2010 November » Raji Barbir Photography

The People Through My Lens - Jerramy

Nov 242010

Beyond just being an actor with whom I’ve worked on five short films (including the endlessly delayed NURF Wars – still in the works, naturally), Jerramy is another one of my close friends.

Strangely so, I think, because we’re so radically different. Yin and Yang I suppose. I’m all about controlling my environment, he’s all about going with the flow. I have a hard time letting go of precise planning, while he lets things evolve however they will.

So my first struggle with him when trying to setup this shoot was pinning down what exactly we were gonna do.

Me: “What defines you, Jerramy?”
Jerramy: “Living life, filling it with love and dreaming.”
Me: “Dude, I can’t shoot that…”

Love, for example, simply as a concept, is too broad and abstract to capture in an image. I shoot the consequence of love when I shoot a couple, I shoot the expression of love with a kiss or hands clasped together, but I can’t shoot love. And I can’t shoot life. And I can’t shoot dreams.

So I kept trying and trying to pin down something tangible to shoot. This proved to be very difficult with him. We did come up with some ideas, but nothing I was crazy about.

So when I decided to meet him by a park, still without a solid plan I felt confident about, I called…

Me: “Hey where are you?”
Jerramy: “I’m in the north parking lot. I’m sitting on the curb next to my car, playing my guitar.”
Me: “Don’t move!! This is you!! This is our shoot!!”

Screw the park; we shot this in the parking lot instead! And this is my best representation of Jerramy. Easy-going, filled with hopes and dreams, and loving life however it comes at him

Oh and here’s the NURF Wars poster Jerramy was the star of. See? It’s making SOME progress! And yes, the “One Man. One Last Job. Lots of NERF Guns.” tag line is obviously meant as a joke. Otherwise I think it would mean I’m currently stuck in the 80s.

The People Through My Lens - Lee

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Nov 222010

The People Through My Lens project is still very much alive, and here finally is another addition to it.

Lee is another one of those uber-talented folks I know. I seem to come in contact with a lot of them! Poor guy’s been waiting for me to finish my short film NURF Wars since February of 2009… Yes, Lee was in that.

Anyway, I’ve worked with him since then on projects from other local filmmakers, usually where I’m shooting behind the scenes stuff, so I knew him pretty well and knew right from the start that I wanted to include him in this.

I went to his house and although I wasn’t gonna be able to shoot him in action as an actor, we started chatting and I quickly re-discovered just how involved he is with music. He regularly performs on stage, working closely with a lot of theater productions and, to my great delight, writes his own stuff. Either for the stage or for fun.

I always love to watch creative people at work. There’s something deeply special about being the creator to something that is uniquely yours…

Ok, without further ado, here’s Lee!

November 17th - "National Unfriend Day"

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Nov 172010

I just read this news article about Jimmy Kimmel declaring today a National Unfriend Day, essentially asking us to unfriend those people on our facebook lists that aren’t real friends.

I feel like I have to stand up and say something here. Partly because I get to shamelessly plug my Facebook profile and invite you to add me as your friend, and partly because it’s such a benign issue that I feel safe in showing the strongly opinionated facet of my character.

At the time of this writing, I have four hundred and fourteen friends. That’s a stupidly high figure and it always makes me laugh to see the friend count climb. If anyone had that many friends, life would be one huge, relentless party.

And make no mistake. I used the word “relentless”. I could have used a word like “continuous”, but that sounds like fun.

“Relentless” sounds like hell.

But obviously, none of us can claim to have that many actual friends. Of course not! In fact, thanks to Facebook’s continuously (or relentlessly, depending on your perspective) updated functions, I’ve found myself needing to categorize a large portion of my “friends” into smaller groups.

The reason for this was initially very simple: I needed to be able to quickly see who was currently online in the chat window.

My personal record of online Facebook friends is currently at 46. That’s a lot of online people to chat to… And I don’t usually wanna talk to any of them.

Eventually, it became about organizing them in such a way as to be able to figure who I wanted or needed to talk to, just by glancing at my list.

If I need a heart to heart or just feel like chit chatting a little, I look to my A+ friends. I called them that because Facebook lists everything alphabetically, and nothing beats an A+, so they’re always at the top of my list of online friends.

Oh and because they’re real friends. I have sixteen of those in that group… SIXTEEN. Out of more than four hundred! And out of those sixteen, I’m very close to only six of them.

So I have six real, close friends out of four hundred and fourteen. Definitely sobering.

But if I need crew for an upcoming shoot, I have a Photography & Crew category. If I need to reach a model with a concept idea, I have a category for that. If I need to talk to one of my past or future clients, I have a category for that too.

And now we’re getting to the heart of the issue.

Because now Facebook sounds a lot like a networking tool. You have a few real friends, and the rest is whatever you want them to be.

So where’s the problem? In the article, Kimmel mentions Facebook cheapening friendship in its real sense… Sounds really stupid to me. If Facebook calling it “friends” is the issue, then this is a terminology issue. Would he feel better if we called them buddies instead?

“Hey when you get home, buddy me on Facebook” or “Why did you un-buddy me on Facebook ya jerk?!”

I understand and even agree to some extent with Kimmel’s rationale for this. That Facebook’s probably haphazard choice of calling everyone a “friend” is likely to give people a false sense of kinship when there isn’t one to begin with.

But as long as I can mentally separate Facebook’s definition of a friend from the REAL definition of one, I have no problem having over four hundred of them.

So uh… Add me on Facebook

My yearly crisis

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Nov 142010

If there’s one constant about being a blogger, for me at least, it’s that you’re always behind.

Granted, it’s been less than a week since my last post, and to be fair, I often lose track of what day it is, but it does still feel like forever since I’ve posted any meaningful photography on the blog… And that bothers me.

A lot.

Hell, last night, my now (apparently) yearly crisis finally came to a head. I wonder where my work is going, why it’s not getting anywhere and what I should try to make some semblance of progress with it.

Deep depression usually follows. The praise I get no longer means anything, because I look at all of my work and I think, “Everything I have, sucks.”

Whatever standards I’m reaching for are just beyond my reach.

Always.

And just like an avalanche, all the rest comes crashing down as well. Should I try something new? And what’s that? What am I doing now that isn’t working? How in the world do I find time for this stuff anyway?

That last one has actually been a serious problem. I shoot a lot of weddings in the summer. I have to pay the bills, though fortunately for me, and unlike many other photographers wanting to break into the big game (advertising, fashion, editorial, etc), I unapologetically and genuinely enjoy shooting weddings. Yes, it’s routine and repetitive, but the people are different, and I love me some people. I’m not a recluse, I’m not anti-social, I’m not a loner; I love people. And weddings provide me with a lot of those. So like with anything else I do, I give 500% of myself to my work.

The problem is, that leaves very little room for anything NON-wedding related. Especially in the summer. Between that and a host of major troubles in my personal life which, of course, happened to take place during what little down time I had (ie. the non-wedding-season months), I feel like I’ve hit a dry spell that has lasted a year and a half…

The solution that I came to, very late last night, is far from groundbreaking or exciting or somehow inspiring in its own right. Plus, the solution always seems to be the same:

Just shoot more.

So now the goal becomes to hash out a plan where I can do just that. Hopefully you’ll notice the results over time.

While you wait, here’s a model shoot I did recently. The best is already on the website, but here’s a few outtakes:

NYC - Part 2

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Nov 082010

Part 2 is here! What? Did you think I’d forgotten?

Well you’d be kinda right… I almost forgot. I’ve been Photoshopping furiously all day trying to get a very large sample album prepped for design. One of 5 more that I need to work on this month.

Anyway, so here is part 2 of my trip to NYC, in Holga-mode. Hope you enjoyed it as much as I did! Can’t wait to go back in March.

Oh and I LOVE medium format film! I’m finally starting to get the hang of my incredibly light-hungry Holga and it’s making me want to have some more control over a roll of film.

Now, although I’d love a medium format professional film camera like a Contax 645, it’s much more expensive than I’m willing to spend on one right now (several thousand – not to mention development costs and then you have to think about lenses and I’m stuck having to buy cool but very expensive Zeiss lenses), so I bought myself a 35mm Canon Elan 7E for an awesome $55! I should be able to use the lenses I already have on it. Bonus!

NYC - Part 1

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Nov 072010

I’ve had a lot of catching up to do since coming back to Utah, but here at last are the pictures from my trip. I’m splitting up the pictures in two parts. Today, I post the pictures taken with my iPhone and my real camera.

Stay tuned for Part 2, coming tomorrow. They’ll be Holga shots, so you know they’ll be interesting!

Day 1: Spent most of the day in planes or the airport. When I landed, my phone started shutting down randomly, often and mostly wouldn’t come back on. My sense of direction was in there (Google Maps), but even worse, so was my hotel’s address… Then when I finally got to the hotel, it was a lot more dodgy than Travelocity had made it appear online. I switched hotels and got myself a long overdue dinner for a measly four bucks.

Delicious food is everywhere and at every price.

Day 2: My first actual day in NYC was spent wandering in a jetlagged haze and trying to get Apple to tell me what was wrong with my phone. Long story short, I now have a new one.

MAN I love New York’s fall colors…

Day 3: I saw a couple of cops waiting for the same train I was about to get on in the subway. I had my giant pro camera with me, so like a crazy person I decided to try shooting some video in a public place and see what happens.

Cop: “Sir, what are you doing?”
Me: “I’m shooting some video…”
Cop: “You can’t do that here, sir.”
Me: “Why?”

She really didn’t like that question. Fortunately, I was able to defuse the situation and she left me alone.

The law doesn’t actually prevent you from shooting photography or video in any public place. I actually looked this up long before the incident, though I also knew that photographers have been getting increasingly harassed by authorities and stupidly painted in a very negative light.

I did end up shooting video in the subway, just when no authorities were around to give me trouble for it.

Still, I was bummed about the incident, wandered into Central Park again but within a few minutes got some calls from real estate agents wanting to show me apartments.

Day 4: After a long and busy day, my good friend Brittany requested some pictures of the Brooklyn Bridge. I was more than happy to oblige. It was already on my to-do list anyway Along the way of course, I took pictures and footage of what I could.