the ocular adventures of andrew jorgensen
Instructional
Nodal Ninja: Good as Gold
Oct 4th
5 years ago I started shooting interactive panoramic photography. Before I ever made my first image I spent hours and hours researching what it would take to produce the highest quality panoramas possible and my search for the perfect setup continues to this day. I have used countless different software programs, camera bodies, lenses, tripods, and panoramic tripod heads. Nothing seemed to be perfect or offer all the features I need in one package, and I find myself doing a constant shuffle to make sure I have the best possible setup. This all changed (at least the pano head part) when I came across Nodal Ninja’s Ultimate Line of pano heads. About a year ago I purchased the Nodal Ninja Ultimate R1 and haven’t looked back since.
Its probably worth mentioning that Nodal Ninja does not actually make solid gold heads. I shot the above image’s for this little post and wasn’t all that excited by the original images so i got busy on some heavy color processing. Below you can see a few images of my R1 in action. On the left it sits atop an 80ft tower custom built for me to capture panoramas during the Lightning in a Bottle Music Festival in Irvine, CA. In the middle shot you can see my pano setup relaxing in the photo pit between ~30,000 crazed fans and rapper Wale at the Coachella Music Festival (i know what your thinking, prob not the best place to leave it..). On the right my R1 sits on a cliff above the Sea of Cortez during a week long camping expedition on a remote beach in Mexico…
For those of you interested in hearing why the Nodal Ninja R1 and the EZ-Leveler II has become my go to setup for every panorama I shoot, click below to read on..
Analog comes to life…
Jul 26th
Less than 6 months ago I got an email from the DJhere camp about a project they were working on. They had a new restaurant in the works and wanted to shoot some images to get a print ad campaign going before they even broke ground on the venue build out. This kind of media savvy forward thinking is part of what makes these guys good at what they do. Matt Spencer and his team of creatives are the force behind Firehouse Eatery, Vin de Syrah, SD Creative Media, and now Analog Bar. I have been shooting with them for several years and they always have exciting projects going on. We arranged to shoot at a super cool recording studio just east of San Diego called Secret Cedar. This was the extent of my creative brief:
“Analog is going to be a play on a classic dive bar – reinvented, so it will still have the great design aspect that Syrah has, all though TOTALLY different look, think 1975 – 1985. So for this shoot we are going for a bit of a rock n roll theme, should be a fun one.”
Arriving at the shoot, Matt grabbed a binder out of his truck and proceed to flip through several pages containing images of tall boys, old stereo equipment, and exotic woods. He spouted out ideas, sounding half crazed, as if he was building a restaurant in his head. If you didn’t know Matt you might have thought this guy had lost his mind. I had seen his wild ideas come to life before but it was hard to imagine that these excited ramblings could ever turn into a functioning restaurant, much less one in the heart of San Diego’s super busy and extremely competitive Gaslamp District. However, with Michael Soriano of onairosdesign on board as creative director the project had already taken a step in the right direction.
6 months later, on the corner of 5th and F, Analog Bar is alive and kicking…
They brought me out last week to do some venue shots that will be used for print ads, website, and PR. We had the place to ourselves for the night and got some really great stuff.
Check out a few selects below, then a little behind the scenes video, and finally a link to a full gallery from the shoot.
Behind the Scenes video (if playback is jumpy pause the vid and let it load for a few seconds):
Click here for full gallery
Lowepro Goes to Coachella
May 13th
Anyone who knows me knows I do enjoy a good bag. “A place for everything, and everything in its place” as the saying goes… which is a bit contradictory because the rest of my life is the polar opposite. At any given time my house/studio/car may be a complete wreck, stuff everywhere, post tornado status. But my camera gear is always neatly stored, every piece in it’s specific place, which happens to be inside one of my many Lowepro bags.
Shooting music festivals presets a plethora of challenges. Ever-changing light conditions, weather conditions, locations and subject matter. To be prepared for this means a lot of gear, and shooting Virtual Tours and Stills at the same time means even more. So not only do I need a ton of gear but I need it to be portable, accessible, and safe. It has to be portable (and comfortably so) because it will be carried on my back for 10-12 hours a day. Accessible, because a change in stage may mean a change in lens or the need for a flash, an artist coming off stage into the crowd might call for a wider lens (and fast), and a full memory card will need replacing immediately. Equally as important as being able to access this gear, is knowing when it’s not being used it’s safe. Music Festivals in general (and photo pits in particular) are not known to be the cleanest, driest, or dust free areas in the world. To a normal person, hauling $15k worth of sensitive electronic equipment into these war zones might seem a bit foolish. I don’t have much of a choice so I simply choose the best bag available that meets all my needs.
I started buying Lowepro at the same time I started buying cameras, about 7 years ago. From the first bag I purchased, every single one has been chosen because it met my needs at the time. It wasn’t until recently that I took notice of the fact that I own more than a half dozen camera bags and every single one of them is a Lowepro. This wasn’t by design, I never set out to buy only Lowepro. I am not the type of person who is so brand loyal that I will blindly buy anything with the right logo on it. Every time I added gear to my collection, or was shooting a project that required a specific type of bag I would figure out exactly what my needs were, do extensive research into what was available and buy what made the most sense. It just so happened that Lowepro made sense, every time.
So, needless to say, Lowepro was a major part of my shooting at Coachella this year. In addition to hauling all my gear out there in my usual bags I had the chance to use a Vertex 200 AW as my primary bag. It is an incredible backpack. Super tough, holds tons of gear, and comfortable enough to cart around all day. I will be doing a full review on this bag later so check back if you want to find out why the Vertex is the perfect bag for this type of work.
most of my Lowepro entourage. many of these sit in my RV while I shoot all day, only one lucky bag gets to come out and play while the mayhem is happening.
me and my Vertex 200 AW in action
Lexar Rocks Coachella
May 4th
While they didn’t make the official 2010 lineup, one of the best performers at this year’s Coachella was Lexar. The day before leaving for the desert the UPS man/angel came to my door with all kinds of fun from the good people at Lexar Media. A couple of HIGH SPEED, high capacity memory cards, an equally fast card reader to handle all that speed, and a bunch of swag. When I say high speed, I’m talkin’ cheetah/nascar/supersonic jet type speed (I know, all of those things are totally awesome).
One of the most important factors in capturing the images you see on this site is that when I press that little button on top of my camera it takes a picture. Not in 1.7 seconds, not when the camera decides its ready, not when its done loading the last 53 pictures, but NOW, PRECISELY WHEN I PRESS IT. It helps to be shooting with some of the fastest cameras on the market, but those high frame rates mean nothing if my memory card cant keep up. I shot this way all weekend. Continuous High Speed setting, rattling off (at times) 60-70 images in less than 10 seconds. Then doing it again a few seconds later. Not once, all weekend, while taking over 15,000 images, did I have to wait for my memory card to finish writing. This is absolutely critical to any type of photography in which it is important to capture the “decisive moment“. Which, in my personal experience, is about 99% of the time I’m shooting. Rockstars don’t huddle up and make sure the photographers are all ready before they do the mid air splits, and rarely does that magic moment happen more than once or twice a show. You have to be ready, and so does your gear.
I used Lexar’s high end Professional Series 600x cards, but they have a whole range of products to suit anyone’s needs.
If you only want to take photos of rocks then grab any old memory card. If you want to shoot rockstars, or anything else with a pulse, look to the quality products at Lexar to fill that little memory card slot. I can assure you, your camera and Lexar will get along swimmingly.
For you strobist type folks, I shot the above picture on my desk this afternoon in about 30 minutes with 2 nikon speedlights, 2 mirrors, and a fog machine. Really simple setup that makes a super sweet rockstar product shot. I will be writing a post on how I threw this together later, check back soon…
Finally, if you want to check out some great images and a read a great account of what its like to be one of the few elite photographers selected to shoot the Olympics, check out Jeff Cable’s blog here. Thanks Jeff!
Secret Cedar Studio Shoot
Apr 7th
Secret Cedar Studios Sounds Super Secretive… probably because it is.
Hidden in an unassuming blue warehouse 50 feet from the end of an small airstrip and 20 minutes east of downtown San Diego sits a state of the art recording studio with an impressive history and client list to match. Bloc Party, Death Cab For Cutie, Kieth Richards, and the Silversun Pickups have all made the studio their workspace, and today we would make it ours. DJhere, the creators of Vin De Syrah wine bar, are opening a new Burger and Music Bar in downtown San Diego called Analog. Although the restaurant/bar isn’t finished being built out, the owners wanted to come up with some marketing images that they could run prior to launch to generate excitement. Built in 1975, Secret Cedar provided the perfect location for a photo shoot with both a highly “musical” and strongly “analog” feel. The images (as per usual with this client) will be used for full page ad’s in 944 and Pacific magazine and in bi-weekly email blasts.
The studio was both a perfect location and a lighting nightmare. With more character than you could shake a stick at I knew immediately that once I could get a few speed lights wrangled around the room I would be able to make some pretty exciting images.
Check out a few standouts below, if you want some more detailed strobist type info and a full gallery follow the “more” link after the the photos.
