Photographer Profiles

New Yorker Chris Gampat calls himself a “Headshot Photographer,” although his 10 years in the business also includes photojournalism, fashion and wedding photography in addition to portraiture. He’s also a creative, funny guy as you can see in these images from his series ‘The Secret Order of the Slice.”

A good friend once told me, “When you’re doing something, you’re not doing something else.” This Yogi Berra-ism is actually great advice. When considering a photo project, think about its commercial potential. You can spend a year photographing the slime left by snails at night, but does anyone want to see that? More importantly in this increasingly web-focused world, will they share it in their social media feeds?

“A mobile device can display still images and video, and it can broadcast audio,” Sciorio says. “The creation point for all three of those is my camera: it shoots stills, video and records audio. So why was I using only one-third of the tools I had? Why was I trying to sell only one kind of product?”

Brazilian photographer Marcos Alberti was inspired by an apocryphal quote that goes something like this: “The first glass of wine is all about the food, the second glass is about love, and the third glass is about mayhem.” Thus, Alberti’s Three Glasses of Wine project was born.

To say that Art Wolfe is not your typical portrait photographer is quite the understatement. With a career spanning 40 years, Wolfe brings his travels from every corner of the earth to create stunning portraits in his Human Canvas collection, honoring the traditions of Ethiopian tribal culture.

Photographing people for a living can prove intimidating for many photographers. Now add “celebrity” to that and you may find you have to step up your game several notches to stand on equal footing with your subject. You can’t afford to be intimidated and you certainly can’t afford to appear unsure of yourself or to question your decisions. You have to enter the picture with a game plan and be decisive, know which lens you’ll be using, what lights, and where to place those lights. But you also have to be prepared for the unexpected. That’s why they give these jobs to photographers such as Victoria Will.

Some years ago Steve Simon took a leave from his job as a newspaper photographer in his native Canada and headed south across the border on a self-assigned project. “I’d loved photography since I was a kid in Montreal, roaming the streets, inspired by Cartier-Bresson,” Simon says, “but I’d been working 10 years at the newspaper, doing the same things again and again. I was looking for a way to get the inspiration back, to explore the power of what photography can be.”