and position relative to the subject subconsciously, small movements can make a big difference. All of that I now have to do with words. When photographing the violin players for the Quintet in the Netherlands I was telling them that it is sort of like them telling someone how to place the fingers on the strings of the violin to play. I would argue that my results are a little bit better than what that situation would produce but you get the idea.
Another interesting development I have watched for the past weeks is that FaceTime photoshoots are happening all over the place now. To the point where companies like Nike are trying it out. Some photographers are projecting the FaceTime call onto surfaces of all sorts and then photograph the projection, some shoot it in color, some focus on professional models, it’s all over the place.
This brings me back to what I said in an interview with aphotoeditor.com about my project. While the technical quality of these shoots is mostly pretty rough, I believe this technique will be used in the future even past the Covid lockdown. Cameras on phones will get better, 5G will improve call quality and clients will think twice about flying someone around the world when they can just send a high end Iphone to the subject and do the shoot remotely. It will be niche, I am sure but I am also sure that it will be done. Technology just has to catch up a little bit more. Nobody had a PDA in the early 2000’s, then mobile internet allowed the Iphone to do what it did.
One think FaceTime does not seem to like at this point is movement. Subjects have to be rather still for the quality to catch up and not look glitchy. But with a great connection and a newer model device I have been able to get FaceTime Portraits that look amazing on a screen. They go through some post processing, sharpening and grain mostly, and then are completely usable for screen applications. I also printed some portraits and made collages and grids which I then photographed with my DSLR and got a high res file of.
FaceTime photoshoots force the photographer to dive deep into the creativity bucket and that’s why they are great! There is almost no control over technical aspects of the camera, no exposure, focus, or any other trickery. The photographer isn’t even holding the camera. I had people stick their device in the washing machine and shoot out of it, hide behind colored plexiglass and involve their spouses to act as moving tripods. It becomes a creative exercise for both, the photographer and the subject and especially during times of Covid lockdown offer a fun escape from being stuck at home.
I have been making the JUNGBLUT20xx since 2013 and it’s been fun to go through the year and select portraits, travel images and whatever else stood out that year to compile them all in this volume. This is not a portfolio, it is a journal style compilation featuring photographs from personal projects, tests, magazine publications and commercial photo shoots. It features images that may be outtakes from jobs or the hero images. It is a truly personal piece, showcasing the images that stood out to me and which I love.
It also helps to keep track of my progress over the years. At this point I can go back 5 years and see how my style has changed. From taking a portrait or landscape image to editing it and then also formatting it in the magazine. And of course it acts as sort of a catalog of my work. Selecting the best images from a year and printing them in a tangible magazine insures that they stay around.
I bring these on jobs and leave them behind, or send them in the mail but you can also just buy one from Magcloud HERE. And you can find the previous years HERE.
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!
When I was at the Surfranch for Red Bull photographing portraits of Carissa Moore (see post HERE) I also shot portraits of ripper Caroline Marks. We did a few different set ups but the one below was my favorite. Dark background and natural light is hard to not make look cool. And Caroline’s blue eyes just look stunning here.
I also got a sweet little action shot of Caroline ripping it up in the water. It was amazing to watch her surf ALL DAY LONG. The amount of energy and endurance is borderline scary.
I’ll post the other athlete portraits I took that day of Jordy Smith, Kolohe Andino and Kanoa Igarashi soon. A fun day shooting portraits of some amazing athletes at the Surfranch!
You can find some of the images I shot on Red Bull’s content pool website.
Following up on the last post, here is a vlog documenting the shoot I did for Red Bull at the Surfranch. I took portraits of Carissa Moore, Jordy Smith, Kolohe Andino, Caroline Marks and Kanoa Igarashi throughout the day. Check it out!
I have been working with Red Bull for many years and recently I had the great pleasure to go out to the Kelly Slater Surfranch in Lemoore, CA for a shoot. I surf, have for many years, so going to the Surfranch was a bucket list item to begin with, especially since I was told to bring a board since “you never know”! Red Bull hired me to photograph a few of their surfers in order to update imagery for the upcoming Freshwater Pro at the Surfranch. Stoked!
When I found out that I would be photographing Carissa Moore the stoke went to yet another level. Carissa is amazing! Given the opportunity to capture a portrait of her was a big honor. Me = happy! I also photographed a couple other of the Red Bull surfers that day, I will post some of those portraits soon.
We photographed a few different set ups all within only a few minutes. I was hired to photograph portraits but during some downtime I also went and shot some action shots of Carissa surfing. Watching that wave is a trip. It is perfect over and over and over and over again… It definitely is lacking the soul I cherish about surfing but this isn’t a critique of the Surfranch, go read opinions about it elsewhere. Bottom line, when it comes to a wave, it doesn’t get better than this.
Throughout the day Carissa and the other surfers kept going at it. At one point in the afternoon I just stared in disbelief at the pool wondering how these guys were still ripping. I would have pooped out many hours ago… I did get my answer when Carissa stepped in front of my camera a little later: She could easily put me on the floor…
A big fat THANK YOU to Red Bull for getting me out there and in front of, not only Carissa Moore but a few other amazing surfers who I will share soon. Also amazing: I was asked to shoot medium format black and white film for part of this! I don’t get that request too many times these days but it’s always a big treat to pull out the Hasselblad and shoot film!
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!
Maybe retro is not quite the right word but this portrait I just took here in my studio in Santa Barbara of model Tiana has that feeling. To me it looks like it’s from the 60’s or 70’s. The attitude, the hair, props and lighting.
I shot this in front of a white backdrop in my outdoor studio. The light is all natural with a lot of cutting by means of dark cloths and flags. I shot quite a few frames of this liking the composition, light, etc. Tiana moved her head slightly in between exposures, into the light and away from it and it’s quite amazing in how narrow of a plane the light really worked.
I will post some more images from this shoot soon. We shot a bunch of great portraits in all kinds of different lighting scenarios and I am still editing through it all but this one just stood out.