Buy My Album!

I have an album of original songs. You can listen, and even buy it, at my page on bandcamp.com. Please give it a listen.

Music Video - Lift You Up - and New Website

This never happened in TV news. In some spare time at work at Kelby Media Group, I shot a music video for my song, "Lift You Up." A coworker who heard me play it asked, in complete seriousness, if I was on a record label. "I know people who do music," he said. "And that song's good." When he had some downtime, he even wanted to help, and he did the camera on the moving shots.

How cool is that?

I shot the rest, and edited the video. Plus, I wrote, performed and recorded the song. You've heard the term "one man band"? This is nearly that in more ways than one!

"Lift You Up" is a painful song for me in a couple of ways. First, it deals with trying to support friends who have suffered catastrophic losses in their lives. Second, one of the people who inspired it, for whom I once had great affection, decided to sever ties with me, so I get a bittersweet feeling whenever I play or hear the song now.

Like the song itself, the video is not perfect, but I like it a lot, and I hope you will, too. Please take a look:



I have taken this music stuff seriously enough that that I bought a the domain name MrJohnMusic.com. For now it uses the basic layout of JohnMcQuiston.com, but it has the best of my songs there, and I plan to tailor a style just for it. Stay tuned. (See what I did there?)

Anchor of The Year?

So this happened. For the third straight year, I am a finalist for the Society of Professional Journalists Florida Chapter Anchor of the Year. I don’t know if this is good. I worked as at WWSB-TV in Sarasota for not even two full weeks of 2014, and my entry consisted of work from a single day’s ordinary newscasts. Either the judge really liked my work on a mundane news day, or only three people entered and all of us made the finals.

You may judge for yourself:

South Dakota Wants Would-Be Mars Colonists

I have not made this up. South Dakota has produced a video extolling its virtues compared to those of Mars for people considering the one-way trip to the red planet. South Dakota, it brags, is "progressive, productive and abundant in oxygen."

My Photos on FineArtAmerica.com

People like the photos I post on Facebook and on Instagram (@PhotoQuist). Now I'll see if anyone likes them enough to buy one. I've uploaded about two dozen to a website called FineArtAmerica.com, where artists can upload their work and the site takes care of the orders, of the making the prints, and doing any framing that a customer wants.

Check it out!

Baby Chimp Plays with Tiger and Wolf Cubs

Useless cuteness? Nah. No such thing. Happy Friday!

Lorikeets Play - Sony Power Zoom Lens Test

One cool thing about my job is that I get to try out cool gear like the Sony FE PZ 28-135mm G OSS lens. Some days I even get paid to go to the zoo and take pictures or photos! The Sony power zoom lens is designed with video in mind, so that's what I shot with it.

While shooting demo footage with the lens on a Sony A7S camera, I caught a couple of interesting exchanges between these colorful birds at Lowry Park Zoo in Tampa called lorikeets. I don't know if this is their version of wrestling, or if it's an attempt at mating. But it's fun to watch?



I did no color grading, correcting or sharpening in post. This is straight from the camera, rendered to an MP4 file. The part before the dissolve used the lens' auto focus. After the transition I manually focused the lens. This shot doesn't feature much of the zoom, but it worked well for me. I'd say more but since I will review the lens for my job, I don't want to steal anyone's thunder! But the result will go up on YouTube, and I'll post it here.