So I tried to get my shot with a 50mm and I did it - this is when we're shooting film, not digital. The guy that hired me looked through the pictures and was like, "Oh, this is pretty good. You did a good job." And I was like, "Yeah, I'm sorry. I only had a 50mm. My girlfriend rented the wrong lens..." and he stopped looking at the pictures and he looked up at me and he said, "You shot this with a 50mm? You're hired."
Jeff VespaI always knew I was going to be an artist. It was a done deal right from when I was very little. It sounds like the dumbest thing ever, but my mom used to doodle when she was on the telephone and she made these - they weren't just little scribbles - these little shapes and forms. I don't know why she did it. I've never seen her do it again.
Jeff VespaI always wanted to live in L.A. The other thing that always inspired me was movies; that's why I'm here. I always wanted to be a part of the movie business and make movies. That's why I went to AFI grad school for filmmaking.
Jeff VespaI was fooling around one day and looking at Yahoo! Jobs. I typed in "photo" and, of course, what comes up is "One hour photo lab" or "Be a photographer in Disneyland" or jobs that no one really wants as a photographer. I saw, by chance, this ad that said, "Wanted: Photographer for premieres and Hollywood events" and I thought, "This can not be real. This is ridiculous. No one advertizes this!" I was really suspect about it.
Jeff VespaOnly sometimes I try to think about it in context. When I think about the context of, "Oh, I'm this or that," in this society, that's one of the terms.
Jeff VespaThere were just moments of the punk scene and I realized that I had to capture it. There was also this photographer in our preschool - I went to a Montessori school in Baltimore, Maryland - and they had this photographer come and take all these incredible photographs. They looked like they were from Life magazine.
Jeff VespaThe Canon AE1 - a fully manual camera. [My mother] had a 50mm, which is a standard lens, and then I got a 28mm. Then I started a little punk magazine, a zine, when I was 14 or 15 years old. I was shooting my friends skateboarding and it was the beginning of the Macintosh. We wouldn't do layouts on the computer; we would pick the font and then type up a paragraph and then print it out and cut it up and put it in a little mock-up and Xerox it.
Jeff Vespa