NEW Book: Saint Petersburg Russia

Book: Saint Petersburg Russia from Lou Jones on Vimeo.


Now available through Blurb.com

For More Info and to order Click Here.

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47 Most Fascinating Apps

About a year ago I passed one of my favorite haunts in the middle of the night & a homeless guy was standing under neon lights begging for spare change.  He had his hand out for alms but at the same time he was talking on a cell phone.  What's wrong with this picture?  It is a crazy world we live in.  A schizophrenic one.  People starving & our biggest concern is what "app" to add to our "smartphone".  (I think app stands for application or apparition or appropriate or something like that.)

$.99.  Two bucks.  Three dollars.  FREE.  There are millions to be made buying/selling additional purposes for a telephone.  They are practically traded on the New York Stock Exchange.  Apps are what makes iPHONEs, DROIDs, BLACKBERRYs, PALMs brilliant.  CAVEAT EMPTOR.  There are lots of gimmicks.

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PDN Photo Plus Expo: Speedlites + Speedlights

PDN Photo Plus Expo 2010
Jacob K. Javits Convention Center
New York City
October 28-30, 2010

Friday, Oct 29, 2010 - 3:45 PM to 5:45 PM

Speedlites + Speedlights

Lou Jones' PDN Workshop Intro from Lou Jones on Vimeo.

So much has changed in photography recently. The new capabilities of digital lighting have stirred interest in Speedlights. In this seminar, Lou Jones will focus on topics featured in his book Speedlights & Speedlites: Creative Flash Photography at Lightspeed, a how to book exploring the versatile features and enormous potential of these little marvels. Topics include diffusing, bouncing, separating and flash modes. Attendees will learn how to use single and multiple speedlights for event, commercial, corporate and sports photography. Responding to feedback from last year's seminar, Jones has tweaked his Speedlight demonstration to address a full range from basic needs to the technical requirements of more advanced photographers. All attendees will learn ways to use these versatile, portable marvels to better react to their environment and champion difficult lighting conditions. More importantly they will see how to capitalize on the sophisticated technology of these compact tools in order to create a unique lighting style, be it cutting edge or classic.

Register/More Information

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SEVEN WONDERS of my WORLD

In my photographic life, I never set out searching for “wonders”.  I was just bitten by the travel bug.  This list is just a result of attrition.

A few years ago Morgan Freeman & Jack Nicholson made a movie.  Although with top tier stars & a huge budget it was not their best effort but it introduced a phrase into the American lexicon “The Bucket List”;  Places you want to go or things you want to do before you “kick the bucket”.  I think most people dream about it in one way or another.  For most of my travel life it has been foremost in my mind even though I have never given the slightest acknowledgment of death.

The ancients made up a list centuries ago: Seven Wonders of the World.  We memorized it in high school.  The man-made monuments are legends that have lost much of their significance but the concept still lingers:  Great Pyramid of Giza, Hanging Gardens of Babylon, Statue of Zeus at Olympia, Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, Mausoleum of Maussollos at Halicarnassus, Colossus of Rhodes, Lighthouse of Alexandria.

The idea seems a little artificial to me but it begs the question “what are the most amazing things I personally have seen before I die."  Hopefully it has evolved over time & I continually add new phenomena as I get older.

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Worst Airplane Flights

I fly…
Not professionally…but for most of my assignments. And because I so often don’t have feet on the ground I get into a lot of trouble. Not intentionally. Just as an “innocent bystander”.

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Stop Motion Video: 1933 Bugatti

Staff at the end of Shoot

So much of commercial photography is engineering.  Clients usually supply you with who or what, maybe when, but solving the problems of where & how are your responsibility.  Confronted with taking a photograph of a priceless 1933 Bugatti automobile on display in a museum exhibition meant we could not have it delivered to our studio.  The museum had plenty of room to work in but shooting cars is one of the most difficult lighting tasks.  The light source has to be larger than the object.  When we shoot shiny, metallic vehicles outside, soft overcast morning or evening sunlight makes the entire sky the light source.  But inside we have to assemble huge, complicated light banks.  For this job the added complication was to construct, transport, then reassemble the light on location.

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From Russia With Love

Touch down at Pulkovo Airport (LED).  Hired car driving me to the hotel in the middle of the city.  Nose pressed to the window, staring out at unfamiliar landscape into a gray light.  Drab, overcast, partially raining.  A new city.  A new country.  The billboards are the only color albeit unintelligible.  A foreign language.  But I spot a word I can almost read.  Then another.  Like a child I phonetically sound out each syllable & guess at the unrecognizable leftovers.  By the time we reach my destination the startling revelation that I can read Russian becomes apparent.

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BBQ

Red states Blue states Barbecue steaks

When traveling I can go several days without eating. In fact I often do.  But with assistants & clients in tow I have to be much more conscientious about sustenance & entertainment.  Clients & art directors like nice restaurants.

Because I am always in an alien environment, finding the appropriate eatery can be daunting. Concierges at tony hotels can be helpful but many of the flop houses I am forced to frequent have very pedestrian tastes.  There are only so many chain restaurants you can tolerate. OLIVE GARDENs or OUTBACKs get tired after a while.

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Video: Thriving After Brain Injury

They say all good photography begins with a good client.  In the case of Massachusetts Association for the Blind it is doubly true.  Their assignment to tell the story for their traumatic head injury division was the perfect storm: an extremely compelling story combined with a reliance on images to communicate.

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The Beltway Sniper

On a cold, asphalt black night in 2002, leaves falling, I found myself standing in a vast parking lot.  The queasy sodium vapor stadium lighting made it quite obvious that the minivan I was renting was not going to work.  My assistant & I trudged back to the office & demanded another vehicle—anything but white.

All over the news, in Washington, DC that fall, mass hysteria put everyone on the alert for a white van.  All eyes were peeled for what came to be known as the Beltway Sniper.  I do not often capitulate to public opinion but I was not going to be pulled over for being a terrorist that day.  We were on assignment & after I related my reasons, Avis begrudgingly gave me another color & we were on our merry way.

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Video: Paris

A selection of content from Lou Jones' trips to Paris for a new Book titled "Paris" compiled and designed into a short video by Lisa Santoro.


Paris by Lou Jones from Lou Jones on Vimeo.

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Photo Remix: Red

This will be the first installment of an ongoing series of photographs from my vast catalog where we examine varying themes that connect these images to each other. These themes can be as simple as a location or event, and as complicated as an emotion implied or felt from viewing these images.

We encourage you to comment your feelings on these and possible other themes that you might wish to see in the future.

So I give you this first Theme: RED.

Ever since I was a child red has been my favorite color and has carried through my life to influence my art in varying ways, through politics, nature and fashion. Often changing its meanings as a noun, verb and adjective Red can easily be found through out my work.

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Collecting photographers: Charles Moore RIP

Taken By Frank Siteman

I grew up at a time when Life & Look magazines were middle-America’s eyes on the world. Saturday Evening Post was another outlet that used the photograph as prime communication & informed a nation hungry for a glance. We watched the latest fads & trends & news printed alter the world just beyond our reach. And we assumed we were part of it. My parents indulged my rabid curiosity. Besides subscribing to all the picture publications we were one of the first African American families to have a television. My sister & I sat on the floor surrounded by playmates & their parents watching the small black/white screen.

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Sands of Time

According to an English system of time units, a “moment” is equal to one minute & thirty seconds. Take a moment & think about that.

Throughout the ages some philosophers have argued that time is a basic property of the universe, others claim it to be an illusion or construct of the mind. The beginnings of civilization required knowledge of seasons, length of a year, month & day. All the world’s religions have given it a central role: in astrology, stories of creation, cyclical world histories, notions of eternity, etc.

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Keeping up with the Joneses

 
Jones Soda

Whether or not it is true, parents are accused of screwing up the lives of all their children.  From poor potty training to incest, overcompensating materialistically, creating a sense of entitlement & other neuroses, kids don’t stand a chance.  In fact I blamed my own mother for crippling my fledgling creativity.  Her crime: discouraging me from pouring chocolate milk over my Rice Krispies.  At the very least we would be millionaires by now.  And my father repeated his stories so often that I hate authority & I have never held a job.  But from the beginning their most unforgivable transgression was the name—JONES.

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CDIA Podcast: Olympics

For over twenty years I've been shooting the Olympics. It's the biggest cross-cultural, international event in the world. Every four years a host country builds a whole new city. I have done all of the games both Summer & Winter during that time. David Tames who was at the Center for Digital Imaging Art(CDIA)at the time did a podcast with me which you can see here...

CDIABU.com - Interview with Lou Jones - Olympic Photographer

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Death Row

David Lee Powell #612

Ellis 1 Unit

Huntsville, Texas

June 1993

In 1990 I embarked on a personal odyssey to investigate capital punishment in the USA.  Like Ulysses it took my studio seven years to find our way home.  The journey resulted in two books both titled Final Exposure: Portraits from Death Row & dozens of exhibitions in galleries, schools & state capital buildings.

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Collecting Photographers: David Burnett

 Recently I ran into David Burnett at,VISA POUR L’IMAGE in Perpignan, France. We reminisced about all the places we had run into each other around the world. Then I flashed back to our first meeting.

One of the more humiliating things in this business is all the infinitely long lines we occasionally endure to obtain credentials. Like a typical news schlub, I was standing in an interminable line of cameramen & reporters & photographers at Logan Airport. The Secret Service was doing security checks of the media. Mesomorphs in dark suits were surreptitiously listening to wires coiling out of their ears. Standing behind me in line was a hirsute photographer with a worn khaki jacket full of bulging pockets. Somehow under all that hair I recognized a face that I had only seen in magazines. In between his past Pulitzer Prize photographs from Vietnam & his future Picture of the Year photographs, he was in Boston covering the Pope John Paul ii visit to USA.

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Batteries Not Included

#$+%&@*:-P! Are you as frustrated with batteries as I am? Although they are everywhere—as ubiquitous a part of modern technology as pixels, they are the bane of my existence. Buy any device: pocket radio, wristwatch, flashlight, hearing aid, Hot Wheels toy car track & right on the package, “BATTERIES NOT INCLUDED”. We can put a man on the moon but we cannot develop a decent battery. That science lags behind all the other marvelous inventions made over the last century.

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Anatomy of a Portrait: Governor Wilder

Normally I am just a garden variety schlub but in a case of mistaken identity, I was running for a shuttle bus at some forgotten airport.  With camera bag & suitcase weighing me down, I was sweating profusely.  Just before I reached the vehicle it pulled away.  I was livid.  Then it screeched to a halt in the middle of the intersection.  Puffing I lumbered the remaining distance & climbed aboard.  The driver looked me up & down disappointedly & exclaimed he thought I was Governor Wilder.  Like he would be carrying his own luggage.

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An Evening With Lou Jones

Travel + PHOTOGRAPHY

An evening with Lou Jones

Travel with Lou Jones around the world and domestically in a manner that can be managed by anyone. See how to avoid the pitfalls, jump the hurdles and give your client more than they bargained for. Learn how to multitask in any language, research a foreign environment before and after you get there, and keep healthy for the duration. There is a lot of misinformation distributed by travel agencies, government sources and colleagues. Through photographic examples and anecdotes we will dispel the myths and show you how to “build travel muscles” for every contingency.

Link to the Invitation HERE.

WHEN:
January 14, 2010 at 06:00 PM
-to-
January 14, 2010 at 09:30 PM

EP Levine
23 Drydock Avenue,
BOSTON, MA 02210

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