Photographer Profiles

John Conn has photographed landscapes, landmarks, and the underwater world, but his passion for documentary storytelling has resulted in his most compelling images: apartheid-era South Africa, residents of a Bowery flophouse, patients in a cancer hospice, the subways of 1970s New York City, and, starting three years ago, the homeless of Manhattan.<

Sophie Gamand is an award-winning photographer and animal advocate. Since 2010, her powerful and whimsical photography has focused on dogs and our relationship with them. She works closely with animal shelters and rescue groups to help promote adoption and animal welfare. We recently interviewed Gamand about how she became a professional animal photographer and, in particular, what draws her to photographing hairless dogs, which has become a recent focus.

If we could describe Steve Bronstein’s trademark shooting style it would be: keep it real and keep it small. Bronstein is a wizard at breathing life into miniature sets and adding an air of believability to each one.
His mastery of perspective and scale is only a small part of that. He also knows how to make his lighting work for him to deliver one-of-a-kind masterpieces. And he has the most talented people working with him to ensure that each step in a project is taken on the surest footing.

Of course sports photographer Eric Bakke can capture the peak action moments. He’s team photographer for the Denver Broncos, shoots X Games for ESPN, and contributes sports images to newspapers, magazines, and organizations. Here, though, we want to talk about his pursuit of a different kind of sports image, one that most often pictures a single athlete and aims for art over action.

“Photography is always a bit random in the UK because the weather is so changeable,” Martin Turner says. When he and his friends arrived late in the afternoon at the Weston-super-Mare seaside resort in North Somerset, they were greeted by “absolute, gorgeous sunshine.” Which lasted about 45 minutes. “All of a sudden the sky went black,” Turner says, “and we had to stand underneath the pier whilst it chucked down rain for quite a while.” Then the clouds broke, and at about 8:00 in the evening he was able to capture this sunset image.

The camera Michael carries might be his Leica M6, loaded with either Ilford XP-2 or Kodak BW400CN chromogenic film and fitted with either a 35mm f/2 or 50mm f/2 Summicron lens; or his Fuji X10 point-and-shoot with its zoom lens set for the equivalent of 50mm; or his Nikon D200 or D700 with the manual 50mm f/1.4 Nikkor lens he got with his F3 back when he was in college.

The legendary American photographer William Eggleston was a true pioneer in the potential of color photography and his quirky, eccentric portraits of everyday life can teach us all a lot about candid artistry and composition.