Just another day (or three) at the office

More beauty stills, with a slightly different lighting/ table top set up from a previous post.

I really believe it doesn't matter how many times you shoot anything you can always improve the way you do. Its all about tweaking.

Budgie Smugglers

Leila Jeffries, a friend whose personal project is to photograph birds, initially Budgerigars, called on me for advice with lighting and implementation. Leila used a box to photograph the birds in which after two shoots is still in revised prototype stage. The photo shows the beautiful birds in the box behind some Lee Diffusion. I'll post an entry when her exhibition is coming.

New Friends

During a pre Thanksgiving day party I met Greg and Jade Matthews. The connection was almost immediate and they invited me to there house for a Thanksgiving dinner on the actual day. It was the night before I was flying back to Sydney so I packed early and headed to Williamsburg for the intimate dinner with a few of their friends. It was a great night and hopefully I'll see them often when I move back to New York in 2009. 
They own and run El DIablo Taco's, the taco truck is located in the back yard of Union Pool. Cnr of Union and Meeker, WIlliamsburg. 
Join their fan page on facebook

Volvo 122

In my teens my Dad was working for Volvo Trucks.  He brought home a book something like- History of Volvo (cars). I had an early appreciation of cars having worked the occasional school holiday in the workshop where my Dad was in management and weekends in my Uncle's mechanic workshop for a short period. 
I poured over the specs of the cars, some I would likely never see in my life, reading from the earliest days until I got to this... The Volvo 122, I think it was the first car I really longed to buy or own, well that was until I saw the P1800 a few pages later !! My first car was almost a 142 but I couldn't convince my parents that it was good idea... so the 122 and lots of the early Volvo's are still in my heart. Its good to see them still on the street. 

Hearts... NY [1]

New York hearts, yes they are everywhere. That's why we love this city.

bumping in..

Going to a gallery/ exhibition opening alone can sometimes bring out interesting results.

I met  Edwina White through mutual friends years ago while we were both in Sydney. I had heard she was living in New York but didn't really expect to randomly bump into to her at the Photo Annual book launch exhibition ... Have a look for her work or go to one of her exhibitions, a great illustrator and good friend.

It's all in the details

I like finding and capturing those little things that might go unseen, disappear or be taken away within minutes if me recording their existence.

Warning signs

While I stayed in an apartment in Battery Park City, I walked past the Ground Zero site almost everyday for a week or so and would see people photographing anything and everything that they could, pointing their cameras into the construction site.
I wanted to capture something that most people probably didn't even notice or see, that conveyed something of the loss without being obvious. Almost like a ghost or the fading of something solid that was once there, these signs on the hoarding really conveyed this to me.

NYC Autumn (Fall)

Could Autumn in NY get any better? 

Amazing people you meet.

While in New York I had the pleasure of meeting Mel McNamara, an Australian introduced through a good friend, Justin Cooper. Mel is working  in NY and like myself won a Greencard in the Lottery. Mel put me in contact with two great Australian photographers who are living and working in NY, Ben Baker and Lucas Allen. All three were very forthcoming with information, their experiences and what it's like to be there. Thanks for the advice, I am eternally grateful and you have helped make some decisions easier for me.

Please have a look at their work.

GOOD TIMES

Post election. 

Election

It was great to be out in the city on  the night of the US elections when Obama was elected. Such a buzz and many people who voted for a new hope were in bars and on the streets celebrating. 

Vote !! Can't Decide..?

Carroll Gardens, at least the stickers are keeping in a neck and neck race...

New York City Marathon

I wanted to capture some of the spirit of the marathon. Without singling any one runner out, to show it was a solo endeavour but amongst others.

Banksy Really ??

It was been rumored that these two huge murals are the work of BANKSY.
Confirmed! Colossal Media painted the works as per instruction. More details.
Broadway and Canal area in Soho / TriBeCa, New York.

Plane wing

As I fly across America from LAX to JFK I shot a few frames...

LA again

Just a a couple of shots from my time with Evelyn.

Stop over and connect

On the way to New York from Sydney I stopped over in LA to catch up with a great longtime friend and her family. I hadn't seen Evelyn in about 2 years and it was so nice to be able to reconnect face to face. Although her husband Alby had to work, we at least had sometime to talk over a great Mexican meal. In the past year or so, they have done so much for me which I will always be grateful for. Such great true friends... 

Their two wonderful cheeky beautiful girls took centre stage for most of the time and without hesitation welcomed me into their lives with open arms.

Scott + Belinda's Wedding

My older brother, Scott finally tries the knot to his long time partner Belinda. I was so happy and proud to be one of his "Best men" as I'm sure our younger brother Ben was also. It will be a wedding I will always cherish. I didn't actually take that many pictures, I was glad to be without my camera for once and to be able to just soak it all up...

COMP Cards

when I didn't think I could fit in anything else to this fortnight before I fly to the US, I decided to get some comp cards printed..

With their fast turn around, i decided to put this task into the capable hands of morecreative soon to be www.carbon8.com.au based in Surry Hills, Sydney.

If you want digital small (or large) print runs done, be sure to contact them...

they do a really good job and you can have the cards Cellogazed (in Matt or gloss) which helps protect them 

below: the cards 2 different ones, show the basic layout front and back.

Website

What seemed liked weeks of work crammed into.. well a week of work and a solid fortnight of little sleep.... 

my livebooks powered website should be live very soon. 

www.jason-hamilton.com

I have been testing it, ironing out a few glitches and uploading images on a temporary site which is now working fine. So shouldn't be much longer.

Art Director to new horizons,

or at least new page designs..

Danielle Rose who works for Shop til You Drop magazine (ACP magazines) is leaving and jumping on the Australian Glamour magazine start up staff....
Always a great person to work with, she will surely be missed at ACP... but I look forward to working with her in the future.
The two photos below are

• the beauty product line up for the next few days, all to be shot straight on with options and then many needing to have swatches shot too.
• just a simple table top beauty set-up which I have been perfecting over the last 5 years to help get through the product efficiently, especially good for editorial.

Website temp up

After a couple of weeks and a couple glitches, the temp web site is up and I'm excited...

I'd like to thank another dear friend Suriya, who took on the mammoth task of grading, retouching and re-sizing a vast amount of the photos I wanted to have access to, not only for the website but also my new portfolios.  Taking a huge amount of pressure off my shoulders and with a heap of her own work already she just took it in her stride and output in a couple of days what realistically, would have taken me weeks with all my other work commitments. 

Portrait

Having great friends who are also great photographers more often than not is positive. Often just talking shop leads to better understanding of what's going on in the industry...

 One confidant, great friend,  a source of inspiration and admiration is Justin Cooper. 

Luckily he was around, in Sydney, while my site was being updated and knowing I'd need a portrait I asked him  for a favour... 

I really like the honesty, openness and hint of a smirk that Justin captured. You can see more of Justin's work here www.justincooper.com

We just call it the pencil now..

On my days off, I can think of worst things to be doing or places to be.

Instead I'm photographing some great food, in the company of great friends and sharing what each of us do best...

Just a couple of set shots (and one of the pool) from the food shoot I did with Chef Paul Hegeman, who years ago asked me to do part of the photography for his site www.chefspencil.com.

I have always wished I could do all the photography on the site, maybe one day we will get around to re-shooting those recipes shot by the contributing Chefs.

From our first meeting (walking dogs) we have become close friends with a great mutual respect for our individual crafts, often sharing secrets over a beer, once all the shots have been done of course.

Google profile ? Need it?

what is this google profile and does it do anything for me?
profile here

First Blog

So today is my first day of  "the blog" world.

After years of having a website that I was never really satisfied with I decided to look into a site that had a great CMS back-end..

my www.livebooks.com site is almost ready and I'll be uploading images to it as soon as humanly possible.

You will be able to view my current commercial work and a selection of images from my projects at www.jason-hamilton.com