Thursday August 25th, 2011
Recently, James Quantz Jr received an email from a new client, an art director from POZ Magazine, a Smart + Strong publication that highlights the lives of people affected by HIV/AIDS. The AD asked James if he would be available to shoot a young boy living with HIV. James accepted the job knowing nothing more than the boys name, Jordan Mitzel, and age, 13. Turns out young Jordan had been chosen by POZ to be featured as one of their Heroes.
In 1998, Jordan was born with fetal alcohol syndrome, addicted to crack, and infected with HIV. He was abandoned by his birth mother. Jordan may have a had a bad start, but it certainly didn’t keep him down. Soon after being abandoned, Jordan was adopted by Beverly Mitzel and Sonja Austin, who had specifically requested an HIV-positive child. Now 13, Jordan has become one of the Regional AIDS Interfaith Network’s biggest donors, raising over $31,000 for the cause. Through his website, Jordan collects donations through means such as recycling and flocking yards with pink flamingos.
Not surprisingly, James was quite impressed by his young subject’s accomplishments. As soon as he got the assignment, he called up Jordan’s mom Beverly and started planning the shoot. James found that Jordon loves sports, especially baseball and soccer and asked Beverly to find out which uniform Jordan preferred. Jordan decided on his soccer uniform, so James took the shoot in that direction as he, “wanted to something besides a simple sedentary posed portrait.”
Here’s what James had to say about his experience,
They don’t make them any braver than Jordan! He basically arrived straight from the hospital to the photo shoot and performed like a real pro. Definitely an inspirational young man and a shoot where you really have to stop and think about the reality of what some people have to endure. Jordan had actually collapsed after a test he had undergone. After all that he refused to cancel the shoot and we got started a few hours late when he started feeling better. I firmly believe I’m a better person having spent about 30 minutes with him.
You can read Jordan’s article here.
- Maria
Friday February 12th, 2010
Digital Photo Pro just featured Jared McMillen in print and online, detailing our our Las Vegas photographer’s process and philosophy.
Mcmillen began his career as a pro climber and eventually realized that he could be paid more as a photographer than an athlete (at least in his sport).
Since then, he’s stopped living out of his van and shoots portraits of athletes (and the occasional CEO) from just about every sport. He says that pro athletes “tend to be very image savvy these days. A photo shoot with a professional basketball or football player can be a lot like a celebrity shoot with an actor or musical icon, involving handlers and publicists and egos galore.” Though he finds that this challenge is what makes his job more interesting.
Because of time constraints with his subjects, he sometimes needs to shoot composite backgrounds, like the image above of Kevin Durant. He finds that this gives him more flexibility to tell the story as he imagined it, since he sometimes only has 15 minutes to shoot an athlete in front of a white backdrop or in the locker room.
He had 30 minutes with racing phenom Danica Patrick (below), and I’m not sure about Andre Agassi (at right) but I thought the shot was nicely balanced.
Jared discusses his gear in the article, too, and makes a “prediction” that in ten years every still shooter will be a “photo-videographer” because of the rapidly advancing technology. You can read more on their website.
On a side note, our Los Angeles-based photographer Caesar Lima lent his photograph to the cover of the same issue. We’ll be talking about Caesar in a future post, since he’s been featured in a few other places recently himself:
-Neil Binkley
Wednesday October 28th, 2009
David Torrence / St. Louis
Portraiture / Landscape / Music
www.davidtorrence.com
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A transplant from Atlanta. David became interested in photography as a teen, while on a safari
in Tanzania. The camera that went to the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro is still part of his ever-growing
collection. Known for his punctuality. Also has a thing for watching professional tennis.
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Submitted By Wonderful Machine at 12:06 pm
Tags: Action & Adventure, Colombia, conceptual, David Torrence, Denver, England, Food & Drink, Martin Brent, Mateo Munoz, portraiture, Sergio Ballivian, St. Louis, Still Life, Travel
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