Tony Arrasmith is a master at creating composite images.
His attention to detail is what draws clients to his Cincinnati studio. A long-time ASMP member, he operates Arrasmith & Associates (www.tonyarrasmith.com) in partnership with Sarah O’Dell, who manages the studio and coordinates projects. The studio has...
He figured he'd be one of the last of the holdouts. "When the whole digital revolution started, I thought I'd be the last guy to be shooting digital," David Alan Harvey says. Then along came an offer he didn't want to refuse. "Nikon was working on an ad campaign for their D100, and they asked me if I'd go down to Mexico and shoot with the...
"How do you get a handle on telling the story of life on earth in images? It took tons of research to master the material."
For his most recent book, Life: A Journey Through Time, Frans Lanting traveled, researched, and photographed for over six years, but when you consider that his goal was to document the story of life on earth, it seems a reasonable amount...
"None of my sample albums have family formal shots. I intentionally leave them out because they're not what I specialize in."
"A lot of it comes down to your client's expectations before the wedding," Mike Colon says of his relationship to the bride and groom. "You have to talk about what they're really expecting, what...
The personal project always finds you. It's never the other way around. We can't remember a pro shooter ever saying anything along the lines of, "I went looking for a labor of love." Maybe it's a subject you've been doing for years and suddenly realize how much you enjoy doing it. Or maybe you decide it's time to bring it to a wider...
"I built my name and reputation on safety and doing things legally, with permission."
Location is everything, and Peter B. Kaplan built his career on getting to places others couldn't...or wouldn't. Although there are images taken from blimps, balloons, and helicopters, the majority of his photographs are taken from rooftops, scaffolds, antenna...
"Another photographer will say, `I don't know anything about figure skating,' and I'll tell him, `Well, here's what's going to happen; here's what to watch for.'"
Funny how things work out sometimes.
Dave Black majored in commercial graphics design and studio drawing at Southern Illinois...
"With the alternative processes, you can see someone's hand at work. It's a very personal way of creating a photograph."
Most of us are finding more of everything thanks to digital imaging technology, but for some photographers, the essentials are getting scarce. Jill Enfield, for example, for whom it's not a question of cameras--she uses...
Best known for her images of global health issues, photojournalist Karen Kasmauski often finds herself in the world's hot zones, but she says the work she does isn't dangerous...until it is. One moment you're fine; the next, there's trouble, and you never saw it coming. "It's always...
The difference is not always skill. Success as a pro shooter takes talent, but, as Rosanne Pennella says, "there are many excellent photographers who cannot make a name for themselves because they cannot figure out how to market themselves and project mastery of their careers."
Eleven years ago Rosanne was an attorney whose first love was not the law.
Chicago-based food photographer Jeff Kauck (www.jeffkauckphotography.com) developed his artistic eye through years of training as a watercolorist. While attending Central Academy of Commercial Art, in Cincinnati, where he also studied advertising, “I picked up my father’s camera—a twin-lens Rolleiflex—and really enjoyed playing with it. And to help support myself through art school, I did a lot of color printing for a wedding photographer.” But he soon realized that his time and talent were better spent on photography than painting. And Cincinnati proved to be the perfect location for a start-up food studio, since it was the home of Procter & Gamble, which became his first client, and a major one at that. But a larger market—Chicago—beckoned to him after 18 years, so he made the move and hasn’t looked back.
“I fell into shooting the healthcare industry quite by accident,” recalls Montclair, New Jersey-based photographer John Emerson (www.johnemersonphotography.com). He’d met an art director who hired him to photograph the staff at a research lab, for Rutgers University—which remains a client some 20 years later. That was the proverbial foot in the door. Aside from that, Emerson continues to pursue his other passion: environmental portraiture of celebrities, athletes, and politicians.
“My dad won a Nikon FM at a company-sponsored event when I was 12, and, the moment he handed the camera over to me, it was love at first sight,” Nels Akerlund recalls. Six months later, he’d built a darkroom in his basement and that love affair with photography has not abated. It carried him through the Rochester Institute of Technology, an internship with a White House photographer in the Reagan administration, and assignments for the National Geographic Society, The New York Times, and photo shoots worldwide. He shares this passion with his wife Anna, who is also his business partner and fellow shooter. Aside from weddings, Akerlund shoots architecture, food, small products, and of course portraits in his studio and on location. He and his wife operate a spacious, two-story, 2000-square-foot studio behind their home in Rockford, Illinois.
Many commercial lifestyle/portrait shooters turn first and foremost to studio strobe to light their subjects. Not Ann Elliott Cutting. Her studio features a south-facing window that she utilizes to the max. I know, it’s not the proverbial north-facing skylight that we’ve been taught to strive for, but it does the job—and quite nicely. More than that, her penchant for employing window light doesn’t mean she shuns brawny power pack systems. She owns and uses those as well, but they’re not always the go-to gear even on commercial assignments and often play a subordinate role.
“I started in my father’s darkroom, retouching negatives at 5 years old,” recalls New York City-based photographer Paul Aresu. “My father was a wedding photographer, with 10 studios and maybe 50 photographers working under him.” In his late teens, Aresu was already shooting weddings for his dad. “It grew from there.” He achieved a BFA from New York’s School of Visual Arts and went on to assist Pete Turner and Tom Arma for several years. “I learned a lot about the business from them.”
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