jonshaft.photo

javelins + nouns

2008-02-21T01:57:00.000-08:00

greetings. early february brought me to ronny's in chicago to photograph my good buddies: javelins and nouns. you can see the results of that here: http://jonshaft.com/javelinouns

new 365

2008-01-17T17:34:00.000-08:00

Here is day seventeen of three hundred sixty six photographs. I'm quite fond of it.

three six five

2008-01-02T15:14:00.000-08:00

I've started a new photo project called 365, where i take one self portrait per day for a year. I will be posting them on my flickr page: http://flickr.com/photos/thehopeful. I began on 1.1.08, and I will finish on 12.31.2008. Here is day two:

personal project

2007-12-11T00:37:00.000-08:00

so, i normally don't post wedding related photographs here, but since this is a personal project, and this photograph is by far the best from the series [ bride + dress ]. The series is an attempt to mix my fine art photography nature with my wedding photographs, while using a 4x5 camera to capture it all. I am completely stepping out of my normal way of making photographs. The end result, I hope, is a series of photographs that can function as portraits, wedding photographs, and works of art all at the same time. These photographs should be able to be hung in a gallery, or be printed in a wedding album, or magazine. The photograph above is just a polaroid from the shoot, so I will be sure to post the real version when I have it available.

jacob tyler wolfgang

2007-12-03T00:06:00.001-08:00

the other day, while doing a shoot for a current project [ brides + dresses ], i had jacob stand in as a test subject for this shot while his wife, sarah, sat in the warm car. here's the polaroid.

johnshaft.com

2007-10-08T13:19:00.000-07:00

I am now the proud owner of johnshaft.com - i recently acquired the domain name, and can't wait to put it to good use. The previous owner used the site as a fan site for the Shaft films, but with a rather poor and outdated design. It's possible that I will update the look of that site and offer it as a link so that john shaft fans can find that information if they're interested.

so i hope you'll join me in celebrating my newest addition to the family. I'm working on acquiring shaft.com, but we'll see what happens.

updates

2007-09-30T23:00:00.000-07:00

Recently, I decided to try to update my equipment, so I began to sell some of my older items on eBay. I sold my nikon D1x body, and paired with the sale [ and for much more than expected ] of my broken sb-800, I purchased a new D200 body. In addition to that, I purchased new 1TB hard drive, which now brings me up to exactly 2TB of storage space, of which 1TB is completely full...when will it end? Also, since I've been receiving so many print orders, I decided to purchase an inkjet printer. I chose the epson r2400 - it's a great printer that will give me up to 13" wide prints. I've made two prints, and so far, everything looks great. And finally, after getting iphone fever [ i've got a fever, and the only cure is more cowbell ] I decided that I could do without the old 12" powerbook that I bought when i was still working at adray in michigan. *proceeds of powerbook purchase will go towards the purchase of 2 new iphones - one for my wife, who is in desperate need of a new phone, and one for myself. We're destined to be the coolest kids on the block.

When I was in michigan, I met up with the band "Which Way is Home" for some photographs - I could not for the life of me think of any great locations to photograph them. They had an idea to shoot at the old Daisy air rifle factory in downtownn plymouth - which consists of one large wall, which is supported by some large beams. Then we moved down the street to an old historic house to finish off the shoot - i'm very pleased with the outcome of the photographs.

That seems to be all of the updates that I have for now - keep yourself updated by looking at this blog often. I am going to be working with a 4x5 view camera very often for the next 10 weeks, so keep your eyes peeled [ "keep your eyes peeled" - that doesn't even make sense... ] for some of those photographs.

iPhone

2007-09-18T22:22:00.000-07:00

so I'm sitting in Michigan with benshaft (my brother) and I'm using his iPhone to write this blog.
if you haven't already done so, go to your nearest apple store and either a.) buy one, or b.) play with one.
I am hooked on this thing and I'm pretty sure that an iPhone will be my next purchase. That's all for now.

2007-09-02T00:34:00.000-07:00

i rented a scooter, and drove toward the mountains.

woah, we're halfway there...

2007-09-02T00:06:00.000-07:00

well, i'm back from vegas, and 3/4 of the way through my 4 wedding weekend. it's 2 am and i should be sleeping, but since i've been nonstop wedding photographer for the past 3 days, i am staying up late to write this.

i left vegas at 11:30pm on thursday, arrived at 5:00am on friday and started shooting again on friday at noon. i got about 2 hours of sleep thursday night as i was flying for most of it, and sitting right by me was a large snoring man. i slept about 45 minutes when i got home, and spent the rest of the time preparing for the upcoming weddings. oddly enough, i think i actually shoot better when i'm sleep exhausted. weird huh?

i didn't take as many photographs in vegas as i thought i would, but i still took quite a bit. i probably would have taken more if my xpan hadn't been damaged. yeah, it got damaged - sucks, i know. i had it in my carry on [ along with all of my other camera equipment ] and i think that the d200 dented the top of it, just to the right of the viewfinder, so now when i turn it on, the switch feels like it's been superglued, and the split level focusing is slightly off - still accurate, i think, but the second image is slightly above the first image, so it looks like it's not in focus. kind of a strange occurance. i don't know that i'm going to be repairing it because the camera is from the UK and i'd likely have to send it back to the UK for repair.

i'll post photos from the trip as soon as i get them - you should be excited, because i've got some good stuff.

viva las vegas

2007-08-26T10:27:00.001-07:00

I fly out monday morning at 6:00am to las vegas to shoot a wedding. i'll be there until thursday evening when i'll fly home to arrive in chicago at 5:00am, then i have to shoot 3 weddings in a row - friday, saturday, sunday. wish me luck. i've never shot 4 weddings in a row, but there's a first for everything, right?

I'll be bringing both hasselblads with me, so there will be plenty of photographs of vegas when i return.

also, i put plenty of new photos up today. 2 new photographs of places, and 5 new photographs of people. take a look and enjoy.

new photos

2007-08-23T16:55:00.001-07:00

i put some new photographs in the travel section of my trip with alex to milwaukee. check them out.

bands

2007-08-23T09:28:00.000-07:00

now that jonshaft.com is up and running, i'd like to put this little offer out there for all of you musicians, bands, friends of bands and further, anyone who knows of a band:

I am getting back into photographing bands [ as i have been out of it for the past 2 years ] and I need to start somewhere, so I have decided [ for a limited time ] that I will be photographing your band/your friends band/you for free, and providing you with a disc of the images. this means live photographs and promo photographs. so call me up, or send me an email and let's get some photographs made.

thoughts on the new look

2007-08-10T09:31:00.000-07:00

it's been roughly a week since the new design and photographs have been online, and i'm happy to say that i haven't gotten sick of seeing it all yet! thats a good sign.

it's not really news, but i changed out one of the music photographs - it is the photograph of jacob tyler wolfgang. if you're interested in checking it out, you should.

some real news though, i will be posting some new photographs from my trip to milwaukee that alex and i took a few weeks back - there are some beauties in there, so keep your eyes out for those.

new site, new blog

2007-08-03T15:35:00.000-07:00

so this is my new blog, to go along with the new look at jonshaft.com

i'll be updating this as regularly as possible with photos, news, etc...

hope you'll check back regularly.