Jake Borowski Photography

AM/PM Spec – Pogo Time Travel

Jake — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 03:28:59 +0000

Here is my first spec commercial ever. It is for AM/PM, and the story was made especially with them in mind. I basically came up with a universally-recognizable concept (time travel) and modified our standard perceptions by asking how time travel might be improved upon as we know it. Back to the Future 3 illustrated how a petroleum-powered vessel could run out of gas in a time where there are no gas pumps, so based on that I determined that mine had to be human powered. Pogo sticks seemed like the most appropriate candidate. Thanks to Matt Krick for his help with the airplane.

“No Way Down” by Spider Mountain

Jake — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 03:55:24 +0000

This was a fun project I worked on several months back that has, until a short while ago, been undergoing a painfully long delayed release. Produced by my friends Frank Ippolito and Ezekiel Zabrowski at Ghostworks, it’s a music video for the song “No Way Down” by Spider Mountain – Bill Moseley’s and Rani Sharone’s musical collaboration. I composited spiders into several shots, replaced some skies with moving mountains and fog, and created the nifty burnout at the end.

We’re Living in the Future

Jake — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 03:56:05 +0000

The longer I am on this planet, the more it becomes apparent that I’ve crossed the threshold between the past and the future as I imagined it in my youth. Every generation experiences this to some degree, but the planet is becoming more populated by people who know little of a life devoid of Moore’s law and I don’t seem to mind it. In some cases.

My friend JR is fortunate enough to be playing drums for CSS right now, so a couple of months back I photographed their show at the Glasshouse in Pomona. Almost immediately after the show started, a glowing ocean of phones clasped in the hands of screaming teenagers began to form in front of me, so for a minute I stood back and had a reflective moment. At shows I attended as a teenager, a sea of lighters would typically form when the moment was just right. At one point glowing LCD screens showed up to the game, and here they were now the only thing besides people being raised into the air.

The sea of lighters would give me a chill when I saw it. It represented a mutual understanding between all of us who participated, that what was emanating from the stage deserved our approval. Is the inter-connectedness a sea of tiny flames induces becoming relegated to nostalgic status? Possibly, as smartphones have now proved to have infected that particular experience from now on into the foreseeable future.

The problem with nostalgia though, is that it causes those who have it to not want to let it go so that it can either die, or spawn new experiences as the sea of cell phones is now doing. Lighters can’t upload a video of the show to Youtube so that everyone else can experience it on that level. I think that’s worth letting some things go.

The Unambiguous Lives of Shopping Carts

Jake — Mon, 23 May 2011 02:44:08 +0000

So one day I was looking at some shopping carts in a parking lot, and determined that they looked like humans. Keep in mind that none of them were moved or manipulated in any way by myself, and that I photographed in the exact positions that I found them in, dragging the shutter with whatever light happened to be available. It’s a fun ongoing project, as I’ve been finding a lot of opportunities to pull over as I’m out and about to get some neat images. As the collection grows, I may turn them into a book or something.