philip seymour hoffman

I only met Philip Seymour Hoffman twice, both of which we in a hurried photo shoot sort of way, but he was instantly likable. 

I liked that he was from Rochester, but lived in my neighborhood and that no matter the character or role he was guaranteed to be excellent. I do not like that I will no longer see him getting coffee around the corner and lament not watching all of the great performances he would have no doubt played in the future. 

www.joshuakessler.com V4

Things are changing quickly in the world of photography and I like it. Over the Past few years I have been incorporating more and more video into my work. I have always photographed people like a director would direct an actor in a film; it is a conversation between two people with a script. Being a photographer and a director has made it hard to answer the inevitable party question, “So what do you do?” then the other day I just blurted it out, “I am a portraitist, a visual handyman” and it sounded perfect. I still make portraits I just use different tools from time to time. This leads me to the launch of www.joshukessler.com V4 which makes it easier to see all sides of my visual handy work. 

Discovering Columbus

Recently I was fortunate to see the new piece by Tatzu Nishi, “Discovering Columbus”. I really loved it for so many reasons, the scale, the whimsy, the attention to detail and just the fact that it exists. It reminded me of a photo I took in Paris over the summer where contractors went to great lengths not to disturb a statue while renovating a building on Quai de Montbello – Quai de Tournelle.

Detroit

I got to spend two weeks in Detroit this summer finishing up the Ford Motors  job and it was a gift. There are a lot of negative things said about the Motor City, but I can only offer positive thoughts. The people I met, the improv I watched, the food I ate, the art I saw, the glorious car culture I bathed in all left me completely inspired. Detroit is like a delicious chili dog from the city's famous landmark, Lafayette Coney Island—it is the sum of the parts that make  it a glorious, wonderful mess. 

Ford, Spain and two great weeks.

Every day that I get to make images is a great day and I always feel like the luckiest person in the world. Being hired by Team Detroit to direct a series of one minute portraits of 10 engineers for Ford Motors was the exception to the rule, lucky does not even begin to describe it, it was just plain perfect. Sure, Barcelona is one of the great cities of the world, Calatrava a genius among architects, the food excellent, the local beer delicious, the mountain scenery of Solsona stunning and the work itself a pleasure. Beyond that, being in Spain and talking about cars all day was a dream come true. I could go on but the best part of the trip was working with my my crack team, Ken Robinson and Cole Slutzky. Ken, Cole and I will forever have a bond that could only be formed living and working in a Volkswagen van for fourteen days together. Make an appointment to have drinks with the three of us and we will tell you inside jokes for hours. 

Dancing In Florence

Words are hard to use to describe Italy, it is just so. It is the things you see, taste, hear and smell. This is just one of those moments in Florence.

Lior Sercarz

Meeting Lior is something one never forgets—how many spice blenders do you know? Lior is an artist, scientist, historian, story teller and collector, but his passion in what he does is what you notice most when sharing a conversation over strong coffee.

www.laboiteny.com

Stephanie Von Watzdorf

Stephanie is the mastermind behind the new fashion line Figue. The genius of her clothing is that she truly exemplifies all of the qualities of her brand—she's worldly, colorful and so much fun.

Los Angeles

I always have a great time in Los Angeles, great friends, Philippe’s French dipped sandwiches and perfect skies. Besides where else can the window of your hotel room remind you to party? 

Richard Serra

Often to recharge I'll head off for a drive north of the city. One of my favorite routes takes me past the DEA Beacon. There is something so special about wandering through a canyon of steel built by Richard Serra. 

surface interest

Surface interest is a new blog I started to showcase my abstract work. I've always joked that I became a photographer because I can't draw! Well, this is my attempt at painting without paint. I liken this to going to the visual gym.

www.surfaceinterest.tumblr.com

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

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 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