Almost Everything with Jeffery Saddoris

“I want to love taking pictures of whatever it is. It’s making something interesting out of everyday objects that intrigues me.”

Kevin Mullins never planned on being a wedding photographer – or any kind of photographer really. His daily routine was a two and a half hour tube ride each way to an IT job in central London. One one particular ride home, he flipped open a magazine someone had left on the seat to an article about wedding photography. The candid black and white photos struck a chord with Kevin and when he got home to his wife, he told her that’s what he wanted to do. I’ll let Kevin fill in the details, but over the past decade, he has shot hundreds of weddings and he has developed a terrific documentary shooting style that allows him to forget about the obvious or more traditional shot list — the rings, the cake, the dress hanging in a tree or in front of a window — and instead focus on the smaller personal stories that make up the bigger story of the day. The end results are intimate and allow us as viewers of the pictures to feel more like we were part of the goings on, rather than simply watching them from the periphery.

CONNECT WITH KEVIN
Website: https://www.kevinmullinsphotography.co.uk
Instagram: @kevinmullinsphotography
Twitter: @kevin_mullins

MUSIC
Please Listen Carefully
(Jahzzar) / CC BY-SA 4.0

At the end of 1999, I bought my first new car: a 2000 Chevy Blazer Sport in black, with a dark grey interior. I had never bought a new car before and the purchase process took months. Literally. I think I test drove every car available under $30,000 — multiple times. It got to the point where sales people at several local dealerships knew me by name. As it turned out, the local Chevy dealer was owned by the father of a guy I went to high school with, who ended up making me a great deal on the Blazer — I think in part so I would stop coming in to test drive his cars. Still, I loved that car and drove it for more than a decade before trading it in. When I decided to upgrade to a new mic, I tested more than 20 different mics — condensers, dynamics, even a couple ribbon mics — before landing on the ElectroVoice RE320 that I currently use. And then there’s my search for a new camera, which was a running joke for about five of the six years of doing On Taking Pictures. The point is, I do an exhaustive amount of research on the tools I buy. On the upside, once I finally get to a decision, I rarely have buyer’s remorse. Seller’s remorse is another story — specifically, a mint-condition Nikon F2AS with 50mm f/1.2 lens that I still don’t know why I sold.

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Freakonomics Radio recently did an episode called How to be Creative where they asked a bunch of academics, artists, musicians, scientists, and inventors: how do you define creativity?

Photographer Nick Brandt just launched a teaser for his next body of work called This Empty World, which as he writes “addresses the escalating destruction of the natural world at the hands of humankind.” It looks like another stunning body of work and I’m looking forward to getting the opportunity to talk to Nick about it.

I’ve recently finished the latest season of The Man in the High Castle and in watching was reminded how much I love the opening titles, which were done by a company called Elastic, who also did Westworld, The Crown, The Punisher and a ton of other really terrific work.

Music in this episode: The Wrong Way (Jahzzar) / CC BY-SA 4.0

“Those villagers living on the front line — that’s the part that got me the most. Those people have nowhere else to go.”

I have been fascinated by photojournalism and specifically combat or conflict photojournalism since first seeing the work of Larry Burrows when I was in high school. His photographs of Vietnam showed a side of war that I hadn’t seen before — not just the atrocities, but also the personal stories and the human cost of conflict. A few months back, Sean Tucker and I were having a conversation about conflict photography and he told me about a friend of his who had gone to Ukraine to photograph the war there after deciding that street photography wasn’t giving him the photographic experience he was looking for. His name is Ondřej Vachek, and after looking at his pictures and reading his accompanying essay called
The Forgotten War, I knew I wanted to talk to him about not only the experience itself, but also about some of the back story and choices that led up to it.

CONNECT WITH ONDREJ
Website: https://www.ondrejvachek.com/
YouTube: OndřejVachek
Instagram: @ondroidv

MUSIC
Please Listen Carefully
(Jahzzar) / CC BY-SA 4.0

“It’s not where you go that really is the point, it’s the going. It’s the person you become in the going to these places.”

I first spoke to David duChemin in 2009 after reading his book
Within the Frame. Since then, we’ve recorded a number of conversations together and in addition to being a fan of both his words and his pictures, I’m proud to call him a friend. We begin the conversation talking about David’s new book
Pilgrims & Nomads — a body of work that has taken him nearly twelve years and multiple trips to Ethiopia and Northern Kenya to produce. As is often the case when David and I sit down, the conversation quickly seems to find its own rhythm and its own direction.

CONNECT WITH DAVID
Website: https://davidduchemin.com
Twitter: @david_duChemin
Instagram: @davidduchemin
Facebook: @visionisbetter

MUSIC
Please Listen Carefully
(Jahzzar) / CC BY-SA 4.0

Yesterday was our first day back from a 9-day working vacation in France and Germany and I’ve got to tell you, I still haven’t fully readjusted to East Coast time, but I wanted to talk a little about the trip while it was still fresh in my mind. I spent the bulk of the day yesterday taking a first pass at photos and making notes about the some of the experiences we had and how I would like to see them affecting me moving forward. Overall, I came back incredibly inspired, both in terms of conversations I’d like to record and some new directions and techniques I would like to explore in my own work, both photographically and in my paintings.

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Legendary conflict photojournalist Don McCullin has released a beautiful new book called The Landscape.

Designed in the USSR: 1950-1989 is a terrific look into the design of everyday life in the Soviet Union throughout the Cold War, from toys to propaganda.

The current issue of Egoïste magazine — volume 11, number 18 — features an absolutely gorgeous photo essay of Jessica Chastain by Ellen von Unwerth. I love that the magazine isn’t bound — it’s just a series of loose leaf pages in a cover.

Music in this episode: The Wrong Way (Jahzzar) / CC BY-SA 4.0

I had a friend in college—let’s call him Michael—who was one of the most interesting people I had ever met up to that point in my life. He was the first person I’d met who had…almost an “aura” about him, for lack of a better word, along with several unique qualities that just made him fascinating to be around. He wasn’t what you would call a “goth” per se, but his appearance was striking. His hair would change often, both in color and style, he was typically clad in black, wore eyeliner, a variety of rings and bracelets, and even had black painted fingernails. I met Michael through a mutual friend in the theater department and what I found most interesting was that he didn’t seem to be playing a part or persona, this was just who he was at the time. One of the biggest influences Michael had on me was his taste in music. Michael played guitar in a band and introduced me to entire genres of music that I had never heard of before from bands like Dead Can Dance, This Mortal Coil, Cocteau Twins, and Peter Murphy. Another friend at the time—a modern dancer named “Memo”—was actually friends with Peter and years later invited me to see him, along with Nine Inch Nails at a little club in Atlanta—but I’ll save that story for another time.

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One thing my dad and I had in common was our love of westerns. When I was little, many weekend afternoons were spent on the sofa watching the likes of John Wayne, Gary Cooper, and Clint Eastwood. Photographer Mark Parascandola visits some of the ghost towns that Hollywood built, and then abandoned, that dot the landscape of southwestern Spain.

Here’s an archive of just a small portion of the incredible design and layout work that Chris Ashworth has created for RayGun magazine.

GQ magazine recently sat down with Paul McCartney and asked him to break down some of some of his most iconic songs, both from The Beatles and from Wings. It’s interesting to hear how the songs came about and which ones still carry weight.

Music in this episode: The Wrong Way (Jahzzar) / CC BY-SA 4.0

Next month, we will have been in this house for two years and it’s taken me all of that time to finally get around to beginning the build out of the two basement spaces that will ultimately become my studios — one for podcasting and digital media and the other for painting and printing. The previous owners of the house were both makers—he was a woodworker and an engineer and she was a painter. Together, they literally built the house in 1956 and in fact one of the downstairs spaces served as a wood shop where the living room built-ins and the kitchen cabinets were made. So there’s a history of making here and I knew before we even bought the house and moved in that I wanted at least one of the spaces downstairs as a studio, and I think I even told Adrianne that I would start building it out on day one. But here we are two years later and still no studio. What happened? I think like so many creative endeavors, it has something to do with fear, or what Steven Pressfield calls “Resistance.” And before I go much further, if you are a maker or a creator and have not read The War of Art, either pause this episode and go order yourself a copy or write yourself a note to pick one up after. It may take a couple readings to really get it, but once it sinks in, it will offer a ton of insight into the creative process and how self-doubt and fear can be debilitating until you get a handle on them.

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Filmmaker Brian Carlson made a terrific short film about lawnmower racing called 41x.

Lens Culture recently shared a brilliant photo essay by photographer Michael Christopher Brown called Yo Soy Fidel. In the essay, Brown follows the “Freedom Caravan” that carried Fidel Castro’s remains across Cuba after his death. It’s a gorgeous set of photographs.

One of my favorite artists, Shepard Fairey, just completed the largest piece of his career. It’s a 15 story mural of Johnny Cash that takes up the entire side of the Residence Inn hotel in Sacramento. The mural was inspired by a photograph by Jim Marshall of Cash at Folsom Prison and in this interview with Capital Public Radio, Fairey talks about how the piece came together.

Music in this episode: The Wrong Way (Jahzzar) / CC BY-SA 4.0

In this episode, I want to talk about prints. You remember prints, right–little pieces of paper with pictures on them? Your parents probably had albums or maybe boxes of them that you would flip through on holidays or birthdays or the night before you went off to college.

The act of printing photographs has changed dramatically since I bought my first camera in 1982—necessarily so. With film cameras, you had to make prints—even just contact prints—to see what you shot, unless of course you were shooting slides. But even then, if you were regularly shooting slides, chances are you had a slide projector and one of those clumsy fold up screens, or at least a favorite wall. The point is, the act of looking at photos used to be a completely separate act than that of taking photos, since film offered no way to chimp as you shot. With digital, it’s all more or less the same process: shoot, look at what you shot. If you missed it or it wasn’t quite right, you do it again and if you did get it, you move on. And once you post that shot to social media, you may never look at it again, other than to check the number of likes.

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Recently, a friend turned me on to the work of a Russian photographer named Daria Belikova, whose work is absolutely stunning. It’s a little Tim Walker, a little Mario Testino, and a little Paolo Roversi all wrapped up into one terrific body of work.

Lead Foo Fighter and former Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl has released a new documentary called Play that “celebrates the rewards and challenges of dedicating one’s life to playing and mastering a musical instrument.” The film shows Dave playing every musical part of a 23 minute instrumental track, all recorded live.

If you’re a fan of drawing sketching or journaling, you’ll love The Moleskine Project, which is a collective exhibition of artists’ sketchbooks from around the world from a variety of different backgrounds.

Music in this episode: The Wrong Way (Jahzzar) / CC BY-SA 4.0

A couple weeks ago, I spoke to a friend from college who I hadn’t spoken to in…well, longer than it should have been. It’s something I’m really trying to work on, but as you probably know, sometimes life gets in the way. Anyway, during the course of our conversation catching up on what was happening in each other’s lives, he told me that my design professor and the person who was really the cornerstone of the entire technical theatre department had passed away last year. I hadn’t spoken to him since 1989, but the news of his passing left me a little gutted. Herb Camburn was a scenic designer, a costume designer, a director, and an artist. He was one of the most talented people I had ever met, let alone had the pleasure of studying under. When explaining a particular concept, he would routinely grab a pen or pencil and begin to draw—sometimes a costume rendering, other times a scenic elevation—but regardless of what he was drawing, the execution was always impeccable. The real art, however, was that he would make his drawings upside down—either seated or standing—from across the table, so that they would be right side up for the intended viewer, who on more than one occasion was me. I had enormous respect for him and for the skill he made look so effortless. He was gruff, at times incredibly difficult (at least this was the memory of my early twenty-something self), and if praise ever did escape his lips, it meant the world because you knew that you’d earned it.

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The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore is an Academy Award-winning homage to the printed page and the love of books based on a book by William Joyce.

Here’s the trailer and a behind the scenes look at a short called The Lost Property Office and one of the things that I absolutely love about this stop-motion film is the fact that everything in it was hand made out of cardboard by filmmaker Daniel Agdag. Be sure to watch the behind the scenes clip to see how some of it came together.

Bill Sienkiewicz is a giant in the comics industry, has worked on books for both DC and Marvel and is probably best known for illustrating Moon Knight and the Frank Miller series Elektra: Assassin. In this video from The Illustration Academy, we get to an overhead look as Bill creates an illustration from start to finish and offers some insights into how he creates his signature style.

Music in this episode: The Wrong Way (Jahzzar) / CC BY-SA 4.0

Earlier this week, we recorded the last episode of On Taking Pictures after more than six years of weekly episodes. While the show was ostensibly about photography, the legacy of the show is 325 episodes—about 600 hours, give or take—of conversations that ranged from why we make art to whether digital is better than film. I think we spent more time asking questions than answering them, and for me, that became the main point of being there week after week. One of my favorite quotes is by Rainer Maria Rilke and while I won’t share the whole thing with you now, the core of it is to “live the questions.” By living the questions, Rilke writes, “Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

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Here’s a link to the full episode of On Taking Pictures the clip was taken from: Episode 43 Artistic Monkhood

LA-based artist and photographer Natalja Kent makes incredible colorful geometric large format photographs without the use of a camera.

Here’s a terrific documentary about Japanese motorcycle culture called Motorcycle Boy. I love the way this thing is shot – it’s dripping with tons of style and energy.

Music in this episode: The Wrong Way (Jahzzar) / CC BY-SA 4.0