Photographer Profiles

Hospitality photography focuses on hotels, resorts, and casinos but it’s not just about capturing luxury accommodations and lush exterior shots of surrounding vistas and scenery. It’s as much about highlighting comfort, relaxation, and fun. The pictures may include special dishes prepared by gourmet chefs, waiters serving tables, and guests enjoying the ambience and amenities. It’s a smorgasbord of images designed to appeal to a wide range of tastes, albeit presented with an air of sophistication to make any potential guest feel like a prince or princess upon arrival.

Social media has clearly taken the world by storm and photographers have been quick to catch on. That is indeed true for extreme sports photographer Christian Pondella, who has a strong following on several social media platforms, particularly Instagram.

I wake up in the middle of the night in a frazzled state. “Did I lock the front door of the gallery and did I turn off the base lights of the trees on my way out?” I was replaying the night’s events in my mind to ease my worries but I am so tired that it is all a blur. I am not sure when I decided to open up my own photo gallery and in some ways I am not really sure why I wanted to do it either.

We don’t subscribe to the notion of some so-called purists that “Photoshop” is a dirty word. After all, some of the best works of iconic film photographers owe their impact to a mastery of the darkroom. The before and after images you see here from young Russian digital artist Max Asabin show that he definitely pushes the envelope when it comes to the digital darkroom.

In 1955, armed with a couple of Leicas, several bottles of French brandy, and hundreds of rolls of film, the photographer Robert Frank set out on an odyssey to look for the soul of America. Behind the wheel of his black Ford Business coupe, he drove over 10,000 miles of endless highways and forgotten back roads; and made nearly 27,000 photographs. From these road-trip images he created a “photobook,” a work that has had a profound impact on photography and photographers ever since: The Americans.

Michael Grecco is an award-winning, internationally renowned director and photographer of celebrity portraits, advertising and editorial commissions, private collections, and fine art. As one of the most respected visual storytellers in the world, his conceptual vision and signature dramatic lighting create distinctive images that are evocative, sophisticated, and comedic.

David X. Tejada’s assignment was a lighting demo for a how-to video and end-use images. The location was a private home where he was asked to create the effect of artificial sunlight. The weather cooperated by providing rain.