Full Moon Over Pasadena

the Gracies – Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu

Recently worked on a documentary with Brasilian director Pedro Gorski about Hélio Gracie, one of the founders of Gracie Jiu-Jitsu, and an all-around amazing human being. As always, I was found behind the still camera, producing production stills. Without a doubt an extraordinary group of men across the board, and it was an honor getting to meet each one of them. Here are a few selects from the experience.

We started at the Gracie Jiu-Jitsu Academy in Torrance, CA. We interviewed with Rorion Gracie and his sons, Rener and Ryron. While there, we also interviewed Ed O’Neill, who has been training at the Gracie Academy for 18 years *AND* is a black belt!

On the last day of production, we found ourselves at the home of Royce Gracie. We finished off the shoot with a couple of short interviews.

Can’t wait to hit the big time so I can start taking classes!

Oahu

Editorial Section on Site!

Recently added a new section to my website Jess Reynolds Photo, called “Editorial”.

I decided that my website needs a section where the images are less…. intense? More natural, if you will. Less photoshop. More editorial.

And so, the Editorial Portfolio on my page has been born.

Currently it has images from my latest trip to Hawaii, and will soon have images from other jobs added in.

News!

It’s been a good month for work. (Hence the lack of blog updates.)

I spent 3 weeks shooting production stills for a Feature Film, Locked Away. I had gigs upon gigs of images from this, so it was a great lesson in editing down. As file sizes get bigger, storage is become greater and greater an issue. That’s why after my summer job, I’m going to get me a DROBO!. More on the summer job in a bit.

Also, this past week found me on set with a fashion shoot, featuring Linday Lohan as the model. Those who know me and my work, know that fashion is not my passion, so before you go scratching your head in confusion, know that I was just shooting the behind-the-scenes photography. The photographer was Patrick Hoelck. Cool guy, great images. Really fun to be around.

Images from both jobs will be added to this blog and categorized as soon as I have the proper permissions to share them.

Both of those jobs have been wrapped on my end, so the exciting news is now I can finally focus on my next two big projects.

I have an upcoming summer job doing videographer work for a non-profit. I’m very excited to use my eye for color and composition with them. It will be a great 90 days, and I look forward to improving on my video shooting and editing skills. In fact, today I will be upgrading to Final Cut Studio 3. VERY exciting.

Primarily though, I need to work on my Brasilia images. Brasilia is celebrating it’s 50th Anniversary, and I know that it is crucial that I get them key-worded and online… Also, they’re going to look great on my new site, jessreynolds.com.

So that’s the news for now. Locked Away and Lindsay Lohan archived, next is Videographer and Brasilia. 🙂

Happy Valentine’s Day…

Here are some roses from the talented Eugène Atget.

Enjoy!

Eugène Atget Roses

Hipstamatic

Absolutely adoring this new iPhone App – Hipstamatic!!!

Taken at the Royal Garden in NoHo.

Funky!

I’m currently doing production stills for a feature film being filmed here in LA…

A recent location of ours was in the middle of Topanga, in a pretty isolated section of the mountain. We were shooting at an old two-story farmhouse, and EVERYTHING was old about this place…

I fell in love with the wallpaper in the living room. No, I probably would never have it in my OWN house, but for where we were, it was perfect… Enjoy!

Ancient tribal language becomes extinct as last speaker dies

Most of the time I’m sharing photo or tech related links, but I can’t help but share this one.

It’s a fascinating article about the death of a language, breaking a 65,000-year link to one of the world’s oldest cultures.

The link to the actual article is here. I’m also going to copy and paste it below, just in case the Guardian ever removes it!

Ancient tribal language becomes extinct as last speaker dies

Boa Sr, the last speaker of the Bo language of the Andaman Islands, has died. Photograph: Alok Das/Survival/Survival

The last speaker of an ancient tribal language has died in the Andaman Islands, breaking a 65,000-year link to one of the world’s oldest cultures.

Boa Sr, who lived through the 2004 tsunami, the Japanese occupation and diseases brought by British settlers, was the last native of the island chain who was fluent in Bo.

Taking its name from a now-extinct tribe, Bo is one of the 10 Great Andamanese languages, which are thought to date back to pre-Neolithic human settlement of south-east Asia.

Though the language has been closely studied by researchers of linguistic history, Boa Sr spent the last few years of her life unable to converse with anyone in her mother tongue.

Even members of inter-related tribes were unable to comprehend the repertoire of Bo songs and stories uttered by the woman in her 80s, who also spoke Hindi and another local language.

“Her loss is not just the loss of the Great Andamanese community, it is a loss of several disciplines of studies put together, including anthropology, linguistics, history, psychology, and biology,” Narayan Choudhary, a linguist of Jawaharlal Nehru University who was part of an Andaman research team, wrote on his webpage. “To me, Boa Sr epitomised a totality of humanity in all its hues and with a richness that is not to be found anywhere else.”

The Andaman Islands, in the Bay of Bengal, are governed by India. The indigenous population has steadily collapsed since the island chain was colonised by British settlers in 1858 and used for most of the following 100 years as a colonial penal colony.

Tribes on some islands retained their distinct culture by dwelling deep in the forests and rebuffing would-be colonisers, missionaries and documentary makers with volleys of arrows. But the last vestiges of remoteness ended with the construction of trunk roads from the 1970s.

According to the NGO Survival International, the number of Great Andamanese has declined in the past 150 years from about 5,000 to 52. Alcoholism is rife among the survivors.

“The Great Andamanese were first massacred, then all but wiped out by paternalistic policies which left them ravaged by epidemics of disease, and robbed of their land and independence,” said Survival International’s director, Stephen Corry. “With the death of Boa Sr and the extinction of the Bo language, a unique part of human society is now just a memory. Boa’s loss is a bleak reminder that we must not allow this to happen to the other tribes of the Andaman Islands.”

Boa Sr appears to have been in good health until recently. During the Indian Ocean tsunami, she reportedly climbed a tree to escape the waves.

She told linguists afterwards that she had been forewarned. “We were all there when the earthquake came. The eldest told us the Earth would part, don’t run away or move.”

Back to Los Angeles….

I made it back to Los Angeles just in time to enjoy some of the torrential downpours that I usually associate with the EAST coast. Fun times!

And just like that, I got back into the swing of things.

Last Thursday I attended a SmugMug LA meeting, my first. I pretty much floated my car down Ventura Blvd. to the venue, but I got there in one piece. (The flooded streets down here looked more like São Paulo than Los Angeles). Jim Brammer was speaking on marketing. Like anything we see or hear, we should take it all in, digest it, then sort through what we need or don’t need. The good thing is, some of what he was saying echoed ideas that I’ve read in two GREAT books, VisionMongers – Making a Life and a Living in Photography and The Art of Start. Other things countered as well, but again, we take what we need, then leave the rest on the table.

The following night I found myself at Loft 4300 to photograph a “Pancakes and Booze” event. It is a monthly event that this gallery holds. Artist Nicole Palmquist, creator of www.booleep.com was asked to paint one of her pieces on a nude model. She had hired me to photograph/document the event for her. It was a great night! There was lots of great work on the walls, pancakes were served all night long, and I especially enjoyed being able to see all of the steps Nicole had to take to get to her final product. Images will be up soon, but I believe I have some censoring to do before I can post them online.

In the meantime, I’m sifting through my images from Brasília, VERY eager to get them online to share, as well as working with liveBooks on my new website. I also have a few meetings set up next week with architects. Already busy!

Hope everyone is well and I look forward to posting some images for you all very soon.