JD is a self-employed Photographer, Filmmaker, and Activist in the Orlando, FL area. On any given day JD could be shooting photo or video at a rally (such as March for Our Lives), filming court-side action at Orlando Magic home games, or teaching videography classes at his alma mater, Rollins College. JD’s advice to interested students is to never stop learning and to “find your group”. Almost every organization or cultural group has media needs, so why not you?
Transcript
Hey, my name is JD Casto, I am class of 2011 at Rollins College, and I do a little bit of everything. Artists is probably the easiest thing to say. I freelance in photography, videography, and I'm also an activist here in Central Florida. When it comes to my art form, my education, my background, is critical media and cultural studies. My art informs my activism, and my activism informs my art. So I will do a lot of photography at rally's, I will do a lot of portrait photography of activists. I will also just do, you know, senior photos, but I'm also, at Rollins, I was very heavily involved with the athletics department and filming all the sports, and so one of my clients for the videography side of everything is actually the Orlando Magic, I'm a court-side camera operator. I will normally speak with a client and ask what their expectations are. There's really a lot of just going back and forth of, "Okay, what is your look, what is your story "gonna look like in accompaniment with this? "Is there anything that you specifically want me to get?" Now it comes to selecting what lenses I'm going to use. If I'm on the go, I try to use just my 24 to 70 milometer lens. It's the most versatile lens that I have. If I know that I'm going to need more of a telephoto lens to get close-ups of like a band, let's say I'm covering a band at Hard Rock, I will typically bring a second body with the 70 to 200 milometer lens, and just switch off between the cameras. When the other photo journalist zig, I zag. When you do a lot of events you'll see that the photographers kind of move in a cluster, and I don't like that, I don't like getting, it sounds very pretentious, but I don't like getting the same exact shot that everybody else gets. I will try and kind of zoom back and get a bigger picture. I really focus on energy. When you make a selects pass, which is you're making your VIP, your top 10 photos, I go through the big emotional beats. It's not just a photo of someone at a rally, I want someone sitting there in passion. Or I want someone with a sign hugging someone. It's not just a picture of the sign, I always lead with emotion. There is no typical week, it's just busy. I can go from doing a mediation project with a law group, to doing a underwear model shoot, to then ending my day, on the court, with the Orlando Magic, and sometimes all that combines with me having to teach at Rollins video production, somewhere in the middle of that. So there is no typical week. I like that. There's this weird controlled chaos aspect to it that I just love.
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