Passion Fruit – 2010 48-hour Film Project Winner

What if you were given only 48 hours to write, shoot, edit and score a film? This is the challenging premise of the 48-Hour Film Project: "On Friday night, you get a character, a prop, a line of dialogue and a genre, all to include in your movie. 48 hours later, the movie must be complete." Local competitions occur in more than 80 cities worldwide. The 2010 winner of the 48 Hour Hampton Roads Film Project was "Passion Fruit," by Jon Abraham (Jon also happens to be a friend of mine--I wrote about his still photography here). Check Jon's winning film at the accompanying YouTube. He is now going to compete against the 80 other international 48 Hour Project city winners--10 of the films will be featured at Cannes. After watching Jon's film, I viewed the winners from some of the other cities. There is a lot of film-making experience on display. For instance, here is the St. Louis entry (the specific requirements for St. Louis were: Charles Crosby, Grocery Store Employee. Prop: a brick. Line of Dialogue: "We'll just have to wait."). Many of these entries are quite humorous. In addition to the above entries, consider this film called "Unwanted," the winner of the Portland Oregon competition.

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Unordinary wedding photography

I've seen a lot of ordinary wedding photography, much of it from high-priced photographers. So have you. While riding in a plane from St. Louis to Los Angeles two weeks ago, I found myself sitting next to a man named Jon Abrahams. After a bit of conversation, he mentioned that he photographed weddings. I thought I knew what to expect. A few seconds later, after he showed me some of his images on his iPhone, I was a believer. I rarely find myself fully engaged when looking at wedding photos, even when the subjects are people I know, and especially when viewing the photos on a tiny screen. Jon's photos were unusual, however. He works the genre harder and more elegantly than most wedding photographers, in order to get artistic shots that nonetheless capture the mood. Jon, who often flies hundreds or thousands of miles to shoot weddings, kindly gave me permission to print the images you see at this post. His website offers a slideshow featuring many additional images. I hope you enjoy these images (including "The Last Supper" photo, below) as much as I did. last-supper

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