In keeping with the theme of Joshua Tree, I was recently driving from Las Vegas to Phoenix along route 93 and stopped by this Joshua Tree when the sun was setting. I thought it was a very dramatic scene and so I made this shot.
click on the image to see a larger version
Joshua Tree National Park is a surreal landscape in the high desert called Mojave that is scattered with the foreboding, tree-like cacti from which it is named. It’s unique beauty is also reflected in the myriad of other hearty plants that dot the landscape and is oddly interspersed with other-worldly piles of gigantic rocks.
Toward the end of June the full moon came out and I shot some time lapse of it as it rose slowly over one such gathering of rocks appropriately named Jumbo Rocks.
I moved away from my home town of Berkeley, IL over 30 years ago but still have family there and visit a couple times a year. Oftentimes, when I’m visiting I like to wander around and take pictures of the place, though some of it has changed drastically.
I attended Field School in the 1960’s from K through 3rd grade. Sometime in the 90’s the school was sold to the Albanian American Islamic organization and is now one of their midwestern mosques. Of the 330,000 houses of worship in the United States, about 2500 are Mosques and of that number, only 200 were built for that purpose. The rest have all been converted from buildings originally designed to be something else…like a grade school.
Occasionally you come across a product that is so impressive that you want everyone to know about it, and PhotoRescue3 is one of those products. An advanced data-recovery solution for digital photography media, PhotoRescue is so good the developers don’t want you to have to pay for it unless it can prove to you that your images can be recovered. This just tells me the developers are interested in creating a quality product that simply works.
I miss the analog world I grew up in. I miss the tactile feel of real film, developed with chemistry, and I miss working in a darkroom where I can see the images emerge from nothing, and where my hands were on the media throughout the entire process. However I have learned to embrace the digital realm we’ve arrived at and I have fallen for techniques and processes that simply cannot be accomplished with film, but one of the things that really irks me about digital is the absolutely fragile nature of the 1’s and 0’s. You know what I’m talking about: corrupt media, incompatible data, “the Avalanche Effect”, or, in real world terms: card falls in lake, bakes in the desert sun, is worn down, or simply mishandled. In short: a lot of hard work has simply vanished. I’m not in the habit of endorsing products but if you work in digital photography, you need to know about PhotoRescue3.
Occasionally you come across a product that is so impressive that you want everyone to know about it, and PhotoRescue3 is one of those products, in fact it is so good the developers don’t want you to have to pay for it unless it can prove to you that your images can be recovered. This just tells me the developers are interested in creating a quality product that simply works.
My sister, who is a fashion photographer in Chicago called me after a shoot recently to say that the SD card she pulled from her Nikon camera and mounted on her Mac was inexplicably showing up as an empty card. Even after putting it back in the camera, it came up as empty. She knew there was data on the card, but somehow between the camera and the card reader on her Mac, it had gotten lost. I suggested she try PhotoRescue 3. She downloaded the free trial version which determined there were in fact images on the card by showing her an accurate preview of the recoverable images–in her case, all of them. So she paid $29 to activate the full version of the software–a pittance in comparison to a re-shoot, and downloaded the images, backed them up and was editing away in no time.
The developers claim that this product may even be able to recover images from a card you erased by mistake, and it recovers movie files as well. You may not need PhotoRescue right now, or ever, but you need to know it is available should the unthinkable happen.
The George Barris Car Show came to Culver City this past weekend and I worked with the 21st Century 3D team to capture all of the fuel injected fun in 3D video.
I have recently updated my DP reel and made it available here.
There is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept.
⎯ Ansel Adams
I have been working behind the lens for almost 20 years, as Director of Photography, Photographer, and as a Studio Chief Lighting Technician. I believe that the language of visual storytelling is a complex one that invollves composition, optics, light and movement. This is the first reel I’ve put together in awhile, but it won’t be the last. Consider it a work in progress and feel free to comment.
My experience includes working with 35mm and 16mm film cameras, broadcast video, High Definition, and all of the latest digital cameras.
View the reel in High Def here, and see more of my films on Vimeo.
I rode my bike down to Venice Beach on Sunday, as I usually do, but this particular Sunday was unusually overcast and dreary for Southern California. None-the-less there were plenty of skaters at the skate park and I managed to get a couple of shots. I used a polarizing filter to cut the light down even more so I could make the skaters blurry, to give them a sense of faster motion.
Last week I was working on a pilot for a television show and our location was a strip mine. The mine is still working, in fact they have plans to completely decapitate some of the large hills in the area. It’s gorgeous country and kind of sad to think it will all be leveled in a few years. But I wanted to get some shots of the huge machinery that is used for this kind of task, but I got to location a little later than I had hoped and only had time to get this one shot.
A Huge earth shredder rips into the hills and grinds them into sand.
I just cannot stop marveling over this camera. We recently shot this music video with 3- 5D’s and a variety of Canon L series lenses.
The video is for the title song of the documentary of the same name. See What I’m Saying, the Deaf Entertainers Documentary is just that: a film about 4 deaf entertainers and is the first of it’s kind as it is open captioned to be accessible to a hearing impaired audience. The music video is open captioned as well, and as far as I know, is also the first of it’s kind. The video was directed by Hilari Scarl and the music is written and performed by the Los Angeles based group Powder.
The video was shot using a total of 3-5D MkII cameras and a variety of support devices. Post production was done in Final Cut Pro and After Effects while the look was created in Color and using the Magic Bullet Looks Suite filters. The workflow included downloading CF cards to external hard drives on location and then transcoding the h.264 footage to Apple Pro Res 422 HQ for editing in Final Cut.
Jeff Gatesman – Director of Photography
Barry Berona – Additional Camera Operator
David Farkas – Addditional Camera Operator
Pedro Guimares – DIT and 1st camera assitant
Tiffany Aug – Additional 1st camera assitant
Alexander Brennan – 2nd Camera Assistant
Stories of what a film crew can do when left unsupervised, with several days off, on a distant location are legendary. This is not one of those stories. Recently I was working on a film in Shreveport, La., and with 4 days off due to circumstances beyond my control, got together with some of the other crew members and made a short film of our own.
[vimeo 8825229 w=500 h=282]
FULL CONTACT SCRABBLE from Jeff Gatesman on Vimeo.
I shot this film entirely with a canon 5D Mark II and grip and lighting equipment purchased from Home Depot. Our one prop was purchased at a swap meet for $7. Of course the film could not have been made without the great talents of our cast and crew, and a ready-made set.
The film was conceived and written by Nancy Breaux and myself, and we borrowed the strengths of our stunt coordinator, Gregory Brazzel, electric best boy, Ken Ballantine, key grip, Scott “Scooter” Hillman, set decorator, Mary Beth O’Connor, and location manager Kendrick Hudson. Our three actors were the stunt crew from the feature: Jennifer H. Cobb, Gregory Brazzel (stunt coordinator) and Tracy Thomas, who also wrote and recorded all the music for Full Contact Scrabble.
Sound for the film was recorded on the 5D using the built-in mic, which is less than desirable. Fortunately during post, 2-time Emmy-award winning sound designer Adam Johnston stepped in and trashed all of the location sound and replaced it with a mighty soundtrack complete with cicada’s, buzzing flies and the snapping gum that helps define Jennifer’s character.
If you liked the film, leave a comment for us. If you didn’t like it: what the heck is wrong with you?
Nancy Breaux: writer/producer
Gregory Brazzel: stunt coordinator
Ken Ballantine: gaffer
Scott, “Scooter” Hillman: Key Grip
Mary Beth O’Connor: set decorator
Kendrick Hudson: location coordinator
Ron King: location re-recording
Tracy Thomas: original music
Adam Johnston: sound design
cast: Jennifer H. Cobb, Gregory Brazzel and Tracy Thomas.
co-written, directed, shot and edited by Jeff Gatesman.
Watch it again in High Def:
