Sorry it’s been so long sense I posted well… Anything here. To be perfectly honest the concerns I wrote about a while back are still haunting me just as much now. But over the next few days I will be showing a few new photos I have been shooting recently. The first is another photo of my good friend, trusty model and girlfriend, Caitlin. She is always reluctant willing to sit for me if I have an idea or need to test something. This time was a new Camera and Body, The Nikon D700 and Nikon’s 24 – 70 f2.8.

Let’s get a little nerdy here for a second. This was lit with a 3 foot Elinchrom rotalux octa slightly over head and slightly to the left coming from about 3 feet away and feathered off. I was using a Ranger Quadra at 8.5 ws, the lowest power setting of that wonderful little pack.

Edited in Light room three for the basic editing, then converted into black and white in Silver Efex and then finished in Photoshop CS5 for the skin and other minor retouching.

That’s all for today, Subscribe to my news letter at the bottom of this page to be updated on new posts!

I’ve fallen in love with the Hasselblad, makes me think a lot more about every frame I shoot. No frames are waisted and if they are I kick my self for it.

First off, I’ve not had any digital work coming out of my corner because this camera switch is taking longer then I thought it would. For those who don’t know, I decided to switch from Canon to Nikon. There are a few different reasons, I will jump into why in another blog. I now have a D700, but I’ve not sold enough gear to get glass for it quite yet. Due to not having a camera I had to turn down work that I would of otherwise had jumped on. Not shooting has as much as I would like to has sent me into a bit of a slump, The added pressure of having my only means of fresh income not available to me. I see now that I pulled the trigger on switching cameras at the wrong time; Live and learn.

On the bright side I did buy a new camera, This one is from the mid ’60′s and you could use it as a hammer if you needed; I bought a Hasselblad 500 C/M. This camera is medium format, for those of you that aren’t photo nerds that means it shoots big, beautiful 120mm negatives. That’s 6cm by 6cm (2.25″ x 2.25″) film. Compared to a top of the line digital SLR camera which has a 35mm sensor. There are tons of benefits to both style of camera but the Hasselblad makes me slow way the hell down when I am shooting. If it is not worth taking a picture of, then I simply don’t take the picture. This camera is making me fall in love with the process of photography all over again.
So far I’ve shot 4 rolls of film with my hasselblad, That comes to a grand total of 48 pictures. I just got my last two rolls back from the lab and have yet to scan them but until then, here is one of the first photos I shot with it. I shot this in the beautiful Malibu, CA.

My girlfriend, Caitlin doesn’t care for my new investment. She calls it the hussy, she will come around… maybe.

A little while ago I asked for your help to pick out some contest images. The first cut has come back, and I did not make the top 5. To be perfectly honest I am disappointed in the selection process, but I will let you decide for your self if the photos that were selected beat mine out, here they are.

What else if going on, hmmm, oh of course, I am back on a bike! The fine folks over at huckelberry Bikes sent me a prototype frame to test out. The frame is called the Dubtek, and you will hear more about it soon, I promise.

I think that is all on my front for now, hopefully more soon.

-JP

PS. How could I forget, I’ve updated my action portfolio on my website, go check it out! JDPETERS.COM

Wondering what made the cut? “Oh, I’ll feed ya baby birds”

I am happy about how this shot turned out technically but lets face it, Cob brought the “Oh shit” factor and that makes the shot.
Cob is riding his proto Deity Cryptkeeper in this photo.

For those of you that care, I was using two lights here, one of which being that beautiful source that comes up in the morning and sets in the evening. The sun is a rim light on cob. I matched the sunlight with a Elinchrom Ranger Quadra with an A head at full power (400w) with a 10″ high output reflector, just out of frame on the right.

I enjoy the colors in this shot and the sun blast of course. But the blue in the sky and the blue in AT’s Jersey, yet he still pops. I like the random little green shrub at the bottom of the rock too, not sure why but me and that shrub are buddies now. Huge Thanks to James Visser for having us all over to shoot and ride, it was a great day.

Here is a little of the story behind the photo and how it was shot.

AT made the drive south to San Diego with Shelby Paget to ride with James Visser. I got from James asking me to come to shoot for the day and I jumped at the chance to shoot and hang out with the boys. I drove to SD that night, slept in the 24hr super market’s parking lot and made my way to Vissers place first thing in the morning to help him prep the trail and feed some horses. The filmer, AT and Shelby showed up shortly after that for a fun day. Here AT drops into a rock roller and my buddy the sun snaked its way threw, stoked! Again two lights here, the sun and my Elinchrom Ranger Quadra. I was able to sneak the Quadra with a 10″ high output in close enough to drop the sky down.

This is an older Shot of my good friend Dan Troyan. It’s hard for me to choose this shot because I have looked at it for so long and chewed it apart in my mind and out loud. But after hearing all of your input it was clear this photo still had impact due to the ghosting, so it’s the last image of the three. This is not “Photoshopped”, as in the ghosting effect was done in camera. This was shot at Foothill College is right behind my Dad’s house, so while I was living there I would ride the campus so often the security guards knew me by name. Two of my good friends came by to ride with me one night, but instead of riding I decided to shoot, having this image in mind. Just after shooting this frame the cops showed up, but instead of kicking us out or worse, he watched for a while and wished us a good night.This photo was done by making a long exposure (around the 2 second mark) and right as Dan rode thew the frame I popped the flash, and let the exposure finish up. So thats open camera shutter before dan enters the frame, wait until he’s were I want him the pop the strobe then let the shutter close. Just that simple.

Thanks for all the help, I will keep you all updated about this contest, Rambo (my kitten) doesn’t want me to do well, because then I would have to leave him for a few weeks to head up to whistler; He’s a big boy I am hoping for the best and expecting nothing to come from it.

-JP

PS high fives and maybe something cool to who can tell me where I pulled “Oh, I’ll feed ya baby birds”, leave a comment.

Here is a bit more about the contest.

“Kokanee Crankworx’s preeminent mountain bike photo contest, the Deep Summer Photo Challenge, has invited their roster of five pro photographers to compete in the July 20 slideshow competition, and has launched their search for the sixth contender with the Pinkbike Deep Summer Wildcard Photographer Search.

Five top pro photographers are competing for cash and for the title of Deep Summer Photo Challenge Champion. We need one more photographer, think you can shoot with the best?

Enter your three best photographs depicting the theme of mountain biking for your chance to compete as the Wildcard photographer in Kokanee Crankworx’s Deep Summer Photo Challenge.

Upload three photos here from May 26 to June 3. The top five submissions as determined by Deep Summer’s judges will be posted on June 6.

Voting to determine the winner of the Pinkbike Deep Summer Wildcard Photographer Search will take place June 6 to June 13.”

Here are the 11 photos I am considering for the contest I will be submitting 3 on the morning of june 3rd. Leave a comment telling me which 3 you would enter.
11

10

9

8

7

6

5

4

3

2

1

If you would like to enter the contest and kick my ass, click here

Thats all for me, help me out, I really would love to be in the finals of this contest in beautiful Whistler, BC!

I am selling

Canon 1d MIII $ 2,200
2 bats +charger
AC Power adapter
Cable Release
PW to Cable Release
Other random goodies

Canon 17-40 F4L $ 700
Canon 70-200 f2.8L II $ 2,200
2x Canon 580ex2′s $300 a pop
sennheiser ME 66 + K6 + rode windscreen $400
Zoom H4N $225

If you are interested in anything, let me know! info@jdpeters.com

Cheers,

JDP

If you are in search for digging deeper into photography and really learning the basics you should check out his creative live feeds for this weekend. Tomorrows starts at 10 on the west coast. and the link to that is, Until then, enjoy the intro from today.

-Jason Peters
jdpeters.com

So what has me so scared? Failing, now I’m not talking about small failures like missing a shot or even fucking up an entire shoot. I am scared of bigger falters that don’t seem far off right now. What happens if I give being a professional photographer all I have and it’s just not enough? Where do I go from there? Back to working at a rock climbing gym? That’s the only other thing I know.

I was never the kid that anyone thought was going to go anywhere, and to be honest I didn’t give a rats ass about the future. Against everyones advice I cruised thew high school doing only enough to not fail, cutting classes and leaving early to go climbing or to work at the gym. In my freshman year I took a photo class because it seemed like an easy A. It ended up being my favorite class and it turned into my creative outlet. I loved the smell of developer on my hands and the pure happiness of seeing that final print coming out just how I imagined it. I was hooked! the end of the year it was time to register for classes and photo was urge first on my list but my resource (special education) teacher had other ideas so I would not step back into the dark room until a year later in my junior year, when I took advanced photo. My senior year I retook advanced photo because there was nothing past that plus I spent two hours a day assisting my teacher with maintaining the darkroom. I digress.

Anyway, I never took SATs or did anything else to prep my self for college admissions but by the time applying came around I knew I wanted to be a photographer. I I searched for photography schools that didn’t require an SAT score, I ended up at Brooks institute, but quickly dropped out. A year after dropping out I was pressured to go back to school and this time I went to the art institute of orange county, after a year of doing poorly and only paying any real attention on photography classes I transferred to their north Hollywood location. This brings us up to pretty recently. Threw out all my schooling I’ve known that school is just not really my thing. After taking a really mellow quarter I decided to take some time off school.

Alright, not sure why I just gave you a history lesson on, well me. But here I am now, terrified of what the future might hold. I am waist deep in credit card bills, battling with the question of what I want To shoot and a slew of more personal problems. These three things have had me in the biggest rut I’ve been threw in my short 22 years of living. I feel my self slipping into being depressed, not knowing who to turn to or what to do. I am starting to feel like I don’t deserve the small amount of working I am getting but at the same time wondering why I can’t land more work. I live day by day, pitching stories to magazines, applying for internships and jobs to try to find a more steady source of income. Doing my best to keep my spirits up and my head down.

So I am turning to you, interwebs. For a few reasons the first was to simply figure out my thoughts by writing them, not sure my thoughts are any more clear now then they were before. But to also ask my few readers what they think my photographic focus should be, so what do you think? Do you like my portraits or commercial mountain bike work, or maybe you like my race coverage and maybe I should go into a more photojournalistic discipline like main stream sports.

Who knows, anyway, for those of you that have believed in me and been by my side the entire time, thank you. There’s really only a few of you out there.

-JP

I’ve not shot a self portrait for a while and testing some new gear sounded like a great excuse. Here’s my technical shpeel on how it was shot. I shot this on a Elinchrom RQ ring light at eye level on camera left a few feet away. I had to be very careful about reflections of the ring light in my glasses. I had a fill card camera right less then a foot away from me to bring the shadows back a little bit. Background light was a Elinchrom Ranger Quadra with a 7″ reflector about 6 inches away from the wall at about shoulder level. Both lights were shot of the same Quadra pack which puts the power at 66% for the key light and 33% for the background light. I was about five feet away from the wall. This was shot at 17mm on my 17-40 and then brought in a bit in post. The camera settings were f11 ISO100 1/200th.

-JP

JP