Portrait of Carissa Moore

New portrait of 3-time world champion surfer Carissa Moore.

Carissa Moore by Jonas Jungblut

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.

Carissa Moore by Jonas Jungblut

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…

Carissa Moore by Jonas Jungblut

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!

Carissa Moore by Jonas Jungblut

Retro style portrait

A retro style black and white portrait on white of model Tiana

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.

All natural light

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.

portrait of Constantin von Jascheroff

Natural light portrait of German actor Constantin von Jascheroff in Berlin.

Constantin von Jascheroff by Jonas Jungblut

I was in Berlin recently and met up with Constantin von Jascheroff for a quick portrait shoot. We have been working on these portraits for over a decade now. Everytime I am in Berlin we meet and take some portraits. I’ll post some more over the next weeks, but this one stood out. We had shot for a while and ended up in this location (his front door with a long dark hallway behind him). He shaved his face except for his mustache for this last set up. and when he told me that he had just finished dubbing Tarantino’s latest release “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” (starring Brad Pitt, Leo DiCaprio and Margot Robbie) I couldn’t help but tell him he reminded me of Pitt.

Natural light portrait

Natural light portrait of artist Nikola Bartenbach in Austria.

portrait of Nikola Bartenbach

I am currently in Austria working on a few personal projects. One of those is portraying local people and recently I photographed artist Nikola Bartenbach.

This was photographed with no light modification. He was standing in a doorway with a dark garage behind him and the light just wrapped around him like this. Finding the right light for portraits is often times easier than one would think, or maybe I have done it for long enough to where it just seems to be like that.

When you are on the road and can’t bring light modifiers or don’t have access to any being able to see the light is essential. Travel portraiture mostly relies on the right light but the same practice can be applied to a more organized portrait. Just spending a few minutes looking around the area and locating a spot that is naturally suited for a portrait can make all the difference.

Editorial publication in Naturally Danny Seo

Lots of new work in the summer issue of Naturally Danny Seo

Over the last months I photographed a piece on LePrunier, a Sacramento based brand that makes plum beauty oil, a story on GT’s Kombucha that featured GT Dave, the founder of the brand and a travel story about my very own, Santa Barbara! The Santa Barbara story featured great local spots like East Beach Tacos, Garde, Jake and Jones, Make Smith Leather, the Lark, Satellite, Bibi Ji, Lotusland, Auto Camp and the Hotel Californian. And last but not least my good, artist buddy Nelson Parrish.

Check out the tearsheets below:

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Photographing 20 Strangers in Isla Vista

Step out of your comfort zone and photograph 20 random people on the street.

I studied photography at Brooks Institute in Santa Barbara. Known for educating students on the highest level of technical skill when it comes to photography there was one (amongst others) infamous assignment that dealt with approaching a stranger in order to photograph them. This was obviously not intended to teach a technical but a communication skill. It also forced you to deal with your fears and doubts. It challenged your comfort zone. It was called 25 Strangers.
Basically you had to produce a portfolio of 25 random strangers. Build a pop-up portrait studio in a park, photograph the strangers in a bar, at the pool, the retirement home or at the law firm on the corner of your street. I don’t remember the specific rules of the assignment but I put up a white background and had each of my strangers add a word to a sentence on a small chalk board and then I photographed them with the chalk board. I called it: 25 Strangers build a sentence. Surprisingly they didn’t. The sentence was grammatically and logically just … not a sentence. No idea what went wrong there…?

Anyways. The other day I remembered this assignment and decided to revisit it. 15 years and many strangers in front of my lens, from celebrities to homeless people in the back alleys of Mumbai, later I figured I should be a lot better at this. But it still was challenging the comfort zone a little. No control over the situation and you have to talk a random stranger into taking their portrait.

So Hugo and I went into Isla Vista on a Friday morning and approached a bunch of strangers. Isla Vista is a blend of University students, homeless people and middle aged surfers. Generally a demographic open to random experiences. This worked in our favor I think. Still, it took a little time to get groovy with.

The amazing thing about doing this was people opening up and telling stories. As you can see in the video some of the strangers shared memories, vented or maybe simply wanted to chat. It was amazing to see how quickly one can dive a lot deeper into a community by simply striking up a conversation with random people on the street. And using a portrait project like this is of course the perfect ice breaker.

I do this type of thing on assignment all the time but it is different when you go into your own community and when there is no agenda or story that you need to tell. Just letting your ego go, the creative juices flow and welcoming any input with open arms. Fun!

Photographic prints on wood

How to mount prints from a laser printer on wood

Here is a video I created to show how I mount laser prints on plywood. This is a way to create wall art that doesn’t break the bank but has a pretty edgy, cool look to it. I printed the photographs here in Santa Barbara at one of the local FedEx places. A black and white 8.5x11 print is $0.14!!! Doesn’t get any cheaper. And you can go up to 32” wide depending on the printers at your local FedEx office!

Laser prints are cool because they have strong contrast and there is no ink that can bleed or fade. By no means would I consider these archival but I have some hanging in my house and studio that are over 10 years old and they haven’t faded! Laser prints became popular in the street art scene for wall pieces and murals and if you haven’t played with them, give ‘em a try.

The video above goes through me making a set of 15 outside my Santa Barbara studio so follow along there but I’ll also give you a quick list of what you need:

-laser print
-1/2” to 3/4” plywood (cabinet grade if possible)
-modd podge glue and sealer (get it at Michaels or on Amazon). I like the matt option. YOU ONLY NEED A SMALL AMOUNT!
-a roller to flatten the print and squeeze the glue around

This does take some practice and you’ll find your own ways of doing it but since it’s so cheap you can play quite a bit. I recommend doing a couple to figure out what works for you.

Most important: Have Fun (and I hope you get some entertainment out of my instructional video…)!

HD cinemagraph from Santa Barbara

HD high quality cinemagraph shot in Santa Barbara

Here is another HD high quality cinemagraph I shot recently. It took me a while to figure out how to make these cinemagraphs HD. There is of course flixel but as far as I can tell they are putting out a video file instead of a gif. Making video files is easy to do yourself in Photoshop. The tricky part is to code the embed code to loop and autoplay. It is not as universal as a gif but rendering the cinemagraph as a high quality video file just makes it look so much better.

We shot this HD cinemagraph in Santa Barbara. The creeks are all full of water these days so it was easy to find a pretty waterfall and put this together.

At the Bookstore

stock images photographed at a bookstore

Finding a good bookstore these days isn’t that easy. In Santa Barbara we can call ourselves lucky to have Chaucer’s, an amazing bookstore. During a stock photo shoot a little while ago we were in the area and so we stopped in and I took this image of the model browsing the collection.

HD Cinemagraph from Nojoqui Falls

High quality HD Cinemagraph by the creek at Nojoqui Falls

playing with a cinemagraph during a quick excursion to Nojoqui Falls. The trail was closed and we were told by the ranger not to disregard the closer since it was raining heavily and the hillside was in danger of sliding. Anyways, I set up the camera by the creek and took footage to create this cinemagraph.

This is an HD cinemagraph as well. Not a gif. I created it in Photoshop and exported as a video file. Some creative embed coding later and here you have a high quality hd cinemagraph!

Everest in a Stairwell

Climbing 29,097 feet in a LA skyscraper

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.

Dos Pueblos High School Engineering Academy

Amir Abo-Shaeer and Emily Shaeer for The Townmarket

It’s always amazing when you find out something about your town that you had no idea about. Cue the Dos Pueblos Engineering Academy. Founder Abo-Shaeer and Emily Shaeer run a program that teaches high school aged kids all kinds of fantastic skills and knowledge in the greater realm of engineering.

I was perplexed when I visited. The amount of resources available to students is fantastic. From CNC machines to computers, tools and of course most importantly knowledgeable help and not to mention space, lots of it! Teenagers were programming machines, writing code, building things and discussing projects within teams. I wanted to stay and join!

The Academy is linked to Dos Pueblos High School in Goleta but students from Santa Barbara also visit the school. Overall a very healthy mix of kids, lots of girls and ethnic diversity. I felt like I had discovered a Santa Barbara gem…

Santa Barbara trail running

photographing running on and off trail in Santa Barbara

trail running in Santa Barbara by photographer Jonas Jungblut

I am lucky to have a solid runner as a buddy so we head out every now and then to photograph some running for stock or portfolio images here in Santa Barbara. The terrain is perfect for running of all kinds. From trail running to urban running, Santa Barbara has it covered. Difficulty from easy to painful, all here…

urban running in Santa Barbara by photographer Jonas Jungblut

In addition to all the terrain, Santa Barbara also offers pretty ideal weather year round. Running in shorts and only a shirt is usually possible throughout the winter.

All these elements combined make for a perfect backdrop to photograph running around here.

trail running in Santa Barbara by photographer Jonas Jungblut

Portrait of Santa Barbara Supervisor Das Williams for The Town Market

Photographing local politicians

Das Williams by Santa Barbara portrait photographer Jonas Jungblut

I have been working closely with The Town Market here in Santa Barbara and part of what we have been doing is documenting (in this case taking portraits) of local people that are having an impact on the community. Das Williams came up and having run into him from time to time over the past decade I was excited to finally be able to photograph him.

We met at his house and I found a spot to put up this blue background. I lit him with a Profoto monoblock but then also decided to use natural light for a variation. The above portrait is the natural light version, it worked well with the pastel colors of the background and his shirt. Shot on the 501cm Hasselblad and Kodak Portra 400 film.

Portrait of Holly Williams in Nashville

An editorial portrait of the singer/songwriter at the White’s Mercantile in Nashville

This was photographed for Naturally Danny Seo magazine and we only had a few minutes to figure it out. Holly was super sweet and after we played around with a couple of poses I took the above image and we were done.

I lit this with a single Q-flash that was popped into the ceiling, off to the side. Nothing too precise but given the timeframe it was the best thing to do.

There is something about 3 minute portrait set ups. Love them or hate them, you gotta be able to whip something up…

portrait of a spear fisherman in Santa Barbara

the challenges of underwater photography

There are some technical challenges to be considered when photographing with professional equipment in the water (and believe me I know all about technical issues. I once drowned $5000 worth of camera gear in a leaky housing off the coast of Tofino, B.C. during a shoot). But they can usually be solved with money. You just throw enough money at the challenge and it goes away. Not so with the practical challenges. You have to keep yourself above the water. But you are missing at least one arm and hand combo to aid with that since you are holding the camera. There are currents, waves, wildlife, all messing with you. Then you can barely frame through the viewfinder while trying to stay afloat. Changing any setting to adjust for exposure is a pain. There are drops of water on the front lens… the list goes on and eventually hits the point where you have to be cool with swimming where there might be sharks lurking.

But all that makes for images taken in the water being just kinda special. Underwater or in-water photography has definitely become easier over the years but it’s still difficult to master.

The above portrait was taken off the coast of Santa Barbara. I was following a friend around while he was spearfishing. He was actively trying to catch some fish so he didn’t waste time posing for me and I had to guess where he would pop up after being “under” for a while. Fun exercise…

Portrait of Cisco Pineda in Pasadena

One of the portraits from an editorial shoot featuring Cisco Pineda of Cisco Brothers Sustainable Furniture. Photographed at Cisco’s house in Pasadena.

Cisco cooked a fantastic lunch for us, one of the perks of being an editorial photographer: sometimes the subjects treat you to something truly unique…

Portrait of actor Constantin von Jascheroff in Berlin

I first met and photographed Constantin, or Conna, at his house when he must have been no older than 16 and then a year later at the old NSA surveillance station on the Teufelsberg in Berlin. A relict from the cold war built on top of the rubble from world war 2, dramatic but to the Berliner: just another piece to an insane puzzle.

After that second shoot a few years went by but for the next one we booked a studio in Berlin and spent a day. We played around for hours. I went from one lighting set up to the next and from dark to light, inside to outside, we changed outfits from casual to dressed-up to not dressed at all and towards the end a bunch of looks I can’t show here. I would say this shoot was definitely the most creatively unrestricted we ever did together. It would prove to produce the most powerful portrait I would take of Conna to date and likely ever.

Constantin von Jascheroff

After that I would call him up every time I was in Berlin and we would shoot some portraits. At his house, him jumping on the trampoline in the backyard. He would make crazy faces or pose super serious. Me always trying to catch the vulnerable moments in between.

We both share a love for Porsches and one year he had started to accumulate all these cars. I was excited but I also was worried because taking a portrait in front of a car is very difficult to pull off without it looking super cheesy. Especially since he was still young. It’s one thing to have an old man in front of a vintage Ferrari or something but a young guy in front of a 90’s Porsche is a tough one.

Over all these years one image from that shoot in the studio stood its ground. It was obvious to me right away when I first saw it that this was a special portrait and it has remained as one of my favorite photographs I have taken. It’s one of these moments where he was sort of in between posing and relaxing. This photograph really pushed me towards shooting in this style and it is in my mind every time I take a portrait that has the potential to rival it.

Constantin von Jascheroff

Constantin von Jascheroff

Catalog shoot for the Walking Company in Carpinteria

These images are from a commercial catalog photoshoot I photographed in Carpinteria for the Walking company a little while ago.

Some beautiful portraits and lifestyle with the always stunning backdrop of Santa Barbara. This was shot in January, not too bad…

Being a Santa Barbara based commercial photographer I usually have to travel for shoots so when the local jobs come through it’s always nice!

It’s also only in Santa Barbara that your assistant drives you to the shoot in a vintage Alfa Romeo… which you then put the model in front of, of course…

portrait in Myanmar

An umbrella for the sun - portrait of a guide in Myanmar

I was on assignment for Naturally Danny Seo mag in northern Thailand and we were so close to the border to Myanmar that we crossed it for a couple hours one morning. We explored the border town and then went to a temple where this young woman was showing us around. She offered an umbrella to us but we didn't take it. After walking around for a little while with her following our every step I realized how the light colored floor acted as a perfect fill light so I asked her if I could take her portrait. She happily agreed!