Some cool Jennifer Lopez pictures:
Christina Aguilera
Image by Cesar Pics
Christina Aguilera
Image by Cesar Pics
From Point-n-shoot to Pro
Image by mark sebastian
This image was captured with my first camera which was a Canon Digital Elph S110, a 2.1 megapixel point-n-shoot camera with one-tenth the resolution of my current camera! Back then, I didn’t take photography very seriously. I just carried the camera around everywhere I went and shot random things hoping to composite it later. As far as I was concerned, a photo was just another layer in photoshop.
Then in December of 2005, Director Charles Yi invited me to shoot behind-the-scenes during his first independent film, Traffic in the Sky. During the first day of the shoot, my Canon S110 began to act up, so I figured it was a good excuse to step it up a notch and purchased my first DSLR, a used Canon Digital Rebel 300D for 0.
It was kinda scary and exciting, actually. For one thing, I was broke and I’ve never touched a "real" camera before in my life…and I was actually afraid of my camera, because it felt like I was carrying a loaded gun every time I held it.
Crazy how a little plastic box of electronics and glass can do that.
For the most part, the photos taken with my new camera were just as good as my point-n-shoot photos, maybe even worse. It wasn’t until June of 2006 that I had my first "crazy" idea which resulted in over 900 girls volunteering to model for me. The details on how I pulled that off are another story, But ultimately, I managed to narrow them down to the top 50. From there, there were the top 4. And out of those 4, I let my room mate at the time, Tony Ha, choose the winner which happened to be Jackie Martinez.
Jackie and I ended up working almost exclusively together for over a year which eventually landed us a dinner meeting in dark underground Japanese restaurant in New York City with commercial photographer Markus Klinko.
What people don’t know about this meeting is that I was really intimidated by Markus. One of the most iconic photographers of our time wants to shoot my one and only model, and there I was with a basic camera gear. It was September of 2007 when I decided that I needed to sell all of my camera gear and invest in high-quality camera professional gear… and in a blink of an eye, I was suddenly ,000 in debt and my set was nowhere near completion. But something was different this time. I wasn’t "buying camera gear", I was "Investing in my future". The only way I would get out of debt was the shoot my way out of debt.
A few days later, we’re sitting across from a photographer who makes six-figures per photo shoot, gossiping about Jennifer Lopez and Beyonce, and stuffing our faces with food we could never afford. The whole thing was just unreal, but there was a particular moment that I will never forget: When Markus realized that Jackie and I lived over 340 miles away from each other. He was stunned, "So how did you shoot so many photos? You must have done at least 30-40 shoots"
Jackie and I turned and looked at each other, revisiting each photo shoot in our heads. Then we turned to Markus and said "We’ve shot about 8 times"
At that point, everybody at the table was in a state of shock. I remember thinking "Holy shit. I think we just stumped the greatest photographer in the world"
October 6th, 2007, one month after our initial meeting, I found myself on set with Markus Klinko during his photo shoot with Mary J. Blige. It wasn’t until I got home from the shoot that I realized how much things have changed. For one thing, I considered myself to be a photographer for the very first time.
to be continued….
Mark J. Sebastian | www.markjsebastian.com