Jonathan Brownfield: Sports Photographer

Jonathan BrownfieldI don’t remember how I happened across Jonathan Brownfield. One of those six degrees of Twitter things, probably. Jonathan is a professional sports photographer and has shot games involving “our” teams so that was probably it.

Along the way he mentioned visiting family in Missouri over the holidays so I tweeted him with an invite to stop by for lunch/tour/interview.  Today was the day.

Here’s some background from one of Jonathan’s websites (for those that take a pass on the interview):

“While in high school, I started working as an assistant for Sports Illustrated photographer, David Klutho. That marked the beginning of my career as a professional photographer. This lead to having over 20 photos published in Sports Illustrated.

When I started college I began working for the University of Missouri Athletic Department and became their Head of Photography. Besides shooting, I coordinated a group of photographers to make sure every home event was covered.

During my sophomore year I was recruited by Hooters to photograph some of the local girls for the 2008 and 2009 calendars and the 2008 Miss Hooters International Beauty Pageant.

I currently shoot sports for US Presswire.

Now days my work is regularly seen in USA Today, ESPN Magazine, and in the LA Times.”

Did I mention that Jonathan is 23 years old?

I made a list of questions to ask a professional sports photographer only to discover that Jonathan has branched out from that (still a passion but now kind of a weekend thing). I rambled on with my questions so I’ve chopped the visit into two, 20-minutes chunks. The first one is mostly bio and social media. The second finally gets around to some sports stuff.

AUDIO: Interview Part 1

AUDIO: Interview Part 2

I was very impressed with Jonathan. Accomplishing what he has at 23, it would be easy to conclude one’s poop is odorless. He is what your grandmother called “a nice young man.”

You can see some of his photography here. He blogs here. And he’s @johnnybond86 on Twitter.

Casio Exilim EX FC100

I’ve only had this camera for a few days and really haven’t played with it enough to offer much of an opinion. The review at InfoSyncWorld says it’s “good” but not “great.” So why did I buy it?

My current Casio is fine and I’ll keep it. But I’ve had such good luck with the Exilim line from Casio, I buy a new one every year or two, just to get my hands on the new features.

I think the FC100 would be a good choice (review above not withstanding) for a parent with youngsters involved in sports. The “High Speed Burst Mode” should let you capture that frozen frame as the soccer ball is kicked or the bat is swung.

The “High Speed Movie” mode claims 1000fps which should make for some fun slow-mo video. I’ll look for opportunities to try out both of those features and post what I get (good or bad) here.

Camera costs between $300 and $350 but that will come down pretty quickly.

The photography of Matthew Howard

Matt Howard is a talented photographer in Kennett, MO (my home town). Matt’s day job is personal trainer so I guess he’s technically an amateur but certainly in the best sense of that word. I stumbled onto Matt’s flickr page recently and was immediately taken with his haunting (for me) images of the flat, empty fields I remember growing up. I got him on the phone for a brief (15 min) chat this afternoon during which he explained his passion for photography started with a book rather than a camera.

AUDIO: Interview with Matt Howard 15 min MP3

 

Pictures from home

Regular readers will know that I grew up in Kennett, Missouri, and lived there until 1984. A great place to be from, if you catch my drift. The landscape is so flat you can see the curve of the earth. And the crop chemicals made for spectacular sunsets. But I never thought of the area as beautiful… until I stumbled across some photos by mshhoward. It appears he has enhanced the images a bit but I could be wrong on that. Doesn’t matter. They’re really striking.

I’ve emailed asking for an interview to find out more about the photographer and his work. Watch this space.

Casio Exilim EX-Z1000

My beloved Casio camera started giving me some weird white screens and rather than wait for it to completely fail at a critical moment… I upgraded. The Casio Exilim Ex-Z1000 is the new, bigger brother to the model I had. Slightly larger form factor but that allows for an even larger display. Lots of megapixels and some optical zoom. But the real clincher for me was the video. With a 2 gig SD card, I can record up to two hours of video! Amazing. Sound is pretty good, too. Here’s a little 2 min clip (13 meg .wmv) I shot last night. John Fougere and David Brazeal doing the weekly high school football scoreboard show.