Herman Leonard is considered to be one of the great jazz scene photographers. He photographed such notable artists as Art Tatum, Dizzy Gillespie, Sarah Vaughan and countless other jazz greats in the smoky haze of jazz clubs with his 4×5 Speed Graphic camera…
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Jazz photographer Herman Leonard dies at 87 (ap)
hermanleonard.com
Herman Leonard Wikipedia article
Iconic Photographer Of Jazz Musicians, Has Died (npr)
Breezy - Beautiful and Free
Over the past few months I’ve started to feel that I’m not living up to my original mission with my photography. The idea I’ve always believed was that we are all beautiful. regardless of skin color, age, weight, height, body type…etc. The beauty is found in who we are and not what we look like. Our western society would like us to believe otherwise so that we’ll buy things to make us feel beautiful but the truth is that buying an outfit won’t make you beautiful. It’ll make you look good but that’s fashion, not beauty.
The new project I’m working on is to attempt to showcase this beauty found within us all. To delve deep into what beauty is and find it in anyone and everyone. To challenge our society’s ideas on beauty. At the moment I’m looking for people interested in being part of this project. If you are contact me by email at jasontag@jasontagphoto.com or by phone at 213.254.5824
The images coming out of these shoots will be collected in a book and the sales of the book will be donated to an AIDS research organization to help find a cure for this disease which is still affecting so many people around the world.
Natalie Minx
I Finally got around to updating the members gallery with a shoot I did with Natalie Minx a few months ago. It was such a fun shoot and working with her was a real treat. Click the link below to view the gallery.
I know I just posted about a bunch of photo apps that I’ve been playing with for months and totally love using. Well yesterday I found one that is pretty cool too!
This one is called Histamatic and bring an even cooler retro look to iPhone photography. It imitates the look and feel of the toy cameras. The weird color aberations, unpredictable focus, and strange color casts. Hipstamtic does it in a fun and exciting way. I know what you’re thinking… I’m a pro photographer with big cameras and able to shoot really high res images and I’m getting excited about low res cameras? weird!
I really love playing with toy cameras and I love the unpredictability of it. not knowing what I’m going to get is part of the magic of film photography that digital just doesn’t recreate. I can get great shots with my digital cameras and I’m able to edit the images to look any way I want which is great but sometimes you just want a camera to have fun with! all in all I love the app and having lots of fun with it!
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Over the past few weeks I’ve been taking some photos on my iPhone. The resolution isn’t that good… well not as good as my Nikon D80… but what the iPhone camera has that my Nikon doesn’t is a whole slew of apps that make taking pictures with it kinda fun!
Kaheka St. Flowers - Taken with iPhone and Toy Camera
My favorite photo app is Toy Camera. It applies post processing that gives the images a look and feel as though you shot it using a Diana or a Holga. You can select from high contrast black and white to over-saturated color, or a vintage warm tone to give it that faded film look. It’s been a lot of fun to take pictures using this app.
My second favorite is an app from the same company that makes Toy Camera called Old Camera. Old Camera is essentially a black and white only, lite version of toy camera. But that doesn’t mean that it’s not just as good as it’s sister app. In fact I use Toy Camera exclusively for color shots and Old Camera for black and white shots. I find using it this way I have a very wide range of looks at my fingertips.
My third favorite photo app for the iPhone is Best Camera. Even though I listed it last, I don’t want anyone to think that it’s not as good as the other two apps. In fact it’s quite a great app, I just tend to use it less than the other two. This app is neat because it’s basically a post processing app that you use to effect photos you’ve already shot with your iPhone camera. However you can also take pictures directly from the app and then apply your effects one at a time until you get the look and feel you want. You can add vignetting, over-saturating colors, muting colors, you can add a border, and even crop the image to a square format. And as a bonus the app can sync up with your facebook or flickr account and upload images directly to those sites. I love this feature and use it quite a lot to get photos up on flickr quickly. It’s definitely something that my fans appreciate. Maybe one of these days I’ll shoot a nude or two this way and post it quickly to the web.
I’ve been asked to shoot for a Maritime zine! I’m so stoked! Ok… I know it’s not like being asked to shoot for Vogue or other high end magazines but it’s a zine with some great stuff and of course a yearly calendar featuring women who work on boats! I’ll share more about it when I know more!
Over the past few days I’ve been mentally preparing myself to teach a friend of mine to take better photos. As a result I’ve been thinking a lot about how I learned to shoot and some thoughts that go way beyond just the mechanical aspects of setting an exposure, framing a shot, and pushing the shutter release. One of the many thoughts that came to mind was about shutter speed.
A lot of the time my shots are just quick shots that I don’t really think about too much. I just point the camera in the right direction(i.e. not at me), set my exposure based on what I think it should be, and push the button. If my shot is too bright then I bring the shutter speed up by a stop of two and shoot again. if it’s too dark, bring it down… you get the idea. The process for doing this is internalized so much for me that I rarely actually think about the exposure settings. I just set, shoot, and on to the next shot. And I typically manage to get the exposures that I expect everytime. But this is what leads me to my new thoughts. If someone is going to spend upwards of 10-15 minutes looking at an image I’ve shot shouldn’t I at least take a little more time in creating it?
As photographers, I think we owe it to our viewers to spend as much time on the shot as you ‘d like the viewer to spend looking at it. It seems only fair. WIth digital photography I think the images have become cheaper because we can shoot thousands in a single session. So what’s one shot among three or four thousand? I know I suffer from this affliction as much as anyone else and I’m starting to think that taking some time with each shot might just result in better images captured. And maybe it might translate to the viewer of the image to spend a few more minutes looking at the image…
Nude, shot with a Nikon 50mm ƒ1.8D
I found out this week that one of my favorite collaborators and muse Sera will be moving back to the contiguous 48 states! We had lots of fun together and she helped me learn some pretty cool things during the two years her and I have been working together. I will certainly miss her talent and skill as a model as well as her personality. It’s a bummer for me for sure. Although there is some sadness associated with this news I wish all the best in her endeavours and I hope that one day our paths cross again.
At the moment I’m looking for a new muse and collaborator. I know that Sera won’t be replaced but maybe I can find another muse who can inspire new art. if you’d like to give it a whirl send me a message.
A few days before my shoot with Natalie I picked up my Diana camera again. I haven’t shot with it for a long time. Mainly because of the chemicals but I do love the surprise of opening the developing tank and seeing what I got. So I’m thinking about shooting more on film and maybe even getting the add-on for the diana that allows you to use 35mm film. Payday is in a few days and I’ll check to see if I can do it. If I can, I will certainly go for it!
The reason is that I love film. I love the way it looks and feels. I like my digital cameras because of the convenience but they seem to lack something that film seems to have in abundance. I don’t know what “it” is, but I do know that I really like “it”… whatever it is. hopefully someday I’ll be able to say precisely what “it” is. It’s like a warmth or a character perhaps that film has. It’s imperfections give it a character that digital just can’t match. I can add it in processing after I’ve shot the image but even then it’s a still a little too uniform for me.
We’ll see what happens…. =)
At the moment I’m finding it difficult to pay for any more than one photo shoot a month. I’d love to shoot more but I have firm belief in paying the models that work with me. It’s important to me because the models I work with have very specialized skills that they have trained and worked hard to receive. And, believe it or not, it feels good to be able to pay them as well. So what I’m looking into now is “Crowdfunding”. It’s similar to crowdsourcing in that a large group of people contributing to a common cause. In this case the “Crowd” would be contributing funds rather than talents/skill/time to a project.
If I do this, I feel that I should open up my gallery of images and make it available free of charge. As it stands now, the gallery has an admission charge. a low one, but still an admission charge. I’m curious what you might think of this idea. leave a comment and let me know what you’re thoughts are.
