Peter+Nadia

I had the honor of shooting this wedding a few days before Christmas. It was an incredible mix of cultures and nationalities. Peter and Nadia are  not only wonderful clients but also great friends! Congrats guys and may God bless your marriage!

Calling vs Career vs Calling?

As some of you know and I guess the rest of you do now, I felt a calling to the ministry when I was 15. I struggled for the next 4-5 years about how that calling would manifest itself. For now I believe it is a calling to missions. Hence why my wife, daughter, and I currently live in Guatemala. However, my senior year in college I bought my first DSLR, a Canon Rrebel xt. It was tiny and all plastic and was awful at anything above iso 400. But it helped me learn photography. I could go out and shoot 300 pictures and then go sit down and look through them and figure out what I did right and wrong.

First wedding I ever helped shoot. Canon Rebel xt & 28-200 f/4-5.6

Since then I have gone from a kid who loved to take photos to a amateur photographer to a serious amateur to a professional. I graduated from my little rebel xt to now shooting a 5D Mark 2 with about $2500 in lenses, flashes, modifiers, etc.

I figured out after a while that I could make money taking pictures. I thought "wow people will pay me to take picture? This is great, it doesn't even seem like work!" Which is unfortunately the very mindset that a lot of young photogs who undercut the industry prices and deliver really awful results, but thats a topic for another post. 

I did photography as a hobby for the longest time, taking a paid gig here and there. I was also still pursuing ministry as my day job. I finished college started working on my masters degree (which I am 9 classes from finishing praise the Lord!). After I got married I started shooting as a part-time pro (which I personally believe is where the majority of the industry is heading because of a combination of the economy and the accessibility of DSLRs.) I really got into wedding and portrait photography in 2012 shooting 4 weddings in 5 weeks and 7 weddings total that year. I love being a portrait photographer. It is my niche. I shoot weddings like a portrait photographer. The photo work I do here in Guatemala I shoot like a portrait photographer. I love off camera lighting and great texture backgrounds. I love the reaction of clients when I deliver their photos or showing the photos on the back of DSLR to the little kids in the villages after I take their photo. I love being a photographer. The good, the bad, and the ugly that is all apart of being a pro. 

But this brings me to the point of this post and the angst that I am currently going through. Lately have been wrestling with my love of photography and my calling to ministry. 

I miss shooting on a regular basis. I miss meeting clients. I miss hunting locations. I started going back through my photos as I am preparing to sell off some of my gear to invest in some new pieces. The more I looked the more I began to think, "man, I'm pretty good at this." Not in a bragging "look how great I am" way but in a "I think I could make a living" kind of way. But the struggle still remains of how a calling to ministry and a career in photography match up. Is it a bi-vocational type of thing? Do I mesh the two into a media ministry that works with smaller organizations who cannot afford quality material (which I have been working on). Ministry is evolving and growing outside the box that used to contain it. But I don't know. So I continue to pray and seek the Lord about it. I will keep you updated as the Lord leads. 

For now I continue to shoot when I can. Serve with Clubhouse (which I love what I am doing with them). Grow as a leader, photographer, minister, husband, father, and christian. 

JD

Peter+Nadia {engagement}

Had a great day in Antigua with these two. I have gotten to know Peter and Nadia since we have moved down here and they are a fun loving couple as can see from the photos below:

Gear used: Canon 5D Mark2, Canon 135 f/2 L, Canon 50 f/1.4, Canon 35 f/2

Stop reading and shoot someone!

Last weekend I shot my Sister-in-law's engagement photos and felt really rusty. It took me forever to get my lighting right and even then I didn't love it. Thankfully I finally sorta got the lighting I was looking for and the pictures turned out great. (see the whole album @ facebook.com/jdjonesphotography) 

Sine then, I have been doing a lot of blog reading about photography and lighting. Article after article trying to increase my knowledge. One think I have read from a lot of pro photog's is to "read little shoot a lot." So last night I got off the computer and setup my light and thankfully Sherlock (our tabby diva of a cat... wait that's redundant... anyway) behaved and let me take some shots of her. The result was that I found one of the lighting setups I had been looking for last weekend and all it took was shooting with straight on hard light at an high angle!

So today's moral of the story is: reading to gain knowledge is great but you also have to apply that knowledge. 

JD

ps my wife ordered this for my daughter who will be here in less than 9 weeks! It's great!

I'm a professional!

When meeting someone for the first time inevitably the question will come up at some point, "so what do you do" or at least some varition thereof. When I was in college the answer was easy, "I'm a (insert designation here) in college". When I was in Grad School/ seminary full time it was the same thing, "I'm a graduate student" or "I'm in seminary" depending if I was talking to church folk or not. 

Once I stopped Grad school full time the answer got more difficult. For a while it was a Lifeway employee but when I started doing media/worship part time I became a "worship leader". 

When I got married I got my first real full time job and I became a delivery driver and only a delivery driver. I didn't add that I delivered caskets because I didn't want people to know that. 

Often I have added a "but" to my answer. "I work at such and such but I'm in grad school and I'm going to be..." 

I currently work three jobs + seminary. I have a bill paying, a creative, and a ministry "job". I put in 32 hours a week at my day job, it's consistent, reliable, and lends itself very little creative production but it helps to pay our bills and out food on the table. 

Then there is my photography business, right now it's my favorite of the three but just by a hair. I get to be creative and work for myself, which can be both good and bad. I probably could have eventually gone full time with this if it had not been for my ministry position (which is my calling and first love) which will be taking us out of the country soon. I love photography! I love shooting, I don't hate editing, not a big fan of the business side but I'm learning more about it. This job has been what I tell people I do, along with my ministry job. In fact it was this self proclaimed title that has started this series of blog posts. I have been telling people for a while now that I'm a photographer, most people assume when you say that, that you mean you're a professional (we will discuss this in our next post) so I usually leave that word out. In the month of June I felt like a professional full time photographer. I had 4 weddings in 5 weeks and a trip to Guatemala the other week to do photography and videography. 

My wife and I were at a wedding a couple of weekends ago and sitting at a table with some folks and someone asked me what I did, I smiled and said, "I'm a photographer and director of media for a non profit group". 

So I wrote the above blog post July 25th with the intention of posting it a few days later when I had time to finish it. Needless to say, but I'm going to anyway, I didn't. 

I had a point to this post when I started writing it but I can't remember what it was. In fact I nearly deleted it but I really liked it.

I guess that I wrote it for a couple of reasons:

1. I was frustrated with my day job. I love the people I work with. But it is not what I am called to be doing and it doesn't challenge me. God has been really working on me to be satisfied and work at it as I would work at my dream job. 

2. To set up the next few posts. I have a couple of ideas in ind of what I want to talk about. 

     a. My wrestling with how media and my calling to the ministry fit together. 

     b. What it means (to me at least) to be a professional photographer.

Anyway. Sorry for the rambling. Another reason I wrote this is that I am trying to get into the habit of keeping a blog going for when we go to Guatemala. Since we are still about 8 months from moving there is not a ton going on but I have plenty to say concerning photography. 

thanks,

JD

From a wedding back in July: