Posts tagged all american rejects
Last #JJ submission for #stripes. @nickysixpack and the resplendent Dexter at home.
Submission for today’s #JJ forum, #stripes. Tyson Ritter from the All-American Rejects backstage at the OC Fair.
The First Time I Photographed The All-American Rejects:
Sometimes it’s fun to participate in the notion of Throwback Thursday. This time let’s take a trip back to October 7, 2006, the first time I photographed AAR or as some other folks remember it, my 23rd birthday. This show was at Seton Hall University in South Orange, NJ. The guys were on the Verizon Wireless Campus Crawl tour. It was a lovely night wherein I made friends that I still have today.
The shot of Nick and Mike toward the end here has particular memories for me. I was standing stage right backstage when I saw them move toward one another. I ran back around into the photo pit, fully hurdled a folding chair that had arrived from campus security, landed and got my shot. Like a ninja swan I had soared over portable furniture to achieve my goal. Upon walking back to my original post backstage I walked into the base of the light stand and hit it so hard that I instantly had a bump in my shin the size of a grapefruit. I am the definition of grace. Happy Thursday!
All-American Rejects: Tyson Ritter at the Grove of Anaheim, Anaheim, CA
Another Lensblr submission post, today will be a lot of that. I continue to believe that you can learn everything you need to know about someone by looking at their shoes. I’ve been photographing this band for more than six years now. I believe this shot accurately embodies the current incarnation of Ty’s stage presence in the calmer moments of a show.
The All-American Rejects at the Grove Photos: Part 2
Another photo set of wonderfully talented friends. It just doesn’t get old. It was a really great day and night of great people I’m so fortunate to be surrounded by. The caliber of each of these human beings is well above average. I’m talking about everyone in the photos, not just the four guys you see on a poster. Dexter’s a people too, so that statement applies to him as well. :)
The Great All American Muppets Vs Puppets Caper: Featuring Nick & Dex Wheeler!
Addressing the most pressing issue of this election, what is the difference between a muppet and a puppet? I asked my friend, Nick Wheeler, Muppet aficionado to clarify this for us.
I also would like to take a moment to note that the most used deco in this video is misspelled. I can, in fact, spell the word “political”. See? I just did it.
The All-American Rejects at The Grove of Anaheim
Thursday November 1 I shot my lovely friends The All-American Rejects in Anaheim. It was, as always, the right kind of photographic fun. The kind that reminds me how much I love using my camera in the right musical setting. Hope you enjoy the photos as much as I enjoyed shooting them. This is the first of a couple photo sets from this show coming your way. There will be some kind of video component at some point as well. Mutual artistry among friends is what makes my world go round.
My Creative Neverland : A Rant.
Lately my brain seems to be moving at about 10,000 miles per minute. It’s as though it has lay dormant for some time and has been awoken by some mysterious force. Something happened and I went through a creative drought. I know what happened, I don’t know that the details are important so much as it is that I felt a kind of emotional pain for some time best not shared with the world at large.
My brain, my heart, my spirit - they’re awake. They are in concert with one another, and they are on fire. It’s been some time since I’ve felt this way. Energized and alive. I’m ready to or already have shed the past that desperately needed shedding and I look toward the future with excitement and vigor, rather than dread and fear. I look at a new challenge and I can’t wait to be sleep deprived.
It may sound ludicrous (oh how I love that word) but some of my best work has happened in that little twilight zone my brain enters when I’ve not slept enough and have been fueled solely on caffeine for just past the right amount of time. This is where I find my creative Neverland. Second brainwave to the right and straight on to insanity. This isn’t about the final product, it doesn’t matter if the lagoon is full of mermaids when I get there - it’s about the flight, about the journey, about what comes between those little hours of “How the hell am I still awake?” and “I’ll see you next Tuesday.”
That’s where my brain absolutely eats. For the last few years every time I picked up my camera it was to either earn a paycheck or because I felt obligated to document something. I lost my inspiration. It wasn’t fun anymore. I lost sight of the fact that when I was 14 years old I said to myself, “When I grow up, I want to take photos for a living. I want to take photos of rock stars for a living. I want to be the visual translation of their music. I want people to see a show - the way I see a show. I want to learn how to light a studio shot from David LaChappelle. I want to shoot Green Day. I want the New Kids on the Block to get back together so I can shoot them. I want to shoot No Doubt. I want to shoot living legends like Bon Jovi. I want to see that no dream is too big and have that be my reality.”
ALL of those things have happened to me, for me, as a part of me. Guess what? For a while there, I forgot that. I forgot that 14 year old girl with her cheap camera in the bowels of the Atlanta music scene. I forgot that she was around for the death rattle of legendary clubs there. I forgot. I got tired, and I got jaded. I got sick of award shows, airplanes, not knowing what day it was or where I was, I got sick of my dream. Instead of continuing to evolve I got stagnant.
Then, I fell in love. I fell in love in a way I didn’t even know was possible. I found myself so connected on a level I didn’t know existed, linked to another human being. I found my opposite half to make me whole. Something I was told by stories would happen someday but I had grown to believe would never happen. It was real, I had found my prince.
Then, I got my heart ripped out. Who cared what photos I had to take. Who cared what I wanted to do to make film. I didn’t know how to feel anymore. I didn’t know what to feel. I did the bare minimum to make sure I stayed afloat, I wandered around like a lost puppy who’d given up looking for their family.
Something happened a few months ago. I picked up my camera for the sake of shooting again. I did a photo shoot I’d been talking about doing for more than a year. I didn’t do it to pay the rent, I didn’t do it to buy anything, I did it because it’s what I do. I interpret what I see in front of me. I create a version of the reality I’m seeing and I preserve it. That’s what I do. I had forgotten that.
Now I’m sleep deprived, and I have to make more hours in the day to get everything done. I have the work that pays the bills and I’m bending over backward to get more, but I have a few other things. I have three ongoing projects in the works at the moment. Three individual projects of photography and a fourth that’s film, and they don’t bring home the bacon. They simply feed my soul. There are trying times ahead of me and all around me. I haven’t felt this alive since I don’t know when.
I have cast off the layers that kept me down creatively and I CAN fly. This is happening and it will happen. I can journey through time and see the world the way my mother did at six years old in 1960. I can channel my frustration and physical health related pain into something that brings awareness to a cause that desperately needs it. I take the innocence that is the foundation of love and document it and put it on display. I can document my journey in these things. I can look at the environments and the people that inspire me and I can say, yeah I’ll see your dream and raise you mine - and I can make these things happen.
How do I know I can? Because I’m a nobody from Atlanta, GA who has only ever had ONE dream die, and that was because the subject of said dream died before I got to him with my camera in an arena. Because I live my dreams every day. Because nothing is beyond my reach. Because I am grateful for the things have happened in my professional and artistic life, and because life doesn’t end just before 30.
Ok, I think I can sleep now.
**The photos in this set are a collection of the shoots that have inspired me and re-invigorated me in the last six months.
Petfinder.com has released the next in the series of photos that Nick Wheeler and I shot to raise awareness to adopt. Check it out and reblog to help save some cute buddies like his handsome fella, Dexter!
Hey lovely kids! Here’s the video I shot of The All-American Rejects at the Orange County Fair last week. So check it out it’s a day in the life on the road :)
Random hipstamatic shot of Ty from sound check last week. I liked the light. #hipstamatic #aar (Taken with Instagram)
Bill Murray Can Crash Here
Don’t ask about the title to this blog. It’ll be explained in a video that’ll come this way in the next few days. In the interim, here’s the briefest of glimpses at Wednesday’s Orange County Fair show. The guys put on a hell of show that night, as is to be expected of people possessing their collected level of talent. It was all the fun it always is to document them. I can’t say it enough, nothing better than documenting my friends doing what they love.
Nick Wheeler & Dexter for Petfinder!
Here’s the first of a few promos I shot from Petfinder that’re coming out featuring Nick Wheeler of the All-American Rejects and his most adorable dog in the universe, Dexter. Check it out, and if you have Pinterest, repin it to support pet adoption!
Finally, a Dextination!
For the last few years I’ve been working on a series of photos of the people I photograph on stage at home with their pets. These photos are of Nick Wheeler from the All-American Rejects and the ever resplendent Dexter.
Nick and I have been talking about taking these photos for a long time, but our constantly conflicting schedules made it difficult. That’s the reality of two people who tour trying to find time where they’re both in Los Angeles and not working. Back in May we finally got to spend a day doing this. Dex is such a good sport, though he continued to look at us both as if to say “I’m not sure I signed up for this part guys?”. It’s always great when I get to do these shoots, they’re more special when they’re folks I’ve known a long time and know pretty well as was the case here.
There will be more photos of Nick and Dex released through Petfinder in the near future in conjunction with a promotion they’re helping out with to encourage pet adoption.
Dexter is the dog that I award the “cutest dog alive” to these days. It’s just true, see for yourself:
To learn more about how you can adopt a pet or to read about Nick and Dex’s journey click here.
The Value of Analog
-The All-American Rejects Pose with fans backstage. Shot on a 1959 Yashica-A with Kodak Portra VC.-
Recently (as in yesterday), John Mayer blogged about his new found love affair with his Leica and learning how to do things in the photo land the manual way. This was how I learned, and so I reblogged his post and made a comment or two, and promised a blog wherein I posted some of my film stuff from the road.
Most of these shots were shot on my 1959 Yashica-A 120mm TLR. I love this camera like Jack Nicholson loves the Lakers. It is a completely manual camera, you have to actually understand and know a thing or two about the stuff you used to have to know to take a great photograph. You have to understand how film speed affects the image outcome. You have to understand shutter speed and aperture, you have to know how to properly expose an image. You don’t get to see what you shot immediately, and you better know what you want, cause you only get twelve exposures per roll. Loading the film is a longish process in the scheme of these things, and you should probably find some low light in which to do it. I love this camera.
Hopefully you’ll be able to see the differences in the shots. I know I can. Those of you who use Instagram and Hipstamatic are probably familiar with a feature called “tilt-shift”. This is born of the concept behind depth of field. This camera opens up to 3.5 and can create a stunning radial blur as a result of the aperture. This is true “tilt-shift” at its best. The film tones are richer than anything a digital camera seems capable of capturing, at least to me. They’re deeper, more saturated with great levels. This is something that happens when actual film is exposed to light. It’s a beautiful thing.
I also shoot some 35mm on occasion, so there’s two shots together from that in here.
I feel ownership over every inch of these images. Which is not to say that I don’t have that feeling with my digital work, but this is different. Every photo you are about to view I spent considerable time with in the dark room thereafter. One of the images I even printed for each band member in the shot and gifted them. These have not been retouched in photoshop beyond what I would do in the dark room. They’re scans from the negatives, as such I like to keep it simple. One or two has a slight contrast adjustment - of the variety that would be achieved with filters in the enlarger and exposure to the paper. The color ones are simply as shot, though most of them are anyway. When you spend time in the dark room you have to make notes about how the shot should be printed after tests, it’s a spiritual experience for me.
Now some information about these shots. They’re of the All-American Rejects from two different fair shows I shot in the summer of 2007. The gift of photographing my friends is two fold, they do what they love and I get to document it, which I love. I’ve said it a million times, but these four men are some of the most fun I can have with my camera. I have shot them on film perhaps more than any of the bands I’ve documented in my adult life, if I’m incorrect then I’ll say they’re tied with 311. The camera loves all four of them, each in a different way. I have found that shooting them with film is a particularly special experience. The time I get to spend in the dark room with people I call friends is always something I cherish. They honor me with their level of comfort in front of my lens. So without further ado, here are the photos I’ve been babbling about.
Tyson Ritter warms up in the dressing room (trailer).
“The Calm Before the Storm” - The All-American Rejects moments before they take the stage at the Del Mar Fairgrounds.
Chris Gaylor and Nick Wheeler talk to fans during a backstage meet and greet.
Nick Wheeler and Chris Gaylor sign autographs backstage.
Mike Kennerty, Chris Gaylor, and Tyson Ritter during a meet and greet with fans backstage. Shot on a Canon EOSII 35mm.
