“So, how did you two meet?” I’m sure most people have had to answer this questions once or twice in their past. In regards to Jonathan and I, “We met online.” The two of us share the same hometown, Fairfield, CA, a small Bay Area town that I’ve recently plotted as the “Outer Bay Area”. It is the terminus city in the Bay Area region of Northern California, the end of the line for Karl the Fog and the hometown of the worldwide confections company Jelly Belly. Albeit that Jonathan and I are separated by more than a decade we also both share a deep passion for street photography. Jonathan, or @Kingjvpes on Instagram and YouTube, has grown exponentially as an authority in the street photography community. He subtly mixes his Bay Area vibes into most of his content which is how I came to really enjoy the things that JP puts out into the Social Media-verse.
For the last year and a half we’ve become more of real life friends than the solely internet variety. So last minute, before JP leaves with his family for the Philippines, I asked him if he would be able to sit down with me for a conversation about @Kingjvpes as a brand, Film vs Digital and his overall view on being in the creative space.
Farm + Flour is one of several “local hero” coffee shops near to the both of us. The outer Bay Area has typically been late to the punch when it comes to all the culinary trends happening closer and within San Francisco. So when a quality establishment opens its doors to the community it is always welcomed and heavily supported by the locals. This is why I asked JP to meet me here to have our sit down.
It was a full house but the noise level was uncomfortably low. There had to be about seven to eight different parties congregated within the barn-style coffee shop but everyone was speaking barely over a whisper. Something was strange but at first I couldn’t figure out what was so odd about the lack of tone in the room. “Sorry. We are having an issue with our music.” the owner explained to another patron. Here I am, getting ready to conduct a recorded interview, in an old-barn-turned-coffee-shop-turned-prayer-room and to add difficulty to a possible re-strategy, it was pouring outside. There’s nowhere else to go. “They better get this music on by the time he gets here.” I thought to myself.
Ten minutes pass and still no Jonathan. I checked my phone: I’M 2 MINUTES OUT. Several more minutes pass and finally the music cuts on. There’s still no Jonathan and as I stand up to get in line to place an order for JP and myself I finally see Mr. Paragas walking through the glass door. We sat down and I prepared our space for the interview. Jonathan pulls out his Bessa R2a and sets it atop the three photography books that I brought for him to thumb through: BYSTANDER, Eli Reed: A Long Walk Home and Lartigue: Life in Color. I ran both of my phones as recorders because I had a feeling one of my phones was bound to fail on this specific day. One eventually would, that my god for intuition. Alas, we begin our chat.
CT: “What made you pick this up [photography] as a hobby?”
KJ: “I think my favorite thing was to go on road trips. And just take photos of whatever but it was very journalistic. And then I got into portrait photography. I started taking pictures of family and friends, doing senior portraits… and then I discovered film.”
CT: “How did you discover film?”
[3:16] KJ: “There’s this guy on YouTube. His name is Dale Decker. He’s a skater. He was shooting a Minolta. I was looking at his photographs. I actually bought his first Zine and it blew me away. His images looked so different from my stuff. Up until then I never did a lot of editing anyway. It was always just jpeg, they were terrible. And when I saw his film photographs I was like, ‘Damn those have so much flavor to them!’ And he was telling me , ‘You don’t need to do any editing to them. Just shoot it and it comes out that way.’ I was like, ‘Ok! Let’s give it a shot.’ I got a film camera and then little-by-little I started making videos on YouTube about it because I was looking for a resource that I can go to - to answer the questions that I wanted to know about film and-”
CT: “You couldn’t find it.”
KJ: “I couldn’t find a lot of it. So I started to make some of those videos myself for other people and then I feel like that’s where it kind of took off.”
(Talk about filling the gap/need for something and then creating your own content)
When you take a look into the history of a lot of the things that we take for granted, the car, the plane, television, internet, Instagram and YouTube the common theme you will notice is that there was a need that wasn’t being addressed and then someone came and filled it. For Jonathan, that’s exactly the approach that he took which has led him to the recent success that he’s had on YouTube. Sure, the formula for a successful photography YT was probably there, at least most of the recipe. But still, to this day, a relatively narrow scope of information on YouTube. Jonathan is not only doing his best to widen that scope but to also make sure that the information you’re getting is helpful and accurate.
If you have ever played the game telephone then you are aware of the outcome before the game even starts. A piece of information is shared and by the end of the line the message passed by the last person has usually quite skewed if not completely obliterated.
The culture for generating information is challenging. One person says something and then another person says the same thing but slightly different. It turns into this copy cat game and it all just comes out wrong. You know me, I’m pretty nerdy, so I’ll hear things and be like, ‘Well that’s wrong.’ But the person isn’t trying to give you the wrong information.”
[5:55] KJ: “And you can kind of tell too. Like when it comes to exposures. One of the main things with film too is when it comes to exposures - over exposing, people think that’s the equivalent to pushing. And it’s the complete opposite. That’s what rubs me the wrong way because I would hate for someone to say, ‘I thought I saw a video and you said that over exposing is the same as pushing?
CT: “It’s over developing”
KJ: “Exactly!”
[10:30] Without a doubt talent rarely sits in “one basket” for any person. Jonathan has been playing the guitar since he was a young child. The discipline to hone in on a craft, at this point, is an entire lifestyle. Focusing, training, reviewing progress are all thing that come naturally for JP. Yet another thing that we both have in common.
KJ: “I think music there’s a certain discipline that comes with practice and your approach to it. And when you apply music discipline to photography there’s a lot of parallels. For example, if you’re practicing a four-note lick it’s the same as photography in the sense that that same muscle memory, that same motion is done often.”
CT: “For me I played the piano but I only played for myself. I played trumpet in a band but I played piano for myself. You’re just sitting by yourself going through the same runs for sometimes hours to make sure that it is muscle memory so you don’t have to look. Do you feel like you’re at that point with the camera?”
KJ: “Uuuuh, no.”
CT: “There’s some things I’m sure.”
KJ: “There are some things where I feel comfortable with like changing aperture when I’m not looking. But When it comes to locking focus manually I that’s still hard for me. I still use things like zone focusing or using higher F-stops.”
[13:20] The Bay Area is a melting pot. It always has been. You’d hard pressed to visit Northern California and not see the cultural impact of having so many different ethnicities represented in a relatively small region. It only makes sense to draw from your cultural background to not only differentiate your work but to also help influence your motivation and drive.
[14:00] KJ: “I think the first thing that influenced me is- I’m sure you know a lot of Filipinos.”
CT: “Yeah bro. We grew up in the same area haha.”
KJ: “Exactly. We’re very prideful and very competitive... I don’t really want it [photography] to be competitive though. I don’t think there needs to be a competitive environment for photography. If you’re good you’re good if you’re not you’re not“
CT: “And the thing is you don’t have to be good, right? You don’t have to be ‘Top Tier’. You just have to enjoy it. That’s how anybody gets good anyway.“
KJ: “Yes, exactly. But I think culturally Bay Area has allowed me to be more comfortably in my own skin and be more comfortable around others.”
When YouTube was in its early stages all you had to do was post a video and that was it. There weren’t any “channels”. Essentially it was Google for videos. You would type in what you wanted to see, cross your fingers, hope that you got a hit or two on your search results. That was 2005. Now it’s 2019. You can still post a mindless video if you wanted but the pressure of post a video and starting a channel is clearly apparent now. “There are rules to this shit.” In the beginning there is still the naivety of doing it for fun but eventually the reality of SEOs and monetization and even time management set in.
KJ: “There was no pressure yet [when I first started]. It was purely a passion project at that point. I don’t think I really created it for other people. It felt like I was just making these videos for fun or for me. The biggest struggles that I had was that I was still learning photography for myself.”
CT: “Because you were [still] learning in the process.”
KJ: “Yeah so the idea was: I would learn these things and then I would try my best to clarify the information. And then, I would make videos to pass that along. But that regurgitation of information allowed me to remember it more. Because it’s almost like I could back and revisit that video and remember exactly what I was thinking or talking about. But I think the biggest challenge was in video production. That’s always a tough one. I didn’t know anything about editing or slow motion or anything. Until this day I still use iMovie. I’ve dabbled in Final Cut a little bit but it’s not as simple as just dragging and dropping. And for the stuff that I do I primarily focus on the videos to have content versus just patching it up with editing.”
Pressure aside, there are more obstacles than just what comes from the business aspect of growing a brand and channel. Health, wellness and family health and wellness have all played a factor in the output on the King Jvpes channel.
[21:10] KJ: I think “creative burnout” is a large part of every creative’s journey. For me it’s been killing me not only emotionally but physically. Because I’ll sacrifice my health even though I’m sick just to go out to record a video because there’s this pressure of uploading on certain days. The harder part of that is once you’ve made all these videos you have to meditate and think: what are these videos that I can make? And so I’ll take a list and I’ll start writing them down, ‘ok this video is cool. this video is alright.’ It almost becomes a job which is fine because I love doing what I do but at the same time it take a lot of energy and it takes a toll on your emotionally. Especially if you let that disconnect you from your family and from actually real life.”
CT: “Well and you have a girlfriend. It sucks when you get home and you’re like, babe just give me 30-minutes”
KJ: “It’s frustrating too.”
CT: “You understand [where they’re coming from] because you want to spend time with your girlfriend but you also want to get things done.”
(Inspirations) [26:10] The ideas of inspiration and creativity do not exist without one another. There are past masters and there are books. And then there are the people that directly impact your life on a daily basis. Both of Jonathan’s parents played a integral role on his work ethic and no doubt that contributed to where this 21 year old rising star is today.
KJ: “One [inspiration] would be reading photos books like [Henri Cartier] Bresson and Garry Winogrand. If I could say that any one person has influenced my photography specifically it would be Garry Winogrand. When it comes to work ethic I get a lot of inspiration from my mom and dad. I grew up with separate parents. I Would have to go to my dads on the weekends and my mom on the weekdays. And because of that situation they had to work double jobs and triple jobs just to support and put food on the table. And I think because of the hours that I’ve seen my mom and my dad working and working and working is where I picked up the idea of “you know what? Sleep is nothing. Let’s wake up at 5AM let’s get the work done. Does YouTube count as inspiration???”
CT: “Anything that you see that gets you motivated to do something counts.”
KJ: “Other YouTube creators like Matt Day and Forest Hill film labs.”
We talked about branding at decent length. It’s an interesting experience witnessing someone come up from almost the very beginning I think I probably missed the first few months of King Jvpes as a channel which I very quickly caught up with. But essentially from start to finish, or I should say, “start to currently”, I’ve watched King Jvpes transform from a nick name to a brand name.
KJ: “King Jvpes was never supposed to be a ‘brand’. It came up because of the YouTube channel but that name was made up in high school by an 18 year old kid. I never imagined in a million years that King Jvpes was ever going to be a name that photographers would say.”
CT: “Are you thinking of it that way now?”
KJ: “At this point, yeah. Because I have to. When people think of King Jvpes they think of a channel, a YouTube, a video or whatever. It never started out that way. It was just a name that I had like, ‘Big Head Taco’.”
CT: “Yeah but he very specifically-” I paused a beat to gather my thoughts . “That was intentional. Take (pronounced - Tah-kay) said, ‘I wanted something that no one else had’ so he saw that space and then he took that [branding] across the board.”
KJ: “Take was at The Film Paidea and he talked to me specifically about this. He said to me, “You have a really different name similar to what I do. Take it and embrace it. It’s your brand. You built that name up and be proud of it.”
We continued this conversation about Jonathan’s brand as the barista came and collected our empty coffee cups. The future of King Jvpes is extremely bright. 21 years old and two years on YouTube he’s taken his followers from zero to 65k followers. For someone who is so early in their adulthood and still new-ish to the platform he has surpassed some of his peers two-fold. For Jonathan he’s already strategizing what the next chapter of this career is going to look like. Whether it happens next year or the year after, the foundation is already being set.
CT: “If I had to tell someone about you I would say, ‘He’s a street photographer he has a YouTube channel. Maybe I would leave it at that or may I would go a little bit further. But if you want people to understand you as a photographer then you would say ‘King Jvpes is a photographer’ flat out. And just got with that until people understand that. I think you stay with King Jvpes.”
KJ: “I want it [KingJvpes] to be a hub for street photography, film photography, YouTube content, landscapes here and there, family photos, here’s a website, I’ll sell prints here and there, all these things stemming from that name because when they retrace the steps back to it they’re like, ‘ok this is King Jvpes.’”
Since the beginning film Photography YT channels there has been the conversation of Film vs Digital. If you type that argument into the search bar, depending on the engine, you will be scrolling hours on end going through the same repetitive conversations and discussions. For Jonathan, he has built his platform primarily based on film photography. He’s also covered this topic on several chats that he’s done on IG Live. Both of us tend to see eye-to-eye, it just doesn’t matter.
KJ: “The reason why I think Film vs Digital is a thing is because it [the conversation] has been created by photographers. That entire thing has been created by people who, one, either go and live by digital or people that are film purists. So it’s come to this point where people are fighting over this for no reason.”
CT: “If I think of an artist I think of someone that uses an easel and paints on a canvas. That’s what I think of. I don’t look at someone who creates things on an iPad like, ‘Man you’re doing it wrong.’ You’re still an artist.”
KJ: “When digital came some people embraced it. But a lot of people turned sour because they felt like, “How can the thing I love the most now be a Canon 5D MK I?’”
CT: “I think too, we get so passionate about the things that we like as if somebody not liking it or the conversation kind of shifting meaning that what you’ve loved or enjoyed is now obsolete. You can love film if you’re the only person shooting film or if there’s 500,000 other people shooting film with you. [I don’t think] You love it enough if you’re worried about that conversation.”
As I continued to make my point I came to the moment that truly means the most to me. It’s not about the medium. There is more to any artistic practice than how you’re administering it. It’s how it makes you feel.
CT: “For me, street photography, I just believe that you should do it on film. It just makes sense. I’ve shot street on digital. I’ve shot street on film. It doesn’t have to do with the results, has everything to do with the experience.”
KJ: “EXACTLY!”
I swiped Jonathan’s Ricoh GRii off the table and illustrated to him the emotional let down that I have when shooting street on digital. For some people there is a tactile sensation that needs to be present while shooting. For me that is why and when I choose film over digital. There could be more to my decision making at the time. But the experience is what brings both Jonathan and myself to film. The results, in 2019, are almost negligible and that comes down tk the individual. We are not in the business of making that decision for other people.
The sound in the coffee shop had leveled off to ambient voices. After almost an hour of chatting I wanted to know what Jonathan plans to provide us in the near future. Projects, projects while traveling and traveling projects are all on the menu in the foreseeable future.
KJ: “I’m shooting a documentary-style video when I leave for the Philippines. I’ll be gone for a month. My goal is to push these [YouTube] videos out so that I can schedule them while I’m gone. So one video each week for three weeks - three videos total. They will all be ready to go so, while I’m absent, I have something to put out. As for photography I really want to do a Zine based on the work that I take while I’m there. I’m taking about 20-something rolls of film.”
CT: “That’s a lot! I feel like that’s a lot.”
KJ: “Not really.”
CT: “20 rolls for a month??”
KJ: “Think of it this way. If I average three rolls a day-”
CT: “Do you do that? Can you do that?”
KJ: “You’ve seen me shoot. If I average three rolls a day that’s only going to last me a week and a half. I’m just going to work on a body of work, street photography in the Philippines, and when I come back, I’ll put the zine together.”
CT: “Are you developing when you get back?”
KJ: “Yeah. I’m just going to send a load of rolls over to The Darkroom Lab.”
At some point, halfway through our conversation, I had this question burning in me to ask. I knew it was going to put him in the hot seat because it’s a slightly divisive question. In the age of hashtags and social media where declarations and associations can be birthed simply by hash tagging haphazardly and at al will. I think at the risk of offending people unintentionally it’s actually relatively hard to get a straight answer out of anyone on this topic. So I decided that I had to throw JP this inside fastball to keep him on his toes.
CT: “What is street photography? Don’t define it. But tell me what is and what isn’t street photography?”
KJ: “You’re killing me haha! Street photography is social documentary. It doesn’t necessarily have to take place on the street but it does need to have some sort of story about that environment. Because, you know, you’ll see a photo of some vast ‘scape but there’s no subject. I think in street photography you need to have that subject. When I look at photographs from Bresson or even Robert Capa they have that.”
CT: “Robert Capa is a perfect example. His environment was not the street [but he told a story]. I think that’s the difference between what street photography is and what ‘street photography/#streetphotography’ is. You’re not explaining to me what is happening to me within this environment in ‘street photography/#streetphotography’. There are photos that I see, which are good photos, that are claiming to be something that it’s not. I’m not saying the photos aren’t good but I am saying you’re misplacing the genre. You know what I mean? That’s all I’m saying but I’m shamelessly saying that.
KJ: “I agree though.”
CT: “For the people like, Eli Reed or Joel Meyerowitz, they put so much passion in instructing, teaching, defining what street photography is - to just be in the street taking photos and claiming that to be street photography is disrespectful. I need to know the story. You always hear every form of photography having an element of storytelling but in street photography ‘the story’ is EVERYTHING.”
KJ: “What do you think of people like Six Street and Sean Tucker?”
CT: “They’re different but they’re still street [photographers]. There are different genres and there are different eras. If you look at the ‘20s, it’s different than the 60’s, different than the ‘80s, different than now. I think what Sean Tucker, Josh Jack and Six Street are doing is the most modern form of what is happening in street photography right now. It’s different than the Bresson/Winogrand/Meyerowitz genre and it’s a whole different class. You’re either in it or you’re not. I’m not, which is fine. But thats the class, that’s the era. It will eventually change to something else and it keeps going.”
KJ: “Parallel that to music. It’s like jazz before versus jazz now. Like Neo-Jazz. You’ll hear guys playing Neo-Jazz and it still has that sound but it’s different.”
It had been raining off and on the whole morning. As I looked out the window I notice that things had let up quite a bit. The one last important piece of information that I wanted to get from JP is understanding what makes him tick when he is living and shooting in the moment. So, before Jonathan and I stepped out to brave the soggy outdoors, I had one last question.
CT: “What is it like for you when you’re in the zone?”
KJ: “Let me actually pick your brain on that. The way I approach street photography is to be completely clueless. I don’t worry about film. I know it’s not an infinite resource but I can buy more if I need to. Do you think that thinking too much can put a ceiling on what you can shoot?”
CT: “I’m always planning my approach to entering ‘the zone’. Running backs have a philosophy or an approach called ‘slow to-fast through’. I played midfield [in soccer] and we have the same approach. I use this for getting into the zone. I’ll analyze a scene for a while and then I will decide if I can get there and if so the idea is that if I get the shot hopefully I’m no longer thinking after that point, I’m reacting to the environment around me.”
KJ: “I feel like you do need to take some of those shots. Just to, like you said, just to get through the hole. Because once you start pressing that shutter I don’t know what it is cognitively. But it unlocks the next step for us to get into the zone. So I think it’s essential the next time [you see] the dude standing there with a cigarette just to click it. Just to get the ball rolling.” CT