As an alternative view to yesterday's popular post, there's nothing wrong with being an amateur. I’m an amateur soccer player, an amateur cook, an amateur skier, designer, racecar driver, and flyfisherman. And I’m happy to be an amateur at all of those things. Actually I LOVE being an amateur at all of those things - it allows me to dabble, make a ton of mistakes, goof around, drop the ball, not care when something else... read more ›
Apr
06
Apr
05
So you want to be a professional? Photographer. Director. Golfer. Belly dancer. Designer. Waiter. Model. If you’re wondering if you’ve got what it takes to go pro, try it. Seriously. Quit what you're doing now and go there. You’ll know soon after you’ve tried to go there whether or not you’re in the right spot. If you don’t have what it takes, it will be obvious - going pro will be too hard, other things... read more ›
Apr
04
Whenever I give a talk or host a show, my fav part is the Q&A. Rather than me guessing what I should share, you just ask away. Especially the hard questions that you can't learn in photography books: landing clients, overcoming failures, working with challenging clients, legal, gear, portfolio questions, whatever it might be. In this year's first #AskChase version of chasejarvisLIVE, I got thru about 40 of your questions in the 90 min show.... read more ›
Mar
26
From cloud 9 to the basement. Yesterday's epic adventure whipped a 180 again today... If yesterday was chocolate cake, today was chopped liver. Reason being, we were completely shut out. Blanked. Skunked. As in zero photos, zero video footy. Didn't even get the camera outta the bag. Mother nature can giveth, but she can also... read more ›
Mar
25
I've been doing this stuff for a good chunk of my life - the only career I've ever had. And so when I'm talking about the quality of a day--the light, the crew, the shots, the vibe--I've got a fair bit to compare it to. Thousands of days on set. That said, today ranks pretty high on my list of epic days.... read more ›
Mar
21
In case you're dropping in on this post out of context, you should read yesterday's post and things will all make sense. In short, I'm doing daily 'diary' entries while working on a campaign for REI in lovely Telluride, Colorado in hopes of shedding some light on what photographers and directors types like me actually do on a... read more ›
Mar
18
How to succeed as a creative. How to fail. How to translate stills to video. Gear. Insight. Fear. Challenge. Agents, education and more. Your questions and mine answered. If you missed--or want to re-watch--the recent LIVE broadcast of chasejarvisLIVE: a conversation with Vincent Laforet, here's an edited 35 minute version for your perusal. The full 90-minute version of the original live broadcast, featuring extra Q&A, is available via our new audio-only podcast. Click... read more ›
Mar
17
Over the next week, I'll be holding onto the last few official days of winter - shooting a next year's holiday campaign up in the mountains. In prep for the project, we were perusing a few reference images from my archive and I stumbled on a few I like. Here's one above, and a few more after the jump. While I AM looking forward to the spring and summer just as much as anybody, I'm... read more ›
Mar
16
More often than not, the underlying vision behind a great piece of art - a photo, a film, a painting, a play, a whatever - comes from a single source. Dostoevsky hatched the vision for The Brothers Karamozov, Andreas Gursky for his huge surreal images, Warhol for his Brillo boxes. But in almost every case, making art, sharing it, selling it, giving it wings, and cultivating it's adoption throughout popular culture requires that the creative... read more ›
Mar
15
I stumbled on this a while ago and forgot to share... The controversial UK teen show came to the USA. Let's skip the debate about the morality of the content--whether it's exploitative or informative or neither. On a purely visual basis, I'd say Writer/Director Evan Silver comes up gold in the promotional intro to MTV's "Skins" about the youth gone wild. IMHO it's dope. Inspirational cinematography that's not over the top technically. Well written. A... read more ›