WIne for Thanksgiving

Lately I’ve been collaborating with the wonderfully talented food stylist Mariana Velasquez. Mariana wanted to do a shoot related to wine, so I had the idea to shoot the wine not the vessel and it got wonderfully trippy. It is my imagined conversation between Bill Viola and Mark Rothko. Once again my good friend and great musician Erik Carlson of AreaC provided a perfect soundscape. 

 Happy Thanksgiving!

1 MInute Bio: Carl

Untitled from Joshua Kessler on Vimeo.

I just completed the first in a series of one minute biographies.The concept is to start with a great still image, have it come to life and then tell a story in under a minute. The inspiration came from the famous bet that Hemingway could not write a story in less than six words, and then being Hemingway he did it with aplomb:

" For sale: baby shoes, never used"


One minute in video is the equivalent of six words in print.

AARP Bulletin Zongo and Me

This is the directors cut of Zongo and Me, that I just completed for the AARP Bulletin. The concept was to adapt portions of the print article and shoot it as a one man play. The inspiration came from John Lithgow performing Newt GIngrich’s press release on the Colbert Report and the classic reading of Green Eggs and Ham by Jessie Jackson on Saturday Night Live. Without the right actor the project would have been sunk from the beginning, so it was pure luck to find Allen Enlow. Allen’s ability to fine tune the voices was amazing and made my job much easier. A typical exchange was, “I need a little less Nicholson and more Cruise!” 

A higher quality link can be found on my site: http://joshuakessler.com/clients/AARP/AARP_Zongo.mp4

Charleston

Normally before visiting a new city I like to learn about it prior to arriving. A few weeks ago I visited Charleston, South Carolina and purposely tried to prepare as little as possible and learn through my camera.Today is the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War, so it seemed like a perfect day to post my visual findings.  

Unnecessary 3D Theater

A few months ago I got a phone call from my agent Gregg asking what I knew about shooting in 3D, which seemed to be the technology of the moment, to which I replied a little but I’d learn more. Coincidentally a friend who reviews all things technical had just received a brand new Panasonic HDC-SDT750 Camcorder to write about and I was the perfect person to test it. With the clock ticking on a one-week camera loan I got to work. All I had was the limitations of the camera, when it is in 3D mode there is very little manual control and it needs a great deal of light and space, the recollection of a James Cameron quote, “Movies like Jackass 3D cheapen the medium”, which turned out to be a misquote he was actually speaking of the movie Piranha, a name for my epic Unnecessary 3D Theater and the phone number of my niece Pipi, hoping that she would reunite her improv group Hot Coffee to star.

Before the shoot I explained to the cast the limitations of the camera and gave the direction to use the camera flaws and the James Cameron misquote as inspiration. My other niece Rosa contributed some ingenious prop purchasing and with a good amount of beer we were off. In this case the limitations were a plus and I definitely learned a lot about 3D cinema.

To get the full effect you will need a pair of old school red cyan 3D glasses.

Valentines Day

As my Valentines gift to everyone, I am pleased to announce the launch of the new K-Y personal lubricant site, which I had the honor of photographing.

http://k-y.com/

Jersey Shore Season 3

One of the great aspects of this stage in my career is to have the opportunity to photograph some subjects more than once, so I was very excited to be chosen by MTV to shoot the publicity photos for Season 3 of The Jersey Shore.

It had been nine months since I last spent the day with The Situation, Snookie, Pauly D, J-Woww, Vinny, Sammie and Ronnie. Even though they are now household names, with all of the security and paparazzi that goes along with it, I can report that they are still normal people who have become a family through an extraordinary shared journey; it was a perfect day of photography with great people.

To see many more images from the shoot click here.

Below is a behind the scenes video from the shoot:

Jersey Shore - MTV Shows

Joshua Kessler iPad App

Throughout my career I have searched for the perfect portfolio to showcase my work. Today more than ever, with video being incorporated into many assignments a traditional 11x14 print portfolio is not able to fully convey what I do. The iPad with a bespoke app is the perfect blend of the best qualities of a traditional portfolio and a web site. It is able to deliver high-resolution video and images instantly with out the need to buffer, in a tactile interactive package.

So the above text is the official version of my app’s description. To sum up… it is just really cool! If you have an iPad click here to download the app and if not contact my agent Gregg and he can loan you an iPad with the app loaded.

Gregg Lhotsky

Bernstein Andriulli

greggl@ba-reps.com

www.ba-reps.com

Vietnam Redux

I visited Vietnam three and a half years ago. Vietnam was a very intense place and I used my camera as a way to make sense of it. Shortly after returning, I took the images from the War Museum in Ho Chi Minh City and made a short video. The museum and parts of Vietnam are heavy places and the slideshow reflected that. The images from that video were mainly shot on the first afternoon of the trip and until now I had done nothing with the bulk of the images. Two weeks ago my agent Gregg Lhotsky needed an image to use in a pitch for a job and I thought there might be something appropriate from the Vietnam images. After finding the Image for Gregg I was inspired and a few hours later the rough draft of the above video was finished. This is happy Vietnam, condensing two weeks from the north to the south and everywhere in between into one minute. This video is a perfect bookend to the first. In the end the camera did help me understand Vietnam better.

The War Museum video: http://vimeo.com/13189788

UJA

Last week I started working on a project for the UJA, United Jewish Appeal, to restock their photography library. Over the next few months I will be photographing at various organizations that are recipients of UJA funding. I knew that this would be a great project, but after only one shoot it has already exceeded all of my expectations. The first assignment was at a monthly gathering of Holocaust survivors organized by Selfhelp. There are four separate groups that meet once a month, so once a week the staff stages an operation of amazing logistical proportions. Fleets of car services are dispatched to all points in Brooklyn to transport the participants to and from the Flatbush Jewish Center for lunch and a musical program free of charge. For some it is the main event of their month, a way to get out and connect with the only people who can truly understand their pasts, for me it was an amazing treat. I have met Holocaust survivors before, but never so many at one time. My feelings can best be summed up by quote from one of the Selfhelp community workers Joe, “You could write a book about anyone in this room!” He was so right.