Contrast is King...

There is a great joy for me, when clients like to design with bold colors and contrasts, just as much as I like to photograph them.  Pastels from the same sleeve of a Pantone color bridge certainly have thier place, and sometimes a room of complimentary, soft and soothing earth tones are exactly what is needed. However when contrast works, it WORKS.

While I may seem biased, stay tuned for part 2 of this post, where I give love to the soothing, creamy, neutral tones I know many of you love.

Jason Jones Architectural and Interior Photography

The Devil is in the Details...

Getting some up close shots of design, is just as important as the whole room view. Good design is about every detail, and the sum of those for the whole.

Don't let good things go to waste using the widest lens [insert coolest camera gear mfg.'s name here] on sale last Black Friday for everything. Your design is personal, so get up close and personal with it!

My clients have enjoyed multiple ASID, AIA and NAHB awards for thier designs submitted with my photography. Let me help you get the recognition you deserve .

Jason Jones Texas Architectural and Interior Photographer

Have you ever felt like something had your name all over it?

JJ's Place in West Texas

I have a love affair with West Texas. Even in my first couple of years as a freelancer, jobs in the area past Weatherford, and not quite into New Mexico yet have always found me. It's a place I've always loved to visit, and theres a little something for everyone.

  I have driven I-20 back and forth between DFW and El Paso (in sections or wholly) literally hundreds of times. I never really thought about it, but I can't remember the last time I saw 20 Eastbound in the daylight, which explains why I have never laid eyes on this gem. Coming back from a job in the Permean Basin, I laid eyes on those two rusty steel J's from a mile away.

  For obvious reasons if you know MY name, you know why I stopped. I also happen to be a picking/antiquing/junking aficionado, so this was doubly exciting! The building has seen better days, and I'm sure this place didn't have a good reputation as a clean watering hole for thirsty families on their way to Dallas - and thats ok. It's rough around the edges, and a little more in between. Thats how I like it. I would have waded past some 3 patch bikers and outlaw truckers back in the day to sit on a stool in here when it was open, just to hear some stories and see "Texacana" in the making. Which brings me back to the point of this post....

  As I travel Texas, Ive been diligently photographing things like this and tucking the files away. I don't know what I'll do with them just yet, and honestly I had backed off the passion for doing it a little bit the last year or so because of how busy I've been with traveling to places other than Texas. I have a couple of coffee table book ideas floating around, and some fine art ideas to work on, but this was a great reminder that sometimes things have your name written all over them. Stop and look - It could be just the boost you/your spirt/passion needed.

Was it destiny? Success means different things Part 2.

Thankfully, I havent forgot to bring my
camera to a shoot since!

Getting film developed was a regular task then.

Do you think sometimes "this is what I was meant to do!"? I do. ALL the time. I struggled to find my place for many years in a different career, fighting the urge to quit because I feared the unknown. 

Fear of failure, fear of mistakes, fear of anything actually - has kept many good people from doing what they should be. Once you overcome it, so many possibilities reveal themselves, and the prior path to that point will look MUCH different when it's behind you, than it did in front of you.

Looking back, I think I was always supposed to be a photographer / producer. I certainly didn't run down that path the first chance I had, but it came back around when the time was right. So many opportunities I have had, would not look or be received the same a few years before they actually presented themselves.
My dad had this Yaschica 35mm SLR camera he bought so long ago I couldn't even tell you how old it is. He only had a couple of prime lenses for it, and it is as basic as it gets for a camera. But he traveled the world with it, and going through old photos, you can see the care he put into what he documented. He still has that camera some 45+ years later. Im actually VERY jealous of the simplicity and how it allows you to just focus (bad pun intended!) on the scene and craft. Devoid of all the modern features a $4000 DSLR has to make sure you nail the technicalities right off the bat.
Once I came along, dad didn't hang his camera up. He just drug me along. While it was always a hobby for him, he still took pride in what he did and his photos. Looking through old albums, it's like I was there, or it brought back the memories just as I remember them. I am quite certain (even if unintentional) he passed this on to me. My love for photography, as a job, hobby and craft, is certainly attributed to the childhood he gave me.

Dad in the early 70's, getting ready for
shore leave in Europe.

Texas and Oklahoma Architectural Photographer

Dallas Commercial Real Estate and Aerial Photographer

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Success means different things, at different times.

Disappointed they did NOT have an Ansel Adams stamp...

Taken in 2009-ish. I know.. It was a nice
thought though!

Before I finally quit my 9-5, and long before I made a living as a photographer, I knew I wanted to be one. I had no idea my path would lead me to where it has - something I am truly grateful for, and still have no idea where I may end up.

When I was working a "regular job", I barely had time, or the the money (and never both at the same time) to REALLY travel. I did what everyone else does, and dreamed of destinations through photos I saw. I always told myself, and my wife, we would go there someday. In my mind, I knew we probably wouldn't, but it's nice to dream and hope. Fast forward to when I was getting close to quitting the corporate world for a life of freelancing - lofty goals and high expectations, that were quickly shot down by the reality of working harder than I had ever worked before, and learning what "Hustle" truly meant. I still dreamed, I still aspired. Without goals, work is pointless.

I remember reading about Ansel Adams and how he came to be a household name, what his photographs meant, etc.. I had always liked landscape photography, although even early on I knew a career taking only landscape photos was probably not a realistic occurrence for most people. I mean even if it was to sell a few prints here and there for pocket cash, that was fine by me. Sometime in the early 2000's I literally told myself I wanted to be "there", when I saw the picture of Ansel on top of his station wagon in a random book or literature. "There", as in "I made it", was just as much a state of mind, as it was standing on my truck in an iconic location to shoot some amazing photo, just like Ansel Adams did.

As things, and life, go, I went a different way. I still remember that conversation I had with myself, what I EXPECTED out of that goal at that moment, like it was yesterday. What I did NOT know at the time, was that success is not always what we thought, or wanted it would be.

Fast forward to April 2018 - more than a decade later. I walked into the Ansel Adams gallery at Yosemite Natl. Park, bought this post card and jotted on the back an obligatory "here", so as to not mail a completely blank postcard. I mailed it to myself from the Yosemite Park Post office next door to the gallery, which had an added bonus of a Half Dome postmark stamp too. When I came home, and retrieved this postcard out of the mail it dawned on me. I DID make it. I DID succeed. I actually teared up, because I realized what had REALLY happened with my life, and the long hard road of sacrifices my family has made to get me here too.

I've sold several landscape prints in the last few years, that I had taken on my travels that photography paid for. I walked the same path at Yosemite that Ansel did many years before, because of money I earned from MY PHOTOGRAPHY.  In the last 4 years I have taken my family to nearly every state in the lower 48 (many of them multiple times), driven coast to coast, and to 3 countries. In 2015 we drove enough miles to circle the equator, plus throw in a trip to the North Pole from Dallas. I made it before I even realized it, but it took Ansel Adams himself (in a weird name dropping way!) to make me realize it.

Texas Architectural Photographer

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