Jake Chamseddine, Portland-based digital creator, has spent the majority of the last ten years honing his photography and videography skills on the road with musicians like Panic! At The Disco, Lorde, Marshmello, and Green Day. To pigeonhole him as a live music photographer and videographer though, would be to underestimate and undervalue his creativity greatly. “I consider myself a creator, a digital creator,” tells Jake. “I’m a photographer, cinematographer, director. I went to school for 3D animation,” he continues, ”basically any creative thing I can do between my camera and 3D modeling, I'm doing all of it.” To drive the point home, Jake describes one such project where multiple avenues of his creativity came together. “I've done some stage design for an artist named Marina,” he says, “I've done some visual walls, the backdrops of tours and concerts with animation. But, honestly, anything artistically that someone will trust me with, I'm like, let me try to make something with it.”
Behind the Camera: Jake Chamseddine
Truthfully, it seems like the drive to just make something creative is where Jake’s foundation started. “For me, it all started when I was really young,” Jake recalls. “When I was a kid, I was always grabbing my mom's camcorder and recording over our Christmases and Thanksgivings with videos of me and my friends just skateboarding and snowboarding. And honestly, I think skating was a huge catalyst for wanting to make these videos,” Jake details of his early beginnings. “I was always like an art kid. I was decent at drawing. I was decent at painting but I was never a great. Then once I found the thing that I felt like I was kind of good at, it gave me a little bit more confidence to keep going, which I think is huge. There's a sense of confidence as an artist to be like, ‘What I'm making is dope.’ Anyone that's like, ‘I make this thing and people want to see it,’ I think that's a good mindstate to have to an extent. And that pushed me to want to keep doing it.”
“It was never me wanting to become a director or cinematographer or photographer, it was always me wanting to make something to be able to relive and rewatch. It was capturing the energy of whatever was going on. I just wanted to have fun and make cool shit with my friends. It came from a true passion of wanting to create,” remembers Jake. “It was kind of an obsession of capturing these memories and being able to relive them back. And I still am obsessed with it,” Jake exclaims. “I like to say that photographers are just hoarders of memories because we're obsessed with documenting. Like if there's a beautiful sunset and I want to remember this moment. I can go and capture that and bring it back. And I think that's the beauty of photography and cinematography, being able to relive all your experiences. That's why I started.”
That obsession would rise again at another turning point in Jake’s creative journey. “I ended up going to Oregon State University and my freshman year of college, me and my roommate at the time started a fake social media branding company, called Left Brain Media Productions,” Jake laughingly remembers. “It was our production company. It was literally just us two living in college and creating videos. We would go to different places around campus, document different events, and then post them on Facebook. Like literally we were filming the book club and whatnot. And then we kind of saw a little bit of traction of people wanting to go watch these videos and wanting to re-engage and relive the experiences that they had at these different events.”
Jake might credit his college videos from Left Brain Media for helping him realize that he could tell stories in a way that audiences would want to see them, but his coursework in high school lit the spark to seeking a career in video and photo. “In high school, I really started falling in love with graphic design and digital animation. I ended up starting to touch on Adobe products and learn how they work,” Jake reminisces. “I think it's really cool that that was an option and I was really thankful to have a class dedicated to that stuff in my high school. That really catapulted me into long-term wanting to learn and maybe figure out how to make this a career one day.”
“When I first started making videos at Oregon State, I was rocking the Canon 6D,” Jake says remembering his gear. “I remember that was a big deal because that was like the cheapest full-frame camera you could get at the time. And coming from like the Canon T3i, the Rebel series, jumping up to the Full Frame camera, I remember I was like, ‘I'm a pro now. I can do depth of field.’ I had like the 50 f1.8, the nifty 50, and that was what I rocked. Took that everywhere with me. That thing was a monster. It lasted a long time.”
While it gave Jake his humble beginnings, the Canon 6D was not a camera renowned for its video capabilities. “Yeah, it was not great. Looking back on it, it was like compressed H264 video. And at the time I didn't even know what settings I was using. I'll be honest, I was learning on the fly every time I’d go out,” says Jake. "I think that's a big thing for creatives nowadays. Everyone wants to learn everything and then go make something. I think the best way you can do it is get out there and just try to use whatever gear you have to create whatever you want,” Jake says imparting some knowledge for those coming up now."
“Part of the nature of progression is that it's not going to be what you want it to be, but there's a sense of, ‘I'm going to get there.’ Every time I went out and created something, I'd finish it and I'd be so stoked on it. And then from that shoot, I learned something that I subconsciously did better the next shoot, and then from there, it was like a stepping ladder. Without those really nitty gritty, run-n-gun, no idea what I'm doing videos, I never would have been able to grow at all. The more and more I worked on more videos, I would remember tutorials I watched and interviews I watched. There was all those in the back of my mind.”
“I also never took offense to someone telling me that I didn't do it right,” Jake notes as another crucial element to his ability to progress off of each new project. “For me, I just was happy to be there at the end of the day. And there's something to be said for that. When people are able to see that you are enjoying what you're doing and you're there trying your hardest and taking people's notes and working with them, I think that goes a long way. I feel like in my career, the best opportunities I've had never came from a piece of work someone saw necessarily. It was always from word of mouth and people knowing that I was there for their best interest and truly loving what I was doing. And people see that in your work as well.”
“I started shooting concerts locally here in Portland,” Jake divulges. “My way into the concerts was being like, ‘Hi, we're Left Brain Media Productions. We film these events. Can we come get a photo pass and we'll give you the content.” That worked for Jake for a while. “I personally started reaching out to venues like the Roseland here in Portland and would ask them, ‘If you can give me a photo pass and I'll give you photos. Just let me know the best way to make that happen,” he continues. “From there, I started building a website. A portfolio of really, really shitty photos. Looking back on it at the time, I was so stoked on them and I'm still really proud of the work that I was doing, but they were very, very subpar of what I could be doing.” Jake was also shooting landscapes when he wasn’t begging local concert venues for free photo passes. “I was actually at a waterfall out in the Gorge called Littoral Falls. Another guy had a camera there and I walked up to him and I was like, ‘Hey I'm Jake. I see you have a camera. What camera are you shooting with?’,” Jake remembers fondly.
“His name was Spud. We chatted a little bit. He said that he was actually on the road touring and I just got his contact info. I was like, ‘If you guys ever need a tour photographer, I would love to come out.’ Fast forward a few months, while I was still at school at Oregon State, and he hit me up one night and was like, ‘Hey, I'm with Panic! at the Disco, we need a tour photographer. Can you come out tomorrow?’
I was supposed to walk that weekend at my college graduation in Oregon State and I peaced out and went on tour and from there, it's just been networking, learning, and experimenting. It's been quite a wild ride. I'm very thankful that they took a gamble on a kid from Tualatin.”
Jake credits a few things he learned early on to his ability to jump right out of college and straight into touring with major musicians. “There's the communication side, which is huge. I think being able to be really confident and upfront with what you want on your end as well as what the client wants from a creative end and finding some balance in the middle. I think if you're not able to communicate that you're kind of screwed in the grand scheme of things. There's always going to be that push and pull to find balance, but being able to have both hard and easy conversations with a variety of different people, that goes way deeper than photography. That's a business thing or a network aspect, where you're able to kind of read a room well. Being able to communicate and understand what's going on and who you need to talk to. And if you don't know who you're supposed to be talking to, being able to ask that and have the confidence to be like, ‘I don't necessarily know what I need to do right now. What are we delivering and what's the budget and how are we going to make that happen?’ That's just a personal trait that's a huge aspect of life success.”
“It's kind of balancing both your expectations and your attitude on how you can come forth to a gig and deliver what is mutually beneficial to everyone and then also makes you happy at the end of the day,” advises Jake. “And I think that it pays to have a good attitude because you know, you don't always get what you want. Some days you're going to be having the worst day on set, having to shoot and edit and turn things around 24/7. And then other days you're going to be having the best day on set. And also just don't be an asshole.
The creative industry is so different than the corporate industry. In the creative industry, there are a lot fewer rules that have to be followed to get something done. I think people in the creative world can sniff out the bad actors or bad faith actors. And just rolling with the punches and voicing what you want while also being able to deliver what the client wants is always huge and helpful at the end of the day.”
For a first gig fresh out of college, touring with a band probably wasn’t the easiest. “I'll run you through my day real quick,” tells Jake. ”My typical day on the road goes, wake up on the tour bus, get ready for the day, and go inside the venue. By probably 11 a.m., I'm charging all of my cameras and getting everything set up.
I have my laptop set up. I'm going through footage from the night before chopping it up, editing it for whatever recap video. For Panic! At The Disco, we were doing weekly recap videos. So every single week we're pumping out one video from the past week, all the shows,” Jake continues.
“Every morning I would edit the footage from the day before into that reel. Then the show would start happening, things would start picking up. I'd go out and shoot B roll of the fans getting into the venue. I'd shoot B roll of the band getting ready for the show. Then I would shoot the band on stage during the whole performance.
As soon as the performance was done, I was running backstage, uploading all my footage, going through all my photos, editing all the photos, sending off probably between 25 to 40 selects a night, and then going to bed, waking up, and doing it again! Groundhog's Day! It was wild. I was responsible for shooting full video and full photo for all meet and greets and all of it. Then on days off I would pretty much just be with the band all day because they would go out and hang out and I would go with them to photograph whatever they were doing that day.”
“I was doing so all my photo selects in Photo Mechanic and then I would import those to Lightroom for editing,” Jake says about his process for delivering all the daily and weekly assets. “Then all my videos up till recently was all Premiere and After Effects. I just recently switched to DaVinci. I love DaVinci.”
“I think it's important as a creative to have different kinds of tools for each job and they all kind of lend their way to different things,” Jake says referencing his gear. “I have two bodies that I'm rocking all the time. The first one is
the Sony A1. I've had that for probably five years now. I have used that camera nonstop and nothing has really surpassed it for me. It's just hard to beat. Between the video and photo, it's just, it's done everything for me. I've shot all of my concert stuff. I've shot a lot of the recap videos on that camera. It was my one body that I needed to be able to do both. It's getting old and it's still insane for today's market of cameras where like every year there's a new crazy thing happening. It's stood the test of time for sure.”
Taking Photos of Fall Out Boy - Sony A1 - taken from Jake's YouTube
“I’ve been a part of their collective for five years or so now, I absolutely love them,” Jake says of being one of Sony’s Ambassadors. “Sony's great. They're taking over right now,” he proclaims. “I use the Sony A1 and then for all of my video content now, all of my YouTube stuff, all of my reels and shorts, I'm using a Sony FX3, which is an incredible camera. The picture that thing makes and the control you have over your video. It's just hard to beat. The way you're able to build it out and the accessories you can buy for it. That’s the best part about the FX3, being able to build it out like a full cinema rig. It comes with the XLR top handle, which puts straight XLR audio into your video which is incredible. My FX3, I could take it on a full set and people would think that it was a cinema camera.”
Jake also keeps his lens options fairly simple too. “Honestly, most of the time I’m using the 24-70mm G master. It’s a great lens. It’s super sharp. It has that aperture ring on it. I also am rocking the 70-200mm G master,” explains Jake. “I literally have the 70-200mm on one camera and the 24-70mm on the other, and I'm switching between the FX3 and the A1, just back and forth, just getting all sorts of different angles. And then for a lot of my super wide stuff, I'm actually using a Sigma art series lens, the 14-24MM F2.8 DG HSM | A. I love that lens. Sony recently came out with a fisheye, but I've had the Sigma for so long. To be able to switch between that really wide angle and then 24mm is great too.”
“Those are the three lenses that I need to get pretty much everything I want professionally,” Jake states. “I think if I had the option, I would shoot only primes all the time, but my work just doesn't lean towards that style of shooting. I mean, if I had all the time in the world to switch my lenses and dial everything up, I would. You’d have to have another body or have a fanny with a bunch of different lenses in there. I think if you ask any professional the first lens that they'll tell you to get is 24-70mm. And usually, the second one is either 70-200mm or something a little bit wider. But I think the versatility of the 24-70mm and 70-200mm is where it’s at. That 24-70mm is such a great focal length for portrait, landscape, travel, whatever you're doing. It's a monster.”
“OWC Atlas Pro memory cards and SSDs,” Jake says of the cards and drives he trusts to hold all his photos and video. “ They're a big sponsor as well. And just recently they're starting to dive more and more into the creative space, which is really nice. They just, they just released their new C fast cards. And all their SD cards are amazing. They also have their version of an SSD. It's a four terabyte SSD called the Envy Pro and it's it's so fast. I transferred four terabytes from my computer to it to back up to something else and I'm not exaggerating, 28 minutes. To transfer from the new MacBook to that drive in 28 minutes is crazy. I was like, ‘What is happening?’’
My *Ridiculous* 35mm Film Camera Collection (Contax t2, Leica M6, Olympus Stylus - taken from Jake's YouTube
“I'm very spoiled in my camera gear. I've been collecting cameras since I started. So for 15-plus years, I've been slowly growing my collection,” Jake continues. “I've been shooting a lot of film recently. I have fallen down the film rabbit hole. I have sunk all the way to the bottom of the iceberg. It is pretty gnarly,” laughs Jake about his film camera obsession. “Most of the time right now I'm shooting a lot of my personal stuff on a Leica M6 with the 28mm Elmarit lens. That's my favorite focal length is 28 millimeters. I just think it looks great, especially for the stuff that I'm shooting the Leica with. It's more lifestyle, less professional. So that 28mm is perfect for that. And then as far as other cameras, I have a disgusting list of everything from toy cameras to your super high end very professional film cameras, like the medium format Mamiya 7 II. I have a Hasselblad X Pan for the panoramic stuff, the Leica M6 and a Leica M3. I have a Fuji GA645, I have a lot of rangefinders. I truly love rangefinders. And then I have a Contax T2,” Jake trails off from the list as he remembers why he bought the Contax.
“So it's crazy. When I went on tour with Lorde, for the Melodrama tour, she only wanted film. So I shot a whole tour cycle in South America and Europe, strictly on film. I brought the Mamiya 7 II and the Contax T2 and I shot probably three months' worth of content on those cameras, lugging around hundreds of rolls of film, getting them all hand-checked at airports before we flew out of it. The amount of times I was almost late for a flight because I was literally waiting for the hand-checking of the film was insane. But that was incredible."
"And I also love being able to deliver all these aspects to a client when they're like, ‘Hey, we really want this look.’ And I'm like, ‘Cool, I have the ability to make that.’ You really want a clean professional look. Okay, let's go with the Sony gear. You really want it to be digital, but want it to look gritty. Let's make it happen. Let's shoot Sony and then let's go into the editing and really fuck around with it and make it look crazy. And then you really want it to be more natural and artsy, you have the film stuff. I think that versatility is important.”
“I recently started working with WANDRD, the camera bag company,” Jake admits when asked how he carries all his gear around. “I honestly didn't know how badly I needed a new camera bag until I used one of their bags and I was like, this is incredible. This is life-changing. I first bought the Prvke, the 31 liter in blue. I made a small YouTube video where I was using the bag and then randomly they reached out to me. They were like, ‘Hey, we would love to send you some stuff,’ and now I am overwhelmed with Wandrd bags, which is a great problem to have. But between the Rouge sling bag, the X-1 crossbody bag, and the Prvke bag, it's everything I need.”
”I love doing YouTube,” says Jake backtracking a little. “I do YouTube videos about my photography and my travels and running around with my family and friends and all that. It’s basically a full-blown ADD brain just trying to make some art. That's where I'm at, so to have a platform like YouTube where I can share the more personal stuff is really cool. And it's fun to have a new way of sharing work too.”
“It's definitely, you get what you put in with YouTube and I'm learning a lot for sure,” continues Jake about his current focus on YouTube. “There's a lot of learning to it. It's more than just making a video. I've made videos about what I do my whole life. I mean, I started making videos of me and my friends skating and snowboarding. And for me, I'm going to be making videos of my family trips when I'm 60, taking my kids to Sun River, you know. I think I'll always be creating.”
“Maybe people are starting to realize how much work it actually is, but it's really fun,” says Jake. “There's a lot of navigating how the app works, how social media works, how people's attention spans work. And then there is running a business side of it too, being able to do branded content with other brands. Being a Sony ambassador and being able to work with them really close on these videos and start reviewing some of their gear is cool. They've just been great supporters since my accident. It's a new realm for sure, but I'm really enjoying it. So go follow my YouTube!”
“YouTube's right now. I think I will continue doing YouTube,” Jake says of future projects and directions for his work. “I think I really want to dive more into the creative direction world of things, especially with live music. My true love is documenting live music and not being able to do that the way I did is definitely a bummer, but finding new avenues and new ways to work in the industry still is really important to me,” he declares. “I've done Green Day, Weezer, Fallout Boy, Marshmello, Lorde, Panic!. I've had a really, really incredible career so far. And I'm so lucky to be able to say that those are my clients that I've worked with. While touring and music photography will always be my true love, my number one passion, I also had an injury when I was out on the road and it has forced me to change. Between my injury and COVID, live music wasn't happening, and forced me to navigate through the fact that I can't shoot concerts like I used to. Just moving about is not as easy as it once was for me. And I think it's both forced me to change and it's also been a pretty natural change just because I am getting older. When I was touring, I was like, ‘I can't do this forever. This is a lot.’ Although I would have loved to do it forever. For sure it’s my passion, my true love, but there's always, in the back of my head, been a what's next?”
“It's slowly coming to fruition,” Jake says of his new path. “It's been a long time now, three years since my accident, with me trying to navigate and figure out what the next thing is for me. I think creative direction and conceptualizing ideas and bringing them to life are next. I think for me it was always, ‘Hey, Jake, we have this cool idea, can you go out and make something cool with it?’ And I really wanted to be a part of creating that idea and then send other people to go and execute it. So I'm definitely getting more in the loop of creative direction a little bit.”
“But it's also scary as fuck because you're starting from scratch again,” Jake admits. “A lot of people think you built this network, you can just go do this other thing, just from doing what I did for so long and building a network. But as long as I was doing photography, there are people that have been doing this other thing that I don't know anything about. So you have to go and learn that. It's definitely been a difficult and really scary transition, but it's been really rewarding too. It kind of feels like I'm falling back in love with everything all over again. You become really jaded with the touring world. And I hate to say that because it's the best job in the world. But it’s kind of just Groundhog's Day. You wake up, you do the same thing over and over and over again. Take photos of the same show over and over and over again. So you definitely can get tired of it. Taking a step out of it for this long and being able to look back into it and being able to look at how great it was and how much fun it is, I'm just really thankful to be slowly navigating into new realms of both live music and my photography and YouTube and things like that. It's just a whole new era of Jake, I guess.”
To watch excerpts from our interview with Jake, click below!