j r o g e r s p h o t o

Also known as frozen smoke, Aerogel is the world’s lowest...

Thu, 06 Sep 2012 09:43:12 -0500

Also known as frozen smoke, Aerogel is the world’s lowest density solid, clocking in at 96% air. It’s basically just a gel made from silicon, except all the liquid has been taken out and replaced with gas instead. If you hold a small piece in your hand, it’s practically impossible to either see or feel, but if you poke it, it’s like styrofoam.

Aerogel isn’t just neat, it’s useful. It supports up to 4,000 times its own weight and can apparently withstand a direct blast from two pounds of dynamite. It’s also the best insulator in existence, which is why we don’t have Aerogel jackets: it works so well that people were complaining about overheating on Mt. Everest.

so last week we had to say goodbye to our beloved english...

Mon, 20 Aug 2012 10:00:26 -0500

so last week we had to say goodbye to our beloved english bulldog. for those of you that know us, nothing else need be said about him, you know what that meant. for those of you that do not, just know that i could write a book about this dog. and someday i may. but not right now. i’ll just say that i have had dogs my whole life and seen them come and go. but this guy was something else entirely. we had a vet come out to our house and put him to sleep because he had so much wrong with his heart, and after taking him to see his (really good) cardiologist tuesday, he lost the will to fight anymore. he had been fighting so hard since november, when we discovered problems with his heart. he stayed happy and strong until last tuesday, and i put him in the truck and hugged him, but he looked at me like he has never looked at me. and strange as it may sound to some of you, i knew he didn’t have it in him to do this any more. no more tests, no more meds. and katie and i agreed that the second he was in pain or seemed the least bit like he was suffering we’d let him go. and wednesday morning we could not get him to eat or wag his tail. and he was telling us it was time. so the vet came out here and did a great job in letting him pass very peacefully. we agreed that there was no way we wanted him to go at a vet’s office. so the vet left and i buried him under the big tree in our north pasture that will henceforth be known as his tree. and after all was said and done, that evening i saw a large, beautiful red-tailed hawk sitting on an H brace over his grave. and i know he is in a better place. Most of you knew him as Chunky, but we called him The Booroo, da Bulling, Chunks, Montilious, Chunking, Chunkling, Chunkster, and a whole list of other nicknames i can’t think of at the moment. he lived a little over 9 years and had one hell of a life traveling and being loved and cheating death quite a few times.

Uep was in full swing this season. What a great bunch of people...

Wed, 16 May 2012 08:13:13 -0500

Uep was in full swing this season. What a great bunch of people work for that company. We go full blast all weekend on days that last 16 hrs + and for not much pay. The juice seems to be the little rushes you get when you nail those shots of cheerleaders upside down, in mid air or some other difficult shot. It’s great to see some of those shooters and event managers that have become good friends through the season and get all sleep deprived and loopy and go have a pint and a good meal or 2 with them, knowing you rocked some bad ass shots that day. or 20,000 of them.

Man… been a while. A lot has happened. Picked up American Airlines as a client. Spent a couple...

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 12:47:30 -0500

Man… been a while. A lot has happened. Picked up American Airlines as a client. Spent a couple of days at LAX running around on the tarmac and crawling around in some Boeing 777 aircraft with the hustle and bustle of a major international airport going on around us. Shot some at DFW, too where they are based. Shot some still, video and have been editing video for them for a while, now. Seems like a good addition to my client list. Here is one i shot of a 777 engine. thanks to matt white for flying out to L.A. with me and helping out. this was shot with his 14mm i rented.

oh man. it’s 10 AM Central. this monday just turned...

Mon, 28 Nov 2011 09:57:07 -0600

oh man. it’s 10 AM Central. this monday just turned into a guitar playing day….

jhnmyr:

Here’s the theme song I wrote and recorded for Zach Anner’s upcoming series “Rollin’ With Zach” on OWN. Incidentally, it was the last thing I sang before I went on the DL…

Rollin’ with Zach will premiere with back-to-back episodes beginning Monday, December 12 from 8:00 - 9:00 p.m. ET/PT

Click here to see a trailer for the show. It looks like it’s going to be great.

So the new fashion page is up. :)

Fri, 05 Aug 2011 11:21:14 -0500

So the new fashion page is up. :)

So the fashion thing is hopefully coming back around....

Fri, 10 Jun 2011 13:45:00 -0500

So the fashion thing is hopefully coming back around. It’s sounding like the market is going to be more smaller companies that are cranking out cool, more custom looks than mass produced pieces. The next few years are going to be interesting for fashion shooters, methinks. I just pray that it’s BETTER than the last few..

This is a shot from a recent shoot for Cowgirl Tuff. Keep your eye on them if you are a denim fan, I think they are going to do nothing but grow. More to come.

jhnmyr: GPOYGW Ibanez Steve Vai Jem Series guitar in Loch Ness...

Wed, 09 Feb 2011 14:07:36 -0600

jhnmyr:

GPOYGW Ibanez Steve Vai Jem Series guitar in Loch Ness Green. Thanks to the Ibanez Custom Shop. One of the first guitars I’ve ever pined for, as if it were brand new in 1989. FMLFTW

and it even has the more rare MAPLE fretboard! i’d be jealous if it was orange!

This guy.. is gonna go far. I met him when he was like 9 or...

Mon, 10 Jan 2011 19:48:00 -0600

This guy.. is gonna go far. I met him when he was like 9 or so.. taught him all my tricks. His ears need to be insured. One day he will record our album and we’re gonna be famous. :)

http://www.vespersound.com/

So I really need to get back into my night landscape...

Fri, 31 Dec 2010 19:04:42 -0600

So I really need to get back into my night landscape photography. I have a nice camera for that, now… so here is a start. :)

It’s an old gas station near the TX/OK border. I took a few shots of my friend’s Jeep and managed to shoot a few of these, too. (thanks for waiting, guys) All light was from a flashlight I got for Christmas.

Stop in Breckenridge (or thereabouts) in Colorado. Me and Dave...

Tue, 28 Dec 2010 10:12:59 -0600

Stop in Breckenridge (or thereabouts) in Colorado. Me and Dave of the Words with Friends crew will be there till 1/2/2011. i’ll bring my guitar. OLD LOVE!

Can’t decide which one of these I like best. This was a...

Mon, 01 Nov 2010 11:42:23 -0500

Can’t decide which one of these I like best. This was a test shoot I did for a potential client (which seems to have worked, they booked me). I sent them some more normal looking shots, but while we were testing I shot some more dramatic stuff like this too. Not too bad for having like 2 hours or so.

Where is @jhnmyr? Weird I meet the guy a month ago and POOF he disappears. Hmm. :P

Sun, 24 Oct 2010 09:51:27 -0500

Where is @jhnmyr? Weird I meet the guy a month ago and POOF he disappears. Hmm. :P

So I sold my trusty Nikon D1x yesterday. What a camera. ...

Thu, 30 Sep 2010 09:57:55 -0500

So I sold my trusty Nikon D1x yesterday. What a camera. It’s funny.. I have a guitar that I have a special place for because i got good on that guitar. I think about that camera the same way. I pulled some really good stuff off with that camera. In every area except fashion, which I must attribute to the Canon 1Ds MKII and Nikon D3 I shot while I was on staff at DIllards and my Nikon D300 I shot while freelancing for them. But I shot great portraits, sports, landscapes, food, product, and even a couple of weddings with the D1x. Good thing is, I sold it to a guy who really seems like he’ll love it as much as me. Now all i have to do is sell the D300, and a coupe of lenses and I can start making the transfer to Canon. So long, guys. You have been awesome cameras.. but it’s time to go Canon.

jhnmyr: The Words With Friends Crew

Mon, 06 Sep 2010 23:38:02 -0500

jhnmyr:

The Words With Friends Crew

OK. I toned down the red eye and balanced the color a little....

Mon, 06 Sep 2010 23:23:00 -0500

OK. I toned down the red eye and balanced the color a little.

ALSO: Thank you, David Ryan Harris, for taking time out to snap this.

So, I finally have to chance to write about the John Mayer concert and meeting. I used to write lengthy reviews about good concerts I have gone to, but it’s been a while.. So this one is a good one to get started on again. There is some guitar geek stuff.. so WWF fans can just skip down to the middle…

Let me preface this by saying a huge thank you to my brother in laws. Paul and Dave could have invited anyone to this, but they know i’m a JM fan and played the guitar for almost as long as Dave’s been alive. They are truly great guys, and through this evening proved this many times over with the way they conducted themselves. We have had some fun in the 3 1/2 years I have known them.

Money has not been all that plentiful since the shooting for Dillards has stopped, so I was not going to go see John this tour. So it was all the better when my brother in law called and said they had been offered tickets. All I heard was Katie saying “yeah.. YEAH.. him and Eric Clapton are his favorite!” over the phone..

So after being sort of in shock kind of happy, we get there Saturday evening and find we are center stage..actually THE center… 7th row.

So the last time I saw John he was out supporting Continuum, which I wrote a long review about if anyone is interested. To me, that is one of the most important albums of the last 10 years. This time, it’s Battle Studies. The line up is a bit different band-wise, but i’m not going into that. Suffice to say the band was bad ass. Sound was a little heavy on the bottom end at first, then was pretty great. Only thing technical I am curious about is Robbie McIntosh’s amp. I will look it up.

Highlights? man.. John gets his SRV strat out (did you know John’s guitar tech is Rene Martinez… Stevie Ray Vaughan’s old tech?) and starts talking about SRV and Dallas and asking his parents for money to go live in Dallas because that’s where Stevie was from. And he’s playing these chords that are in Jimi’s “Little Wing” while he’s talking.. (maybe my favorite Jimi Hendrix tune.. certainly my favorite to play lol I did a mandolin solo due to too much tequila during a little jam session once when I lived in Austin..heh)..so i am thinking he’s gonna cover that. And he’s talking about drugs and how he’s only smoked weed and describing an SRV song called “Life Without You” and the goosebumps start to rise. Well, he proceeds to do the best version of Jimi’s “Voodoo Chile: Slight Return” I have ever heard. (man that wah tone was PERFECT!). Seriously. It was complete with standing (and kneeling) in front of his Two-Rocks (amps) and just wailin’.. John has a way of sort of channeling Jimi Hendrix. It really is a sight to see it from 50 feet away. He took his tremolo arm off his guitar in the middle of the song for some reason.. and afterwards seemed to be complimenting Rene (I guess for how that guitar played).

He did Bob Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” acoustically. That was cool. In fact.. all the acoustic stuff with the band had a cool sort of flavor that night. Sort of loose and yet everyone was adding very tasteful bits. Robbie was doing really cool stuff on a few songs, “Why Georgia”, especially.

I really am a fan of the song “Heartbreak Warfare”. Some really sweet delay on that one and just enough funky modulation, too. Gravity was insanely good, too. And yeah, John.. I noticed you leaning hard into some SRV influenced licks during the solos. Goosebumps again. “Half of My Heart” closed the evening. I really dig the Rick Turner guitar he uses for that song. Lindsey Buckingham of Fleetwood Mac uses one of those. They just have this weird, yet beautiful midrange sound that is awesome some some things.

In all honesty, that all I can really remember about the concert. I was so excited about meeting John and stuff that I couldn’t focus on the details. Me and the WWF guys were wearing our WWF tee shirts that are black with a yellowish logo on them, and there were a old of blue lights, so I think John may have seen us.. lol. In fact, I think he did tell us he saw us and spoke into a mic or something he had on his amps to tell his assistant to call us.

Ok. All the WWF fans and non-guitar geeks can start here.

So we were waiting to be fetched from the meet and greet line and there were a few girls out there, as can be imagined. One saw my shirt and said “words with friends? Is that a words with friends tee shirt?” lol I said yes and pointed to Paul and Dave and told the girl they are the founders of Newtoy and created WWF. At the time, I was pissed off trying to send a txt or place a call on my iPhone but the network was overrun and so I was having to retry everything. So i concentrated on this for a few minutes and when I looked up Paul and Dave were being surrounded by some true WWF fans. (Drunk SMU girls, mostly).. heheh Photos were taken, and we had our own little sample of rockstardom. Even if some of that was the fact that girls knew we were getting in and they wanted in.

So we were fetched. And given VIP stickers and let through the gate. The whole night I was expecting to be in a large room or near the busses with about 100 people with the whole band and staff. I mean.. i had made up my mind that was what it was gonna be. I was wrong. A door was knocked on and opened and in a room the size of a small hotel room, there sat John. My first impression? He gets up and shakes our hands and promptly digs in the fridge for us some drinks. (Sierra Pale Ale for me) and hands them to us. Wow. A little smalltalk and this is where Maggie asks John for a bottle opener. (Laughter) In fact, I had been looking around the room for one, myself. The 3 of us looked silly standing there with unopened beers. John sincerely apologized and we wound up opening them on his wardrobe (a roadcase, for JM). For the next 30 min or so it’s just us, me, Paul, Dave, and Maggie, JM and this one drunk chick that somehow made it in with us.. hehe

I have to say, as much of a fan I have been of John for the last 6 or 7 years, I had no idea what to expect him to be like in real life. But I found ourselves in this detailed conversation about video games. Just like talking to a new friend about similar experiences you had as a kid.. just as easy as if the new friend was a good friend of your best friend. Then he mentions music and produces a nice hard case full of about 30 records. As he is making a point about great records that have no “hits” on them he also pulls out Eric Clapton’s “Journeyman”. At that point I have to say something. I am a huge Clapton fan, he is the guy that turned this country kid on to rock and roll via his “24 Nights” album. And so I say something like.. “no way.. Journeyman? Man old love.” and he says “I LOVE OLD LOVE”.. You can play that song forever..” My mouth was probably agape because my buddy Rob and I can (and have) jammed that song for looong periods of time. So we discuss music for a little while. It’s insane. There were very specific things said about music that I feel the exact same way about.

Of the drunk girl I will only say this.. JM is such a cool, intelligent, coherent host that he’d be hard core talking about something with Paul and Dave, and she’d sort of say something out of the blue.. and without any awkwardness, John would segueway into a smooth, funny but not condescending answer for her and then back to the discussion.

John later thanked Paul in an email for making his dressing room feel like a living room.

As some people started coming in, we chilled for a while and then decided to not overstay our welcome. On the way out, John thanked us again, and we had a photo taken with Dave’s iPhone (with him this time). I wish I’d have one of my cameras with me.. but you know.. short notice. And as I left, I shook his hand and said: “As a Dallas native and guitar player, thank you so much for what you are doing with stuff like what you are saying about Stevie”.. and had a little moment there. What I was going to say was “Thank you for singlehandedly bringing the guitar back to popular music.” Maybe next time.

All in all.. just such a cool experience. Everyone was so chill.. even me! I didn’t really expect to sit down and have a 30 min hang out session. normally, i want to keep musicians and their personalities separate than their music. i am a fan of one amazing guitarist in particular that has been an ass to me a couple of times and it almost ruined me on his music. But with John, it was like a little peek into what was brewing as he was growing up to form the songs and guitar playing he has now. I have heard some folks badmouth him.. and it chaps me for 2 reasons: 1 most of that is bad press. 2. You shouldn’t care anyway. If you like the music, fine.. if not, fine.. but the media is not something you should base your opinion on ANYTHING on.

I think tomorrow, after re-reading this and prettying up a little (I am way too tired to write in my normal, witty and unique style) I am going to lock the door to my music room, and jam along to the DVDs and CDs I have of his, and some EC, too.

Long shot, but if you read this, John.. thanks SO much!! Can we talk more about music?

-Jeff

Yeah, even now every once in a while someone contacts me to...

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 10:28:37 -0500

Yeah, even now every once in a while someone contacts me to assist..

fair market rate?

Wed, 04 Aug 2010 15:37:07 -0500

i recently ran into an issue i have been blessed enough not to have to deal with until today. the dreaded “fair market rate” argument. here is an excerpt from my response to the potential client, who merely said my price of $150 to shoot copy work of her painting didn’t seem like a fair market rate:

”..as far as fair market rate, photography is not something you can really apply a Kelly’s Blue Book value to. You get what you pay for. And while that might sound cliche, it is the truth. Unfortunately for seasoned photographers who make their living with it, the onslaught of weekend warriors with a digital slr they picked up at Wal-Mart or Best Buy has wreaked havoc with the perception of “fair market value”. I shot about 20 paintings for a coffee table book for a major publisher all in one session and made over $600…”

in her defense, her shooter in (my beloved) austin charges her $200 to shoot 5 paintings. she therefore thought only one painting should be considerably cheaper. she stated the answer in her initial email by saying she understood most of the effort was in setting up the lights and so forth, and that’s what it is.. what the client is paying for is the expertise of knowing how to shoot something and doing it right and in a timely manner and having the experience/wherewithal to make it happen even if there are unforeseen problems. that’s the value of what your client is paying for. forget trying to rationalize a price to them about equipment, and studio and insurance costs, and the myriad other overhead costs. what your price is depends on what you think the intangible assets you have acquired (and some would argue -were born with) are worth.

all i can hope is that the photographic market will eventually see that finding some yahoo to shoot a job for a fraction of what it should be shot for is a risky endeavor at the very least. all these people with canon rebels that read strobist (not that i have anything against strobist) and fancy themselves professional photographers may not have been on a commercial shoot that a client has thousands of dollars (or TENS of thousands of dollars) invested in and a camera go down. or the art director wants to uproot and shoot in another, vastly different location. or the tech erases some important files. or it’s 98F and the light is getting away from them and there are still 5 shots to do. what happens then? yeah, their book may be nice. and their price may be nicer.. but did they shoot it all at their leisure? people helping them? a workshop, perhaps? how long did they work on each shot? i mean.. i love to shoot tests.. you can take a long time and experiment. not so when a client is paying. try shooting consistently good stuff under all kinds of pressure, dealing with all kinds of people.

i think that’s my best asset. i mean.. like my work or don’t like my work but the fact of the matter is that i get along with everyone, there seems to always be a nice fun, yet focused atmosphere on my shoots, and i don’t panic. even when my client has the meyerson booked, 4 models, hair and makeup, and 3 or 4 full time employees on a shoot and the assistant pulls the ol’ canon 1Ds MKII and 24-70L 2.8 down off the tripod and smashes it into many.. many pieces on the marble slab floor. (ok.. so maybe i got a little verklempt on that one..)

Just messing around while chilling in the hotel room. Thanks to...

Sat, 26 Jun 2010 13:20:13 -0500

Just messing around while chilling in the hotel room. Thanks to Mandy and Chris for taking some time out to let me shoot a few shots. It was chilly and i was too tired to be seriously photographing.. but I got some cool stuff. :)

Not exactly my hoss. But she’ll do. :)

Mon, 21 Jun 2010 18:45:28 -0500

Not exactly my hoss. But she’ll do. :)