Braun's World

Amazing images and stories. I love photography for the power it holds to describe is incalculable.

Drawing the War from duckrabbit on Vimeo.

(Courtesy of Stephen Alvarez's Blog)

Duckrabbit has produced a series of multimedia pieces on the Eastern Congo (website here). This particular piece is about children kidnaped by the Lords Resistance Army. As part of rehabilitation and counseling returned abductees are encouraged to draw their experiences. Eastern Congo is a hard place, suffering there is so common that it does not rate as news by the world media. The LRA in particular is a dark subject there is a reason that its leader is under indictment by the ICC.

-creative director of Duckrabbit,
"too often the photography world whirs around a sense of art and not people. Africa is the dark continent, but as I'm sure you know spend enough time there and your eyes adjust."

Well their eyes have adjusted well. They tell the story beyond the headlines -or lack of headlines- and bring back humanity. Theses are people suffering, people with names and stories.

Bahati's Story - Condition Critical from duckrabbit on Vimeo.

Commissioned by MSF Duckrabbit has put together fine pieces of advocacy and storytelling.

Keep Shooting.
-Braun

Recently I had the great honor to be a part of a special project... Help Portrait. A crew of like minded and hearted UBER talented photographers got together and gave up their valuable time and amazing skills to shoot portraits of the south Dallas community centered around CornerStone Church....They let me tag along.

Help Portrait (Dallas) from jordan bellamy on Vimeo.

I left encouraged and moved after spending the day shooting a whole range of families and individuals. Some had never had their portrait taken....EVER. The Mom+Son+Aunt (shot below) hadn't had a family photo since Chris (the son) was 2 years old!

Their first family portrait! (below) So Why is this project so important? Well for one, History. These photo's will last generations. When a great great niece asks what Aunt Linda looked like, the family will have a photograph to show her. It's important for everybody to know that they are loved, beautiful, and worth remembering. Worth documenting their life.

This man helped start Cornerstone Church. The area is not in the best part of town. Pastor Chris told us stories about early days of drive by shootings and dead bodies found behind the building was a regular thing. This man shines love for his area. It was my great honor to take his portrait.

Here are the first video's of the founder of Help Portrait, Jeremy Cowart. Thank you Mr. Cowart for your heart.




Seeing great photographer like Chase Jarvis, Jeremy Cowart, and Austin Mann use their talents not just to pay the bills, but enrich other's lives out of the solid goodness of their hearts gives me a great hope for the future of photography. Keep Shooting.

Huge Thanks to everybody involved! Amazing job

Recently I had the chance to shoot one of my favorite Dallas Bands....ODIS. I've loved these guy's music for several years now, so I was pretty pumped when Larry, the lead singer, asked me to shoot them.

The direction from the guys is that they wanted this RAW.."just us".."this is me" kindv shots. No smoke or magic or uber lighting. If you are somewhat familiar with my work you know I like to explore the possibilities both in camera and in post. (computer software). WHAT NO PS, NO MASKS....NOPE. Oddly enough I felt liberated and challenged. It's good to be challenged.
Larry (Vocals)


Kindv kicking myself for not shooting some behind the scenes fun. Being the oldest of 3 brothers, makes me pretty at home with hanging with guys...doing guys stuff. Yes we had a nerf gun shoot out and Rob the guitar genius showed us how he could barely escape death while busting some sweet moves on the skateboard in the studio. My brothers and I all live pretty far away from each other now so just hanging out with these guys made me miss them quite a bit.
Mike (drummer)

While shooting we jabbered on about our favorite Bruce Lee Movies (Enter the Dragon...DUH) and the local Dallas music scene.
Rob (guitar)

Lighting: Imagine this!!! Subject 3-5 ft in front of the white backdrop.
An, AB1600 through a large octabox right behind me elevated pointed down. Another pointing at the back drop behind the subject. WOOWWWWW. 2 light was used.

Bristen (Bass)...(FYI Ashton Kutcher stole his sig look from Bristen)


HUGE THANKS TO Studman SEAN for all the help.

Have Fun and keep shooting!

Braun

Here some amazing video's that truly inspired me. Some technically, other's esthetically, and another competitively. Let me know what you think!
Land of Talk, "It's Ok"

Land of Talk - It's Okay from Saddle Creek on Vimeo.

One of my favorite photographers, Andrew Zuckerman's "BIRD Film".

BIRD film from Andrew Zuckerman Studio on Vimeo.

Behind the Scene of Andrew Zuckerman's BIRD Film

BIRD Behind the Scenes from Andrew Zuckerman Studio on Vimeo.

This cool vid from photographer Alexx Henry for a "future" Outside Magazine. Amazing!

These past couple of months have been pretty crazy. Finally home for a little bit. Sorry I haven't blogged in so long. Let's catch up!!

Lately I've been working on huge projects with my mentor Robert Latorre with his camera system....THE BIGGGG FREEZE. Our latest adventure was a couple of shows for the band CREED.

Robert Latorre with his Big Freeze at the Houston Creed show. Can you count all 3 rigs??

Tech low down. We used 48 Nikon D700's, 42 Nikon D300's, and a ton of the original film freeze system. It just so happened to break a World Record of Most Camera's used in a live production. Total of 250!! (breaking Jusin Timberlake's of 42...Sorry JT) Here is a guy from the guinness book of world records they flew from London to verify the system. He liked it a lot.





The lead singer Scott showing off his skills on how to blow stuff up. "This is how I torch and melt Nikon cameras! AHHHH!!!!!"


The Real Rock Star....TRAVIS!!



The footage came out amazing...I will post after Creed's DVD comes out.
Photographer/Production tip #11...Never publish the work before the client can...takes all the surprise out of the fun.
Photographer/Prodcution tip #93...When the Pyro Tech's yells.....PRYO TEST!...Seriously watch where your standing!

THE ENTIRE FREEZE TEAM DID AN AMAZING JOB! It was my honor to work with everybody!

Video from my new Iphone 3gs. Love this thing!!


Keep Dreaming and Keep Shooting!

Braun

Amazing new Nike video. "Exploit Yourself". Here is the commercial and the "Making of" short. (reminds me of my morning runs ;) ) Enjoy!

The Runner -Exploit yourself- from BLR_VFX on Vimeo.

MakingOf -Exploit Yourself- from BLR_VFX on Vimeo.