Meet Jordan Calhoun of J. Cal Photography in Midtown

Today we’d like to introduce you to Jordan Calhoun.

Jordan, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I started taking pictures in my senior year of high school. During that time I was at a point in life where graduation was coming and I was still unsure bout what I wanted to pursue after I graduated. In all honesty, I was going to go to college because my heart wasn’t set on going but my mom told me I HAD to go.

At this time I had only applied to two schools, both being art schools. I got into both of them but I ultimately decided to attend SCAD as I had been artistic my entire life and when I heard about the school as a child I wanted to go. Throughout my four years at this school, I went through several different emotional situations in my personal life and many of these situations became portrayed within many of the images I would take for my class projects. In several of these projects, I would symbolically commit suicide within my images. I did this as a way of releasing the emotions I was feeling as a way of not wanting to relive the current situation any longer.

Within my personal work, I still create work that relates to my emotions but I now make work that reflects these hard to process emotions through digital manipulation of my self-portraits that reflects certain parts in music. In doing so I am able to release my feeling through my photography as well as get my message across to the audience that I want them to understand.

Has it been a smooth road?
Being in the photography world has not always been a smooth ride. There were several things I had to fight through within myself to make work that had the message that I wanted to portray to my audience. I never really cared what others had to say about my work as everyone around me says im talented… the one person’s opinions that outweighed everyone else opinions were my own as I would often time feel as if what I make isn’t good enough or that nobody will understand what im trying to say. Fighting myself and my own inner thoughts about my own ability to create work had been the biggest struggle for me as a creator.

So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the J. Cal Photography story. Tell us more about the business.
My business mostly consists of photography but I also can create art outside of that realm. Within the world of photography, however, I don’t stick to one thing. I take traditional black and white film images. I do portraiture. I do documentary/ street photography. I have done retro fashion photography. I have also done mixed media type photographic work. What most people know me for is my overall usage of color within my work as I know how to manipulate the colors within my work in a way that makes it vibrant but doesn’t overthrow the overall subject of my images.

How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
I see my industry getting larger within the next 5-10 years because photography is still growing. People always want images for everything from family to personal events. What I see becoming a possible trend are image that moves to get a deeper feel of the overall image.

Contact Info:

• Phone: 4045101571
• Email: [email protected]
• Instagram: @shots.by.jordan
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/j.cal.photograph

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