The Eclipse of God
Dr. Erwin Lutzer joins Michael to discuss his most recent book, The Eclipse of God, and the need to return to the Lord.
At his core, Jeremy is an artist. Starting out as a painter first, Jeremy fell in love with the creative process. He then went on to study graphic design in college and founded his own graphic design company, Pixelgrazer, in 2001. Jeremy really only began taking pictures to bring texture into his design work. But before he knew it, he realized that photography was his true passion. So in April of 2005, Jeremy switched over to it full time and he has never looked back. In a relatively short amount of time, Jeremy earned the respect of artists, photographers, and celebrities alike. Now hailed as one of the trailblazers in the industry, Jeremy sees photography as a natural extension of his passion for the arts.
Jeremy has taken portraits of many familiar names such as Taylor Swift, Tim Tebow, The Kardashians, Sting, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Heidi Klum, Gwyneth Paltrow, The Civil Wars, Emma Stone, Courtney Cox, and Ryan Seacrest, just to name a few. His clients, mostly entertainment based, include ABC, FOX, A&E, F/X, Discovery Channel, ESPN, People, US Weekly, VIBE, E!, Universal Records, Sony Records and Warner Brothers Records. His work has been published in Rolling Stone, ESPN Magazine, People Magazine, USA Today, Fast Company, NYTimes, TIME, Nylon and more.
“I mean, when I’m shooting a celebrity, no, I’m just another photo shoot; another thing to do in their journey. A lot of times literally, I don’t even get time to say, “Hello.” and meet. A lot of times, It’s like bam, bam, bam, you walk in and you shoot. But there are other times when I get to travel and really get to know people. That trip to Iceland I recently did with Imogen Heap, I mean it was just she and I, an assistant and her boyfriend. The four of us drove around in Iceland in a car together so it just depends on the experience, but I really feel alive and really walking where I’m supposed to be when I’m working with people of opposing or different beliefs. I love it. I think it’s just incredible!”
“Just, you know one of my favorite experiences was: I toured with Britney Spears for three months and I was thrown in a tour bus with her dancers and a lot of people in the tours, entertainers and, I mean, not only were we different belief systems but we were the Russian, the German, the Hispanic guy, the African American. I was literally the only white person and belief wise we had me the Christian; we had atheists, gays, lesbians, you name it.
Traveling for three months on this tour bus, I just loved the opportunity to share what I believed, but also to listen to them and what they believe in and to show them that not all Christians are extremely judgemental and hateful towards other systems. I dont know, I love trying to reverse that direction that the Christian brand seems to go, which is all judgement and hate; I don’t know. I feel like we’ve really got a bad brand out there.”
“I certainly don’t think of myself as a scholar on these topics, but from your normal average guy perspective, I just try to love people and listen a lot. I love to listen and ask questions and just try to be Christ the best way that I can without throwing out judgement. I’ve had to work with a lot of people whose beliefs I don’t necessarily agree with, but I love those opportunities because I learn from them.
I just recently photographed a family that the show Big Love is based on so it’s a man and his four wives, so we shot their book cover out in LA, and just such a wonderful day, just listening and respecting each other. You know, I’m not going to change, or try to change their belief systems in an eight hour photo shoot and so we just talked about our beliefs and there was no arguing; there was no fighting. This is why we believe in, what we believe in. We talked about my beliefs and it was just beautiful. So I love to just listen and try to love people no matter what.”
“I was sitting on my couch like the rest of the world at the time; just in disbelief watching CNN. I felt like the media was like ‘Look at all these dead bodies; look at all the buildings that fell down.’ There wasn’t really any story to it, so at the time Twitter and social media weren’t as big internationally, so a lot of Haitians weren’t really on Twitter at the time, but I just thought, “What if they could tweet, what would those people be telling the world right now? What would they be broadcasting?”
Then the media wasn’t really doing that so I hopped on a flight and went down there myself and asked people “What would you have to tell the world right now?” It was only a week after the earthquake so there were still aftershocks and dead bodies laying around. It was unlike anything I’ve ever seen. It was like being in a war zone; people screaming; fire on every street corner; just chaos. So it was amazing to see what people had to say during those moments.”
“It’s kind of a follow up to the Haiti project. I spoke at a conference where my friend, Laura Waters Hinson did a project on forgiveness in Rwanda. Here we are twenty years after the genocide and people are forgiving each other for murder and it’s just crazy. It’s a crazy thought! I asked her, “What if we did my project, like I did it in Haiti, but did it with the people you’re working with in Rwanda?” So the idea was to go interview these people who had forgiven the killers of these families, and do a portrait of them together, and not only that but to shoot the portrait at the scene of the crime.
In some cases we even had the actual weapon that was used. So yeah, it was completely insane. In America, I can’t imagine many Americans saying, “Yeah, I’ll go do a photoshoot at the scene where this guy killed my family.” We’ll go laugh, and we’ll forgive each other, like that doesn’t’ happen. It was just beyond inspiring to have those conversations and to see them walking through this process of reconciliation.”
“It was crazy because I didn’t know what to do with that project, but when I got home a few months later and I got an email like, “Hey, we’re launching this new photography blog, and we’d love to share anything new you’ve got.” I said, “Well I did this thing in Rwanda and I don’t know what to do with it.” It happened to be the new photo blog for CNN so the next thing I knew this project was the leading worldwide headline, Could You Forgive Your Families Killer? So it was just amazing to see how God plants these ideas, and then has a plan for them later, after the fact.”
“In 2008 I had a very simple idea to do an event locally here in Nashville for a local Rescue Mission for families in need. We just did photo shoots for them, gave them the full experience, hair and makeup, just made them look beautiful, played with their kids, and just had a great day doing photography. After that day, we made a video; we put it on Facebook and eight people commented, “Hey, if you ever do this again, I’d love to do it with you.”
It was in those eight comments, I mean we’re talking very little, but I realized in that moment, this could be a much bigger deal. This could be a global kind of thing and so nine months later in August 2009, I launched the idea on my blog, and other people helped me spread the word, and then we had our first global event in 2009 of December and people participated in I think it was forty-three countries, in over forty states in America. It instantly became this global movement and ever since then we’ve just been doing it all over the world every December. A woman told me the other day, “The only photo I’ve ever had taken was my jail mugshot.”
“I don’t think of myself as a speaker. I’m not really trying to be the next, whatever, you know. I don’t think I’m of myself as a writer either. But I do enjoy the process of trying to motivate people and inspire people through just pursuing ideas and trying to help people. So I do enjoy sharing what I’ve done and talking about it in a way that hopefully inspires somebody out there; it’s always a love-hate thing.
I don’t think of myself as a great speaker, but I do share very emotionally. I end up crying every time I speak. The other night I spoke in front of a big group and talked about my brother passing away this year and of course, I just wept like a baby, not like cool crying, but ugly crying you know where it’s really awkward for the audience.”
“I think one of the main things people need to really stop doing is, comparing themselves. You know it’s so easy to view your instagram feeds and to go on Pinterest, Twitter and Facebook and just compare, compare, compare. I’ll never be that good. I’ll never be that rockstar, photographer, whatever. But you just got to start shooting. It’s whole ten thousand hour thing; just start putting in the hours and start shooting like crazy.
There are a lot of great, great photographers; there’s thousands of them, great artists, but the important thing is to really focus on the ideas and the type of things you’re passionate about vs. perfecting the art of photography. Anybody can learn to retouch and learn photoshoot; anybody can learn to light; anybody can learn to take a good picture, but few really make interesting unique work or have a unique voice. That really, I’m sure applies to anything, to music, but time and time again I see people come out of all the noise who has a unique voice.”
“Actually, I think it was one morning when you were speaking at Fellowship, I have always been paranoid about my walk, that I’m not this super prayer every day. I’m not constantly in the Word; I’m not doing all these things, but when you grow up as a Christian you think, “You’re bad if you’re not having your thirty minute daily quiet time and doing this, and this, and this.” Thing is you just said, “Sometimes conversations are just one way and you’re just listening.”
I’ve always felt like God just speaks to me constantly and I’m just always just trying to listen and a lot of people talk about ideas, but I always feel like those ideas are just… I have to give God credit because they come out of no where and they’re so clear and they’re so present and they’re so fast.
My idea for a portrait, I think, was when I was eating at a Logan’s Roadhouse, with my in laws and family and I’m sitting there eating fried chicken watching sports on the TV overhead and all of a sudden there’s this massive idea. It comes like that and the next thing I know, a year later it’s in forty countries so I think a lot of people have those ideas but I think a lot of people live in fear or “I can’t do that,” “I don’t have a platform,” “ I’m not special enough,” “I’m not good enough.” I just love that moment of jumping off that cliff, “Alright, God, It’s yours.You’ve given it to me. I’m going to jump and see what happens.” Each time I’ve done that, I’ve just gained more and more confidence.”
“He loves his family. She knows how much I love her and my children. Hopefully that would be the first thing, but as far as like a from a career standpoint just always, always dreaming, it’s really hard for me to turn that part off. I can turn the photography part off, but I can’t turn the ideation process off. I’ve always got an idea, and it’s to the point in which it can be a problem because from week to week, “ I’m going to focus on this now.
This is what I’m going to do with my life,” and the next week, “No, no, no, I’m going to be an artist now. No, no, no, I’m going to start speaking and teaching.” The next week I’m like, “Forget that, No, no, no I’m going to…” So there’s always something new that I want to do. So she would probably say something along those lines. “He’s just a dreamer.”
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