As I am a commercial photographer in Arizona, I often get the call to photograph baseball players during spring training. This work is unique and different from any other mid-season sports photo shoot -- including baseball. They are the kind that I cherish because of the calmness on set.
Every so often, a photo shoot comes along, and in the middle of it, you find yourself taking a step back and mentally trying to reckon with the idea that you should be paying just to be there. Sometimes, it is the subject, and sometimes, it is the experience; the photo shoot I’m talking about today was a bit of both.
Photographing Sandra Day O’Connor was unlike any other photo shoot I have ever done before or since. It began with a phone call from The New York Times, asking me to meet Justice O’Connor at her house and create a portrait of her against a white background.
After releasing the Photoshoot at the Edge of Space, I encountered an unexpected turn of events. Ordinarily, when I release images -- be they of trains, cars, or athletes -- I receive a smattering of emails and messages inquiring about the availability of prints for purchase. These queries typically come from fans, some devoted to specific race teams, others enamored with a particular athlete or train locomotive. However, the response to my Edge of Space series was unprecedented; I was inundated with requests, not just from individual enthusiasts, but also from esteemed museums.
When making PetaPixel’s documentary about Blair Bunting’s U2 photo shoot at the edge of space (which you should really watch now if you haven’t), one thing we decided not to focus on was the camera gear. But we love talking about cameras and lenses, so Chris sat down with Blair the evening before his epic shoot to discuss the equipment he was bringing up in a U2 spy plane.
This week on the PetaPixel Podcast, the team comes together for a special episode from Apple Park! Chris, Jordan, and Jaron spend some time discussing some topics that they didn't get to mention in their first-impressions of Apple's latest handhelds.
Eight years of discussions. Six months of training. Two days of final preparations. Much was required to give photographer Blair Bunting two hours at the edge of Earth's atmosphere to conduct the first-ever photo shoot at near-space where he captured images that have never been made before and will likely never be made again.
Some cars exist in myths and legends. They can be so rare that even a car enthusiast might only see them by the good graces of another. The Mercedes C1000 exemplifies this.
There’s something about the passion that exists between a mechanic and a motorcycle. Their hands and tools are their paintbrushes, and their grease-stained nails are their paint. I was fortunate to witness them create their art and document it all while creating my own.
Away from the world, the city, and the light pollution, I stood in a green forest where the breeze couldn’t even penetrate the trees surrounding me. It was an area that only existed to me in my imagination after multiple times of poring over Google Maps and allowing my mind to wander.
Of all the arts available to mankind, my heart belongs to music. Perhaps it’s a sentiment that doesn’t serve my self-interest much, as my only achievements in the arts have come through photography.
The new Top Gun movie has been released in cinemas, and PetaPixel is revisiting the time when a photographer sacrificed his body to recreate the iconic Polaroid scene from the original film.
The tracks begin to ring. I listen closely with the engine roaring louder and louder as each second passes and ready my camera... my finger resting steady on the shutter.
After I published a story on sunglasses for photographers, I got a ton of emails asking how I lit the series. So, while on the road for a recent photo shoot, I took some time at my AirBNB and wrote out how I approach what is called "split color lighting."
It was my first year in college. I was going out every day to teach myself photography, Harry Potter had just come out in theaters, and Canon entered the digital photography world with its very first fully backed flagship, the Canon EOS 1D.
In ways much like the chicken and the egg, it is tough to distinguish which came first, my love of photography, or my obsession with optics.
Lighting as a thought process is fundamentally easy to apply to schemata. Water is not.
It was a quiet evening with a brilliant red sunset visible through the tall pines of Flagstaff, Arizona. I was sitting with my neighbor in my front yard, each of us enjoying an Old Fashioned and toasting to another hot summer day.
It wasn’t that the phone hadn’t rung for an entire year, it was that the shoots were always too risky; my urge to be on set was always overruled by my commitment to ensure that making art did not lead to someone contracting COVID.
One week before what would be my only photoshoot of 2020, I received a phone call that broke me emotionally. My producer, friend and all-around incredible person, Eric, had taken his own life.
If there was a theme in automotive advertising photography for 2020, it would be minimalism. This not only applies to aesthetics, but also (and more importantly) to production.
Robert "Scratch" Mitchell was one of the pilots who helped recreate the famous Top Gun canopy-to-canopy photo scene to see if it was possible, and explains in this 10-minute video what his team got right, and what Top Gun got wrong.
It’s heavy, expensive, does not have image stabilization, and is impractical for most photographers. It also happens to be one of the best zoom lenses ever made.
Has COVID-19 impacted the look of ad campaigns? Maybe, but probably not by as much as you might think. What is impacted, however, is the way that a commercial photography set operates for the foreseeable future.
Twenty years. They have gone by fast. I can remember the first time I saw a camera with a screen on the back of it at a sporting venue, and now a camera without one is considered vintage. However, the look of modern cameras is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to changes.
I, like many of you, watched the Sony a7R IV announcement live stream on Tuesday. I saw them put up the video of the camera and its specs, which I thought looked good as an evolution of their R platform. However, when the lights came back on in the room, the kind man that is the VP of their alpha division debuted the camera to the world with the line: “medium format level image quality”
Photographing a Porsche is a special experience for me, as I am a racing fan, and Porsche is racing. They are the essence of speed on the curving tracks they have graced around the world, and on a photo shoot, they are just as incredible sitting still. It is for this and many other reasons that I count myself lucky to stand behind the camera while photographing the art pieces that are Porsche racecars.
It is June 15th, 1999. The box office is being dominated by the release of the first new Star Wars in 16 years, even though it is tainted by one Jar Jar Binks. Until this day, photography was largely dominated by a technology that had existed for over a hundred years. It was a technology pioneered by George Eastman in his invention called, the Kodak. Over the many years from 1885 onward, it became known to the photographic community and to the world as “film.”
Doing a photo shoot in China is different than anything I have experienced on any set anywhere else in the world. Heck, just getting from the hotel to the set is like playing a video game when it comes to driving on the roads... or sidewalks, for that matter. However, to go to a country expecting it not to have a different culture is ethnocentric and prepares one for nothing.
It was January 2009 and I was preparing to shoot the newest campaign for the television show, Deadliest Catch. Truth be told, I had made very little the year prior because the world was experiencing a market recession, and the first budgets that many companies cut were in advertising. But then came the phone call saying that I had been awarded the photo shoot. I immediately called the camera store, for I actually didn’t own a camera at the time, having sold my Nikon D3 in the preceding weeks.
With the release of Nikon’s new mirrorless camera and the impending release of Canon’s competitor, we are seeing the future of photography as we know it. However, in the response of some we are also seeing the demise of the community as a whole.
A few days ago, I awoke to a text message from a friend who lives halfway around the world telling me that he had unexpectedly seen one of my images on a FOX News story. The image was from a photoshoot that I had done of Richard “Old Man” Harrison from the television show Pawn Stars, which airs on the History Channel. However, after looking it up and seeing what photo he was talking about, I was surprised. The photo I was met with wasn’t even one I remembered taking.
The progression that is the discovery and appreciation of photography is a journey unique to the voyager. Whether the path is walked through a textbook, an online forum, or alone, there is no two that are alike.
I'm not usually one to talk about celebrities that I keep in touch with from photo shoots. Some of this comes out of professional courtesy, and another part of it is that I'm a bit of a private person. However, a current project and fun day in the studio has made for some new images and behind the scenes video that I think you will all enjoy. Here's a look at the shenanigans that take place when I share the studio with my photographer friend (who plays football), Larry Fitzgerald.
I was sitting in my dorm room at Arizona State University. To my left I had my XBox on (as it was pretty much 24/7) with some racing game on pause. In front of me I had my future, for I was entering a photography competition that I believed would make me famous and rich beyond my wildest dreams.
There is a progression that takes place in the journey that is our lighting knowledge: ambient light > on-camera flash > bouncing that flash > off-camera strobes > gels.
A career in commercial photography is a progression in learning. One that wanes when complacency creeps in and thrives when pursuit of knowledge lives at its heart. Having a broad mind in both approach and equipment is the key to clearing your mind to be creative.
Remember in the movie Top Gun, when Goose and Maverick go canopy to canopy with a Russian jet, and Goose snaps that Polaroid? Advertising photographer Blair Bunting wanted to find out if it was possible... so he convinced a jet team to let him try it.
Some aspects of photography are easier to teach than others. Photographing an advertising campaign alongside of a TV production is not one of them.
There will always be photo shoots that test your creativity, and sometimes there are campaigns that seem to just give you incredible images. Deadliest Catch is definitely a campaign that lends its hand to stunning visuals… at the cost of your comfort.