As a springboard from all the portrait work I’ve done over the past three years, I, at some time during that process, became really attuned/enamored/moved by people’s faces and started experimenting with a new creative study. Internally we’re calling it “60”. In short, it’s really simple: I’m taking 60 second video portraits of people. No instruction, no direction, no coaching, nothing. Just the camera pointed at them for a minute.
Although the concept is simple, I’ve found the results to be pretty interesting. At a fundamental level, the human face says a lot, even without the person saying anything at all.
While I’ve been at this for a while, I thought it would be time to start sharing some of these portraits here on the blog. This chase jarvis 60 features world-renowned explorer Mike Horn. You may remember Mike from my Pangaea experience across the South China Sea with Panerai watches. [Lots of posts here, here, and here.] It was a life changing experience for me, and a good bit of it was getting to know Mike. Hopefully you’ll get to know him a little here as well.
Love to know your thoughts.
[aside: if you are interested in seeing these videos when I post them to youtube, rather than just the occasional ones that make it here to the blog, you’re invited to subscribe to my youtube channel here. thx]
Shout out to McKenzie Stubbert for the music.
Hey Chase,
Looking forward to seeing the people you capture in this way. I think moving portraits are very interesting. As far as the length discussion goes, I’m not sure 60 seconds is long enough. Each time I shoot one I kind of let it predict it’s own length.
I have one that is 4 minutes long on my site and many people have sat through the whole thing. Somebody a few comments back was suggesting they are two long at 60 seconds. My vote it keep them there, or longer.
I actually used a moving self portrait on my about page on my new site launch. Check it.
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Chase, I am a first time visitor to your blog and I find this post very interesting. I am running through my mind possible subjects to try this on and wish I would have come across it before Christmas as I would have used this in a video Christmas card.
I congratulate you on your successes and thank you for the inspiration, it is exactly what I need to get off my butt and exercise my passion!
That was INTENSE!!! Being the subject in one of these must be difficult…staring into the camera for a minute…but I love it cos I’ve not seen this done before…so its something new and fresh for me…
One of the best examples of the “60 second portrait” is from the New Order video “Round and Round” in the 1980s:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kHgMvWmIs4