Jonathan Buckley, Founder & Photographer
Jonathan has long had an interest in the leading edges of photography and media. Through his Silicon Valley marketing strategy firm, The Artesian Network, his Team has produced many multimedia pieces including advertisements, product, web, and demand generation pieces to assist new tech firms to explain their wares to the market in new and innovative ways. Photography as an art form was always a peripheral interest.
To learn more about the Artesian Network, please visit the site here.
In 2012, Jonathan convinced his then bride, Blynn, to run an experiment and crowdsource wedding photographers to find one willing to engage in an Instagram-only wedding. At this time, the iPhone 4s was proving to be the first great camera phone and Instagram was just starting to take off. One of the core designers of Instagram itself, Cole Rise of the “Rise Filter” and original Instagram logo fame, stepped up to assist a wonderful local photographer, Kimberly A. (Thomas) Kimberlin in the shoot. Though considered really risky for such an event at the time, everyone was really pleased with the results. The original Instagram blog went viral, and was amplified by hundreds of blogs and magazines internationally. The story and photos still remain posted today on sites such as Fstoppers.
Within a year and with only 13 employees, Instagram was bought for $1B by Facebook and in the same year, Eastman Kodak finally declared bankruptcy. It turned out to be a front-row seat to technology disruption in the art technology world.
Jonathan’s then 12-year-old son Kaden quickly took to weekend photography projects with his Dad from the curiosity generated from this wedding experiment. Kaden’s interest in photography and a new, separate interest in robotics intersected when the pair began attaching GoPro® cameras to hand-built aircraft. One of their “garage style” videos went viral and ended up as the opening montage at DroneCon in 2014 thanks to Twitter support from 3D Robotics founder Chris Anderson. Kaden's original video is still live today here on YouTube.
In 2015, more professional, integrated aerial camera systems became accessible to the weekend photographer with patience to experiment and persevere through the early adoption curve. Regulation on the federal and state level also followed suit. Jonathan was featured on Bloomberg TV discussing the changing regulatory landscape for drone operators.
Throughout this period, Jonathan’s photography and videography works began getting noticed in larger circles, featured in numerous commercials, documentaries, music videos, and feature films. In 2017, Jonathan, working together with some close friends, conceived of Elevar Pictures as a way to generate a new and innovative corporate art alternative. The Team has been focusing on creating still and moving images for office buildings, restaurants, hotels and institutions looking to reflect their values, stories and brands in a most elegant and modern way. And thus, the next chapter of the story begins.
Meanwhile, Kaden has moved on to college and rarely gets to make art openings any longer, but rest assured he has his camera close by and a drone pilot's license in the works.
Some endorsements:
“It has been my great luck and privilege to meet and collaborate with Jonathan Buckley while directing scenic shots of San Francisco for my feature film The Etruscan Smile.
Jonathan is a truly passion-motivated person that digs deep into any detail that can make the job better, and it was as inspiring as it was great fun to work together. From our first meeting, through the whole process, Jonathan was attentive and determined on achieving the best possible result without any compromise, no matter what that entailed.
Quite impressively a 100% of the shots we set out to capture found their way seamlessly into the final-cut of the film, adding to the scope, beauty and emotional charge of key moments in the Story.”
Oded Binnun
Academy Award Nominee Filmmaker
Assistant Professor in Social Documentation and Film and Digital Media, University of California at Santa Cruz
Jason LaBarbera, Creator
Jason is has been a life-long entrepreneur with a passion for people and the arts. Since 2000, Jason has grown and led T3.AM™, a Silicon Valley recruiting firm with a pioneering approach to hiring in highly competitive markets. Besides a rigorous interview framework and the development of proprietary tools to stay successful and ahead in leading companies such as Google, Facebook and Twitter, Jason has always integrated new and innovative approaches to multimedia in his company in order to appeal to the right candidates, at the right time, for the right reasons.
The results speak for themselves. The key to understanding art and its appeal to a market is to have a very keenly developed sense of empathy for people. It is no surprise then that these skills from his successes from T3.AM have directly translated over to Elevar through the creation of the business.
Jason is excited to finally have the freedom and opportunity to fully leverage his unique way of seeing the universe, to help capture artful moments that are both unique and awe-inspiring to others. To have the opportunity to share this sacred experience with his close friends is quite literally a dream come true.
To learn more about T3.AM, please visit T3.AM here.
Steve Peters, Lead Digital Artist
Steve Peters heads up an independent photo retouching studio located in the San Francisco Bay Area, specializing in the development and production of custom creative imagery for advertising, marketing and fine art purposes.
Steve works hands-on with ad agencies, design firms, and photographers – as well as directly with brand name companies, offering personalized service and extraordinary image via retouching, computer generation (cg), compositing and color enhancement.
Elevar is proud to partner with someone of Steve’s extraordinary caliber and deep experience, which is second to none. When taking a very high definition panorama photograph in variable conditions, and then blowing it up to take up an entire wall with a definition that metal printing can afford, every pixel has to be perfect in post-production and Steve is an integral part of getting us there.
To learn more about Steve’s independent work directly, please visit Steve Peters Digital Imaging here.