Hatch is a San Francisco design firm founded by Joel Templin and Katie Jain. Since its inception in 2007, Hatch has developed innovative campaigns for some of the world’s biggest brands, including Coca-Cola, Apple, and Target. They are known not only for their exceptional work, but also their distinctive business model, which allows them to be a launch pad for their own products. Most recently, Hatch was at the World Series of Poker promoting their first “hatchling”, JAQK Cellars.
I had the chance to sit down with Joel and Katie last week to discuss their work, process, and the recent goings on over at Hatch. With the launch of their new website and the success of JAQK, and they have their hands full! Check out the interview after the jump.
Be sure to check out Part Two of this interview over on Grain Edit!
I stumbled onto James P. Morse’s work via the Deastro Video and I’m really enjoying the style. I’d seen his Dabrye portraits before but never knew who was behind them. Very cool stuff, his whole portfolio is certainly worth checking out.
You’ve heard Sorcerer on the blog before when he was one half of Windsurf multiple times and now with an LP under his belt like his partner Hatchback its a full on assault of laid back tracks coming out of the California. When these guys do disco I picture them doing it in the least stressful way by having their own hide out close to the beach where they grill and play synths until the breeze slows down and all the sails on the horizon head home.
What better way to keep the feeling going from that Sorcerer track by following it with Toto – Africa.
Prepare for a bit of downer with The Antlers LP, the tempo kinda of bums you out without even listening to the sad bastard lyrics BUT musically this Shiva song has some magic to it that keeps your chin up.
Air has been ruined for me by TV commercials, small plate restaurants playlists, loungey martini bars etc and I probably wouldn’t of done up their career differently if I were them. I usually check out everything they put out even though i’ll probably never put it on again, all I do is give it a listen and just go straight to Les professionnels and listen to the horns and smile, its almost like visiting grave in a weird and creepy way because the feelings I had for old Air were amazing at the time I liked them and now all I have memories of the times I heard the music for the first time.
A little peek inside the wonderful world of Randolph Chabot, aka Deastro by James P. Morse. I had the chance to play with Deastro in Detroit and they really put on an incredible show, catch them if you have the chance.
The Cove looks like it could be the most heart wrenching movie I’ll see for a long while. The documentary about the plight of Dolphins in Japan shines a light into a secretive cove where an estimated 23,000 are slaughtered annually. There are screenings being held in select US cities throughout August. If you’re in the San Francisco bay area it’s playing at Shattuck Cinemas in Berkeley on 8/7 where producer Fisher Stevens will be holding a Q&A after the screening. Hopefully this story gets some traction and will effect some sort of change.
So I’m back home after my nice little break, it feels good. Luckily the weather here in San Francisco today is sunny so it’s not such a huge change from Tulum (although it’s about 20°F cooler). I had a great time and got some good shots with the little Canon Elf but I did miss having my D80 along. It was nice to not have to lug around a big DSLR, but the handheld just didn’t cut it for a lot of the shots. I’ll try posting up some of the better ones this week. Now it’s time to start sifting through the email and get back into work mode…
We’ve written before about photographiclighting. Another lighting arena that I’ve recently explored is continuous lighting for video. As I had absolutely no idea what I was doing when I jumped into this, I decided to start with a basic kit set up, and then go from there. I had researched enough to know that I would need at least three lights, but I was fuzzy on just about every other detail. I ended up going with the Smith Victor K84 Photoflood Kit. (Four lights: two A80 flood lights and two, smaller A5s.)
Now to this point, the kit has satisfied my requirements. I haven’t felt like I needed any additional lights on my projects and everything is lit well and looks (more) professional. That said, I have learned a lot in the process about what not to do.
First, these lights get unimaginably hot when they’re on for an extended period of time (more than 5 minutes). I use them in an enclosed room without a lot of ventilation and it can become unbearable really quickly. If you are interviewing someone, or performing under these lights, you need to either get things done fast, or have some way of cooling down your room. I broke a sweat just snapping the above picture, and they had only been on for 10 minutes.
Second, despite the benefits of using continuous lighting for photography (no camera syncing necessary, always see where you’re lighting etc), this kit is not powerful enough to really work in this regard. Unless the lights are right up on your subject, you’ll have to adjust the shutter speed significantly to get satisfactory results. It’s also impossible to get good portrait shots, mainly because your iris gets smaller as it gets used to the continuous amount of light; doesn’t look as cool as strobe. It works for some photo things, but I am mainly attempting to use this kit for lighting video. So far the footage has required a significant amount of color correction to make things look natural. The kit is a tungsten set up, which burns yellow/orange, and that is the color of the footage upon capture. Luckily I’ve been working a lot with Color and have been able to work around this.
The biggest positive to the kit is that it’s cheap (relatively). It helps to know some basic lighting strategy (three point etc), but the kit really doesn’t require much know-how to get up and running. It is a great starter kit and I feel like I have a much better idea of what I need, now that I have fumbled my way around with this one. Of course it will be a while before I can afford a real set up, but in the mean time I am having a good time experimenting and making mistakes. This probably wasn’t the kit of me at the end of the day, but it sure beats lighting things with assorted desk lamps and flash lights.
