portrait photography
This is the third cover I secured in the last week. When it rains it pours, I guess…
This one features lifestyle guru Danny Seo and former model, actress and founder of Weelicious Catherine McCord. We shot this in Los Angeles in Catherine’s kitchen after strolling the Hollywood farmers market for a few hours one morning.
It got a little weird when I received this one just days after seeing the cover of STERN with my younger son and town of heritage in Austria on it. This is my older son on the cover of the main newspaper of Berlin, the city I was born and raised in. Both kids, both places of personal, historical significance for me. Kinda weird.
It allowed me to make a joke about the kids competing for European magazine covers 😂
This photo was shot for stock here in Santa Barbara.
Super excited for this one! German STERN magazine put one of my photos on their cover recently. The image features my younger son overlooking the town of my heritage, Bludenz, in Vorarlberg, Austria. We were on an overnight hike when I took this photo at the Frassenhuette (hut). There may be photos of myself at this age (6) sitting right there.
Having the cover of STERN is amazing by itself but the fact that it not only features my son but also the town of Bludenz is just ridiculously awesome. The cover on the previous issue featured Joe Biden 😊
In the first week of January of this year I photographed Kara Thoms here in Santa Barbara. Kara is based here and operates her boutique from a dreamy A-frame house in the mountains overlooking Santa Barbara and the Channel Islands. I happened to know Kara from a shoot (she used to model) from may years ago for the Walking Company so it was fun to reconnect.
In mid December of 2020 I drove through the Santa Ynez Valley and crossed the ranges into the Cuyama Valley and ultimately into the town of Cuyama to photograph the revived Cuyama Buckhorn. A historic roadside motel the Buckhorn is under new ownership and has been receiving an amazing refresh. Close proximity to the Carrizo Plains, a National Monument containing the largest single native grassland remaining in California, makes the Buckhorn a great escape from Los Angeles, Ojai or Santa Barbara. The drive along Highway 33 between Cuyama and Ojai is one of the prettiest drives and supposedly one of the best areas to view fall colors in California.
And finally I drove down to Chino and visited Eastern Leaf Nursery to photograph their Bonsai operation. The depth of history regarding Bonsai is remarkable and I even received a little gift in form an olive tree Bonsai (I love Olive trees).
You can view all of these stories in the current (Spring 2021) issue of Naturally Danny Seo.
JUNGBLUT2020 - a journal-style selection of my favorite work from 2020 now available.
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I recently gave an interview with Berlin Los Angeles. Berlin and Los Angeles are sister cities and since I grew up in Berlin and now reside outside of Los Angeles, this was a perfect fit. You can check out the interview on their site HERE or read on below.
Interview:
Can you tell us what you and your work stand for?
I have this statement: “My formative years were spent trying to decipher if things should be analog or digital, divided or unified, English or German. It created a duality, a longing to find the right balance within the chaos.” It is obviously rooted in growing up in Berlin in the 80’s and 90’s but trying to maintain a balance that allows one to stay sane is super important to everything. So on personal photo projects and with artworks finding balance within the chaos is always a driver.
What was your career path and how were you introduced to the world of photography?
My dad introduced me to photography when I was a kid but both my parents exposed me to a lot of the arts from an early age on so I grew into it. As a teenager I was heavily into individual sports like board sports and BMX/mountainbiking which are also creative but physical activities. So those two elements blended together with photography, me documenting the lifestyle. I never really had to come up with what I wanted to do as a career, it just naturally evolved. I mean, there was the decision to come to California and study photography but at that point I was already set on this being what I want to do in life.
While in school I started assisting on large commercial productions and editorial shoots in Los Angeles and after school I started building my own busi- ness while still assisting in LA. I then became the first (main) assistant to an Architectural photographer and we traveled the world photographing high end hotels and resorts for a couple years. Just before my second son was born I had this moment while staying in a suite at a Ritz-Carlton where I realized that I was getting very used to a lifestyle that I was never going to be able to afford myself unless I stopped being an assistant. So I quit and jumped off the cliff into doing my own thing.
What influenced your decision to make the move from Berlin to sunny California?
Baywatch! Hehehe... No, but I grew up watching all those California TV shows (Knight Rider, Fall Guy, 90210, Baywatch) and then I got super into moun- tainbiking, skateboarding, snowboarding and surfing*. I also started reading books in English exclusively for a couple years when I was around 12. Then the owner of the English bookstore around the corner from me in Berlin recommended On the Road by Jack Kerouac to me when I was 17 or so and that was it (In 2019 I went to the bookstore and the man was still there. I told him that he was heavily responsible for the course of my life and we had a wonderful chat for about 30 minutes. A few months later he passed away.).
My parents had taken us on 3-week road trips to California multiple times throughout the 90’s and by the time I got my Abitur it was clear I wanted to be in California. In hindsight it would have been really odd if I hadn’t ended up here...
*in the form of posters on the wall and fantasizing about it
You specialize in commercial portraiture, lifestyle and travel photography. How is the influence of Berlin and Santa Barbara reflected in your projects?
That’s maybe easier for an outside observer to comment on. It’s tough for me to judge how much Berlin influences me consciously since I have lived in
California for 19 years now. Assistants and friends definitely comment on me being straight forward and being a little bit of a snobby German at times, hehehe. All my professional life has been formed in the US, including schooling so I think my work reflects the Californian in me more. But growing up as a teenager in 1990’s Berlin definitely instilled a healthy amount of punkiness and lack of respect for rules. Santa Barbara is such a bubble of safe, beautiful and calm while Berlin is arguable one of the most progressive, vibrant and culturally rich cities on the planet. Being able to pull from both of those places feels very good. I think a lot depends on where the work takes place, really. Especially personal, creative projects happen very differently in these two locations.
On your website, you exhibit a wide and amazing variety of projects.Which projects did you enjoy most so far, and why?
I loved doing this project with a friend of mine in China, The Bamboo Diaries. He had started a company (Soul Poles) making ski poles out of bamboo and needed to find a bamboo supplier in China so I came along to document the search and we had a great time. At one point we were zooming along some Hinterland roads on this motorcycle with me driving even though I had never driven a motorcycle on a road before. Then it started raining and I couldn’t see anything... It was amazing. The whole diary and photographs were published in Water Journal a few years back. It was a complete groove piece and probably influenced by my Beat Generation interest.
Going on a tuna trawler off the coast of Oregon for an editorial was an amazing experience and so was hanging out with Gabby Reece and Laird Hamilton for a day. Going to Barbuda after it was destroyed by a hurricane was sobering in a very good way.
One thing that stood out over the past couple years was meeting Pino Lella in northern Italy after reading a novel which he is the protagonist in (Beneath a Scarlet Sky). I was on a job in Colorado and read this novel that was gifted to me by the father of our exchange student who happened to work with
the daughter of Lella. I was sitting at the Denver airport holding back tears when I finished it not only because of the drama of the whole thing but also because I had an odd amount of real life connections to Lella. I was going to Romania for a job two weeks later and had already planned to stop at our house in Vorarlberg, Austria for a few days on my way back. So I decided that I had to drive to Lago Maggiore for a day while in Austria. Problem was that there was a media lock out on Lella because the rights to the story were held for a movie or TV series or something. But I somehow managed to get an ok from Lella’s wife the night before my only window to drive down there. 20 minutes from Lella’s house a Carabinieri almost killed the whole endeavor when he told me I couldn’t pass on the only road snaking along the lakeshore. I then spent 30 minutes with Lella and his wife and upon my travel back to Califor- nia the security people at the San Francisco airport lost the three rolls of film that I had shot of Lella. The only images I had!! I made such a fuzz at the security area I was worried I was getting myself in trouble but it worked and they figured out where they had misplaced the film. So, the point is that this was something I really wanted to do even though it was incredibly impossible under normal circumstances. But I realized that everything had aligned for me to do this right there and then and I jumped on it, getting bounced around in the process but making it (I also overdrove the rental car going over San Bernardino pass on the way back being so stoked and it just shut down on me right on top saying “Limit”...). The Barbuda piece was similar in that way. Not necessarily enjoyable while it was happening but a huge personal accomplishment when it was done. Those are the projects that give back the most.
Where do you find your inspiration? What does your creative process look like from the first idea to a finalized project?
When it comes to personal projects: An open mind. Once the hook is in you can only hang on for dear life and trust your experience. With both the project on Pino Lella and Barbuda rationality was mostly thrown out the window. I just had to do it in order to sleep at night. I had no choice. It’s scary but it also is the most exciting process. It’s not easy to do this on an assignment when people expect a certain result but I have been lucky to have worked with clients who understand this and let me do my thing to a degree. I am super thankful for that.
But generally on an assignment I have pretty strong direction from the team and can focus on producing the work without a lot of the distractions of production which is great. There is a lot of communication on the creative and it becomes a team effort. I have found that one or two “unhinged” personal projects combined with a bunch of organized and structured assignments per year is a good balance.
What are your favorite places in each city?
Berlin:
I love the Teufelsberg. I spent a lot of time there as a teenager so I still cherish it. Around Savignyplatz, Camera Work Gallerie. I love riding my bike around the city on a warm summer day and take it all in.
Los Angeles/Santa Barbara: The Getty Museum, overlooking LA on a spring day after a storm when the San Bernardino Mountains have snow on them is amazing. Dinner at Sunset Tower is a treat. Wurstküche in the Arts District and the LACMA are great. In Santa Barbara I love being up in the mountains or by/in the water.
Can you share with us what’s next on your list?
Figuring out how to navigate this new world we live in, really. At least in the short term. I shot a project early on in the shutdown that was all virtual portraits, via video chat. It got me to shoot a piece for the Washington Post Magazine, including the cover, virtually. That was fun, interesting and novel but I am not the biggest fan of sitting at the computer, that’s why I chose the profession I am in to begin with.
I also built out an online gallery/store recently so I can list tangible artworks I have created in the past as well as new work. That seems to have been a logical trend this year but I have enough inventory to where this makes sense and it was overdue anyways. So I think that’ll receive some energy over the next months, listing works and working on new sculptures, collages and stuff.
I am turning 40 next year and that event coincides with my halfway point of living in Berlin and California, 20 years in each place. So I am planning on celebrating both of these accordingly.
Martha Soffer by Jonas Jungblut
My recent editorial piece on one of the most renowned Ayurvedic doctors and experts in the country, Martha Soffer, can be viewed in print in the current issue of Naturally Danny Seo Magazine. Martha operates Surya Spa in Los Angeles where I photographed this story. You'll also find two gems from trips to northern Thailand and Telluride, CO in this issue.
Surya Spa by Jonas Jungblut
Surya Spa by Jonas Jungblut
Surya Spa by Jonas Jungblut
Telluride by Jonas Jungblut
The image on the right was photographed at the Anantara Golden Triangle Resort in northern Thailand on a trip a few years ago. My favorite memory from that place is a teenage elephant wanting to play with me… by running into me…
Anantara Golden Triangle by Jonas Jungblut
I am excited to share that you can now shop my art work on an elegant new site: galleryjonas.com
Browse the Water, Mountain and Skin collections for photographic images that can be bought as loose prints or in a custom high quality frame.
Buying fine art online has never been more popular. If you have been considering shopping art for your interior space, may that be a house, apartment or office, I hope you come over to Gallery Jonas to take a look.
Large scale, framed photographic prints are incredible, but sets of multiple images can add modern design to a wall and tell stories. Depending on what you want to achieve with the art in your space a set may be the right choice.
Getting lost in a vast, minimalist, large scale landscape image can be meditative and allow for focused thought. That type of artwork will create calmness and add peace to a space. It requires more thought to analyze and make sense of a single photograph, which, in my opinion, is the point of large scale imagery.
A set allows for storytelling and quicker digestion. The individual images compete for your attention so it is more difficult to dive as deep into each one as when you have one single image to dissect. The set allows for a more playful, less serious consumption of visual candy, though. Further, the design of the set or grid becomes an important factor to the story you are telling.
Browse the photography collections and design your own sets!
I produced and shot this short film featuring artist R. Nelson Parrish and custom surfboard shaper Ryan Lovelace’s project FOILS recently. The project was commissioned by the good folks over at Entropy Resins, makers of amazing bio resin.
We shot this at Parrish and Lovelace’s studios in Santa Barbara with a Covid-safe tiny crew and had a good time. Being the two characters they are, we had an entertaining day, including a lunch with Keith Malloy that consisted of a conversation which can only be referred to as unique.
Having documented Parrish and his work for over a decade we hadn’t produced a video/film before except for a vlog type video featuring a project in Berlin, so this was fun!
I’ll let Nelson and Ryan explain what FOILS is all about in the video. Enjoy!
A big thank you to all involved and especially Entropy Resins for making this possible!
Carey Hart mid air
Before the shut down resulting from the Covid epidemic I photographed an editorial for EasyRiders Magazine featuring Carey Hart. Maybe you’ve seen the short film we shot at the same time in a previous post but here are some still portraits and action shots.
portrait of Carey Hart
portrait of Carey Hart
This was a small crew shoot but we managed to shoot stills and motion of three different scenarios that day. Portraits and lifestyle stuff around Carey’s hangar, some motocross action and some streetbike stuff on his Indian.
portrait of Carey Hart
Carey Hart being the motocross rider he is, the dirt bike part was just crazy to watch. He has his own track on his property and we followed him out to it, him of course getting there before us. When we came up to it he was just flying over the massive table at the center of it. He then proceeded to jump over a fence for fun. Watch the film for some impressions, its good!
portrait of Carey Hart
Right before our shoot Carey had finished an asphalt pump track behind his hangar. It actually was so new the edges were still soft, but it was rideable. So my assistant (the great Tate Larrick) and I took a BMX and a skateboard out there and had a fun little session in the late evening light to finish up the day. Amazing!
Many Thanks to the crew at Easyriders and Carey Hart and his team who were incredible nice, supportive and accommodating!
I photographed another cover for Naturally Danny Seo Magazine this summer and it is out now! The cover was photographed in Serenbe, GA. I had to fly out from Santa Barbara, or LAX, to shoot this cover and one of the stories in the magazine. This was right when cases of Covid started to rise in Georgia. Not so comfortable but the travel experience was actually insanely easy. No lines, no waiting. Lots of space on the plane.
Cover photograph for Naturally Danny Seo Magazine by Jonas Jungblut
The portrait of Amy Feezer was photographed virtually via FaceTime. A technique I used to shoot a story for the Washington Post earlier this year which also landed me a cover. You can see more examples of Virtual Portraits in my series APART/TOGETHER.
The story on Anna Getty took me to Ojai, just about an hour’s drive from Santa Barbara. We spent the day at Anna’s house and had a good time. That was a really enjoyable shoot!
To photograph Elizabeth Stein of purely elizabeth I actually drove from Santa Barbara to Boulder, CO, a quick 20 hour drive… I stopped in Salt Lake City and made a road trip out of it which was super fun.
The Modern Farmhouse story was shot in Serenbe during the same trip we photographed the cover of the magazine. Serenbe is a small community outside of Atlanta. I have visited this charming, little gem a few times before but this time it felt like it is really growing together. There are still a lot of houses being built, a lot of them modeled after European villages (I was told the founder of Serenbe literally recreated roof lines from photographs he took of villages in Europe) and it is coming together nicely.
Finally there is a one page story about Ireland. These photos are from my first trip for the magazine when we spent a week in Ireland, stayed at castles, harvested seaweed and got sick from Oysters…
Virtual Portrait of Amy Feezor by Jonas Jungblut
Earlier this year, before Covid-19 had arrived, I did a production for EasyRiders Magazine featuring Carey Hart. This project was a stills and video combo. Stills aren’t released yet but I am happy the video is, so check it out below!
Many Thanks to the team at EasyRiders, Tate Larrick and of course Carey Hart and his team!
This image and light was the inspiration to that earlier post with the black and white image of the skateboarder in the Santa Barbara skatepark. This is at around 6am and that soft light coming from the left was natural sunlight filtered through some light clouds. Just so pretty…
Actually, this isn’t a mystery woman in the sense that I don’t know who it is, I am well aware of who this is. But Half Dome in the background is (or should be) a feature that does not need to be explained, and I liked the juxtaposition of that.
This was taken during a recent road trip. Trying to stay socially distant while traveling…
I kayaked along an early morning swim of friends of mine the other day and took this image at the beginning. It wasn’t particularly warm and it was definitely moody. Low hanging marine layer but a little wind as well.
The swim left Hendry’s Beach and went to Shoreline Beach in Santa Barbara, about 3.8 miles. In the kayak it was a comfortable cruise but swimming looked a little painful. Especially when they had to swim through thick kelp beds. More images coming soon…
I’ve been spending some time at the Santa Barbara skatepark recently… at six in the morning… My son likes to go early so he has the place to himself. Lucky for him I have been in skateboarding for the past 30 years so I am willing. I noticed how beautiful the light is in the skatepark at that time so I asked another friend of ours if he’d join to take some action shots and portraits.
For any of you who are familiar with my work, this is the kid from the Flying Baby photograph that was published in Friendship, Family, Love & Laughter in 2009.
I have three stories in the current issue of Naturally Danny Seo Magazine and this one is a odd one. This was the first editorial job I photographed after the shelter in place order in March and nobody could travel or put together photo productions. So Danny came up with the idea of printing out photos of products that needed to be photographed for this story and then placing them around my property here in Santa Barbara. A creative solution to a complicated challenge. Shooting a commercial production like this is a little more nerve-wracking and logistically complicated but for this editorial I was left to play around and just over-shoot it a little.
The below story was shot in Minneapolis and an image from it ended up on the cover of the magazine. Always nice! We shot this right before the Covid-19 shut down and I got back to Santa Barbara before air travel got restricted.
And finally a Yoga story I shot earlier in the year at Rancho Valencia resort in San Diego. We shot this early in the morning and I was wearing a Patagonia Puff Jacket… Erika Gibson (yogi) rocked it in the cold morning air!
Here are two recent covers of national magazines with my images on them. Pretty stoked, I have to say! The Washington Post Magazine cover was shot remotely, via FaceTime and other video chat applications during lock down. When I started my FaceTime portrait project I sure didn’t anticipate ending up on the cover of the Washington Post mag. Another great example of jumping off a cliff, figuring out how to fly on the way down and landing in paradise… I guess. It just shows that sticking your neck out usually leads to something. All the images for this article and my project Apart/Together, which features subjects from around the globe, were photographed while I was at home in Santa Barbara. Times are changing and technology is speeding up that change in a scary way.
The Naturally cover was photographed in Minneapolis. No idea did I have that just a few months later the city would become the epicenter of a powerful resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement.
On that note: I was always fascinated by the change that occured in the United States in the 60’s. People standing up for their rights and changing things. It was part of what made me want to immigrate here. Our current situation reminds of that time and seeing people fight for their rights in the streets as well as in the media again is inspiring!
FaceTime Portraits for the Washington Post
A few weeks ago I was assigned by the Washington Post Magazine to photograph 19 subjects across the United Stated. The assignment was for a piece they were putting together highlighting positive stories during the Covid-19 pandemic. I photographed it all via FaceTime.
The subjects ranged from writer Margaret Atwood to Park Ranger Jessica Korgie. From comedian Russel Peters to shop owner Ifat Pridan. An amazing range of personalities and I got to meet them all in their spaces. One on one! Surreal!!! I just dropped in on them in their homes!
Given a somewhat tight deadline the biggest challenge was scheduling all the subjects. I had done over 60 FaceTime portraits prior to this assignment so I felt comfortable once the call was on but getting it all sorted was another story.
A big Thank You to Dudley Brooks at the Post for having the vision to put this together!!!
Take a look here:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/lifestyle/magazine/america-resilient-coronavirus-pandemic/?itid=sf_lifestyle-magazine
Since my last post about my Virtual FaceTime Portraits a lot has happened on that front. At this point I have photographed 80 plus people with FaceTime photoshoots and I am still shooting almost every day. The Washington Post has assigned me with a story for which I had to photograph 17 people across the United States and I photographed a musical Quintet in the Netherlands.
FaceTime portrait
What I keep telling people is that as a portrait photographer I normally move intuitively around the subject. I adjust the cameras angle and position relative to the subject subconsciously, small movements can make a big difference. All of that I now have to do with words. When photographing the violin players for the Quintet in the Netherlands I was telling them that it is sort of like them telling someone how to place the fingers on the strings of the violin to play. I would argue that my results are a little bit better than what that situation would produce but you get the idea.
FaceTime Portrait
Another interesting development I have watched for the past weeks is that FaceTime photoshoots are happening all over the place now. To the point where companies like Nike are trying it out. Some photographers are projecting the FaceTime call onto surfaces of all sorts and then photograph the projection, some shoot it in color, some focus on professional models, it’s all over the place.
This brings me back to what I said in an interview with aphotoeditor.com about my project. While the technical quality of these shoots is mostly pretty rough, I believe this technique will be used in the future even past the Covid lockdown. Cameras on phones will get better, 5G will improve call quality and clients will think twice about flying someone around the world when they can just send a high end Iphone to the subject and do the shoot remotely. It will be niche, I am sure but I am also sure that it will be done. Technology just has to catch up a little bit more. Nobody had a PDA in the early 2000’s, then mobile internet allowed the Iphone to do what it did.
FaceTime Portrait
FaceTime Portrait
FaceTime Portrait
One think FaceTime does not seem to like at this point is movement. Subjects have to be rather still for the quality to catch up and not look glitchy. But with a great connection and a newer model device I have been able to get FaceTime Portraits that look amazing on a screen. They go through some post processing, sharpening and grain mostly, and then are completely usable for screen applications. I also printed some portraits and made collages and grids which I then photographed with my DSLR and got a high res file of.
FaceTime Portrait
FaceTime photoshoots force the photographer to dive deep into the creativity bucket and that’s why they are great! There is almost no control over technical aspects of the camera, no exposure, focus, or any other trickery. The photographer isn’t even holding the camera. I had people stick their device in the washing machine and shoot out of it, hide behind colored plexiglass and involve their spouses to act as moving tripods. It becomes a creative exercise for both, the photographer and the subject and especially during times of Covid lockdown offer a fun escape from being stuck at home.
FaceTime Portrait
FaceTime Portrait
FaceTime Portrait
FaceTime Portrait
FaceTime Portrait
FaceTime Portrait
