#46 Jarob Ortiz; Ansel Did Not Do My Job!

2021-02-28

When the USA National Park Service advertised for a large format photographer to come and work for them there were 4,500 applicants. Jarob Ortiz sent in his resume and, along with 18 others got through to interview stage and landed the dream job. Things we chatted about on the show: Before landing the job Jarob was already photographing historic buildings for his personal work – the town of Gary in Indiana for exa...

Things we chatted about on the show:

Before landing the job Jarob was already photographing historic buildings for his personal work – the town of Gary in Indiana for example.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary,_Indiana#National_Register_of_Historic_Places

We discussed the latest on the Reveni Labs spotmeter on Kickstarter now massively over subscribed but (as I type) still active.

https://www.reveni-labs.com/spotmeter

We discovered that it’s really hard to see much of Jarob’s work for the Park Service in a digital form as they are a tad behind on the scanning front but you can go look at all sorts of interesting things at the Heritage Documentation Program site.

The permanent collection of architectural, engineering and landscape documentation at the Library of Congress consists of measured and interpretive drawings, large-format black and white and color photographs, written historical and descriptive data, and original field notes. The collection captures the American experience through approximately 40,000 recorded historic structures and sites, from American Indian cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde to space-age technology at Cape Canaveral.

https://www.nps.gov/HDP/coll.htm

Although I was sceptical, there is a really interesting FB page too.

https://www.facebook.com/HeritageDocumentationPrograms

We didn’t get to talk lenses which is odd but we did chat a bit about apparently clever digital cameras called Phase one (Simon seemed to know something about them).

https://www.phaseone.com/en/

After the show, Jarob mentioned to us that he would have liked to have answered a question that we did not ask, so here's the question and answer;

What advice do you have for large format photographers?

It's great to draw inspiration from famous photographers and their technique, but it's far more important not to chase them. Everyone has their own approach, all of which is unique to that individual based upon their life experiences and the personality as a result.

Like in my case.... People calling me "the next Ansel Adams" - give me a break! I'll never be Ansel Adams. Ansel was a master of the craft; a man that revolutionized the photographic process with his Zone System approach. I'll never be that. All we can do as photographers is workhard and hold ourselves to a higher standard and someday (hopefully) we'll be noticed.

Jarob’s links

https://www.instagram.com/jarobortiz/

Other News

None to speak of…..

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