Jimmy Sastra

Photographers always get front row seats. Or we get to hang out backstage with the band. But what’s best is that sometime we get hired and get our own private show.

Above: Timaree Schmit

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Meet my parents and my little brother. From left to right: Budiman, Marijetti and Johnny Sastra.

You must see these at higher resolution: papa, mama, the prince.

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The great things about kids is that they are so expressive. They seem to be in their own little world. Unlike grownups they don’t mind getting their picture taken. They’re not so self conscious and they’re usually not that shy.

I like to get down on one knee when I photograph them to make myself shorter and see the world from their perspective. This little man below was being spun around by his dad. I tried blurring the background to emphasize that.

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Today is Thanksgiving day so let’s give thanks to God and express our gratitude for all that he’s given us. Here’s some more single strobe hyperrealism. My gift to you.

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About two weeks ago I went to PDMA, a conference about innovation and I saw Guy Kawasaki speak about curve jumping: adopting the latest and greatest piece of technology to stay ahead of the competition. The analogy in photography is to find the newest piece of hardware, whether it’s a lens baby, some new light modifier, a lens with ultra sonic motor and built-in solar panels, who knows what’s next. It always takes time to learn how to use your new toys, and usually the learning curve is pretty steep. So it’s very tempting to get new toys because it can complete change your photography instantly. However, lately I’ve found it’s more important to be perfecting what I’m already doing.

So in this photo I have no new gadgets. Just trying to perfect this style of one flash to highlight the face, and what I call hyperreal post production. Hyperreal post production is when I load a picture into Photoshop and play around with the sliders for an hour. I don’t exactly understand how they manipulate the bits, but I’m getting a good intuition for some of them. Also my eye gets more sensitive to slight changes. Slow but steady progress.

This photo was taken at sunset. It is considered by many photographers the perfect time of day.

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The Intergrated Product Design (IPD) program at my school is one thirds School of Engineering, one thirds School of Design and one thirds Wharton business school. To quote their website:

“… an opportunity to manifest a synthesis of art and technology and to push the envelope of design …”

Sounds like fun!

Pictured above are students from Jenny Buck’s Creative Thinking & Functional Iteration in Design course. These machines are mechanical volleyball players powered by mechanical means only.

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A very eclectic group of friends stayed at my house this past weekend. My friend Andreas was visiting from Denmark and my roommate Neil had a bunch of friends over from all kinds of different backgrounds: Ireland, Australia, Panama, etc.

Neil’s friend Simon Davis runs a non-profit group called Pain for Gain, formerly known as ‘Masochists without Borders’. He got his friends together to raise money for building a school in Betivatu, a village in the Solomin Islands by cumulatively climbing the Art Museum steps a total of 800 times last Saturday here in Philadelphia. 800 Times being the equivalent of climbing to the top of the Mount Everest. It took this group of 5 heroes (Simon Davis, Neil Beeharry, Isis Philips, Melanie Funken and Dave Walsh) a total of 3 and a half hours to complete the challenge. Random passersby would come in and pitch in. Most notably Brian who is pictured below.

It was a cloudy and rainy day. So the sky was pretty much a giant soft box. No shadows or any interesting light. So I used my bare flash, hand held to cast some highlights and was able to catch Brian mid stride. You can even see a little drop of sweat coming down his face.

Check out Pain for Gain on their website or facebook page.

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Andrew Rosenthal lately has me shooting for happier.com. It’s really nice to have shoots coming in regularly. They say the only way to get good at photography is practice, practice, practice and having someone call me on a regular basis holds me accountable to keep pushing that button with my finger. Thanks Andrew!

This time he had me shoot Dr. Martin Seligman, one of the leading professors in the field of positive psychology. This is a portrait I took yesterday that I really liked.

A snooted flash is placed at eye level about 3 meters to the right. Snooted means adding a tube to the front of your flash so the light comes out as a very narrow spot light. It’s zoomed in all the way at 105mm. When the flash is zoomed in all the way the light comes out in a very narrow beam and since all the light is concentrated we can set the power very low, 1/64 if I remember correctly. The exposure is set at the usual 2 stops below ambient. The other light sources are fluorescent lighting inside and daylight coming in through the window from outside. I pulled down the blinds to create a nice textured background and I was hoping to cast some nice subtle shadows which actually worked. Note the shadow lines on the back of his head.

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