Offscreen Issue 13

I've been meaning to do a full post about this for months now - I think I got my copy in the mail sometime in March. Better late than never, right?

So, the opportunity to shoot for Offscreen was very unexpected. I'm not really sure how the editor, Kai Brach, usually selects photographers for each issue, but I was fortunate in that Jamin - the subject of this interview - and I had worked together numerous times previously, and he was familiar enough with my work to recommend me. Also fortunate that Kai was down. 

The brief was pretty simple. Offscreen has a fairly standardized aesthetic for their photography, the only real directive was to match that as closely as possible, keep things as ambient/naturally lit as possible and get him in as many different scenarios as possible. 

I only decided that photography was going to become my primary focus a few years ago. As the possibilities with that career decision started to crystallize, I realized that a huge rite of passage for any photographer is to get their work in print - especially now, as digital mediums tend to rule the day. You can certainly have a full career in photography without having your work reproduced in a physical medium, but it's an achievement I think we all want under our belt. I didn't know how it'd come about, definitely didn't know when, but it was a goal I set in front of myself. To have it happen in one of my favorite mags, a magazine I've been reading since it's inception (2012), was the icing on the cake. 

I've also been doing a lot of photography for Killscreen's print magazine as well - really looking forward to seeing and sharing all of that. These first few forays into portraiture for print are still about me defining my style, so I'm really hungry to do more, and get it honed down a bit. 

Next up, I gotta shoot some covers. I have a kill-list of magazines I'd like to shoot for, and a lot of what I'll be working on in the coming months culminates in a big marketing push, to get my work out in front of these publications and see if I can't make clients out of them. 

Baby steps!

OFFSCREEN MAGAZINE

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So, in the fall of 2015, I was commissioned to photograph a colleague of mine, Jamin Warren (founder of Killscreen and host of the PBS Gameshow), for one of my favorite print mags - Offscreen. If you're not familiar, Offscreen is a print-only publication that focuses on and documents internet and technology entrepreneurs, designers and other creatives. So glad to finally be able to talk about it! 

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one of my photos of Jamin for Offscreen.

I highly recommend grabbing a copy - not just because my work is in this issue. The folks offscreen highlights are interesting, talented and typically would go unnoticed otherwise. I love the culture that creator Kai Brach has developed around the magazine. He has a blog where he's super transparent about the ins and outs of publishing Offscreen, touching on such topics as how he makes and spends his money, and problems with diversity among the people he features. It's also a great testament to what can be done with an extremely small team, he basically puts the magazine together by himself, with the help of contributors, of course. It's also really nicely designed.

All in all, it's a really great opportunity for me, and I'm definitely motivated to get my work into more of my favorite magazines - I've started on a kill list of mags I'd like to shoot for. Gotta dream big. 

Happy 2016!