Interviews

Gregory Crewdson is one of the best known and influential fine art photographers working today. He is currently the director of the photography department at Yale University where he received his MFA early on.

Natalie Brasington is a New York-based advertising and entertainment photographer who shoots for a variety of clients, including Comedy Central, Pantene, DirecTV, Details and Rolling Stone. She recently spoke about pricing at a round table discussion put on by PhotoShelter, and we were intrigued by her approach and outlook.

Photo & Go is a new photo-making concept retail store that launched in Las Vegas in August 2015. The store was launched by Polaroid Fotobar's founders to take the idea of liberating digital photos to the next level. We spoke to co-founder Dov Quint about the store and the industry.

Mickey H. Osterreicher is a lawyer who has served as General Counsel of the National Press Photographers Association (NPPA) since 2006. We had a chat with Osterreicher about his life and the state of photographers' rights.

Brandon and Brian Wright, better known as The Brothers Wright, are the identical twins behind the craft film company CineStill Film.

Farrah Karapetian is a renowned Los Angeles based conceptual artist who creates stunning imagery through photograms or “cameraless” photography. She studied as an undergraduate at Yale University and received her MFA at UCLA. She just concluded an exhibition at Danziger Gallery in New York City and looks forward to her second exhibition at Von Lintel Gallery in Los Angeles in January 2016.

Holly Andres is an American fine art and commercial photographer who has been creating dynamic and compelling images for over a decade. She started out shooting mostly fine art photography, but gradually branched into editorial assignments with the New York Times Magazine and many others. She continues to evolve and expand her art. For her fine art work, she is represented by the Robert Mann Gallery (New York City), Robert Koch Gallery (San Francisco), Jackson Fine Art (Atlanta), and Charles A. Harman Fine Art (Portland). For commercial assignments she is represented by Hello Artists.

Bryan Carnathan is a photographer and the founder of The Digital Picture, one of the leading Canon DSLR gear review websites in the world. We had a chat with Carnathan to learn more about his popular site and his thoughts on the camera industry.

Tim Jones is a Bristol-based photographer who is currently serving as a British Army Photographer covering West Midlands and Wales. His photos for the army are published in local and national publications

We chatted with Jones to learn more about his life and career as an official army photographer.

Nick Cahill is a photographer and filmmaker based in Incline Village, Nevada. One of his photos was recently selected for the cover of National Geographic magazine -- the "Guide to the Night Sky" issue. We had a chat with Cahill about his life, work, and cover photo experience.

Thomas Demand is a German photographer and sculpturist who is internationally known for his remarkable and engaging political still life artworks. I had the opportunity recently to ask Thomas about the thoughts and processes that go into making his art and photos.

Jason Kirby is a photographer and entrepreneur who is working on building Togally, a new online marketplace for connecting photographers and those who need photos shot. We had a chat with Kirby about his new venture.

Garth Milan is one of the top action sports photographers in the world, traveling the world to photograph some of the world's most talented and most extreme athletes. Recently we featured Milan's photos of athlete Robbie Maddison surfing giant waves on a dirt bike. We had the privilege of chatting with Milan to talk about his life, career, and the future of the action sports industry.

Quintin Lake is a fine art and architectural photographer based in Cheltenham, England. He has been working on an ambitious photo project titled The Perimeter, which involves walking 10,000km (~6214 miles) around the British coast in sections at a time. The journey started back in April, and Lake expects that it will take him 5 years to complete the challenge.

In this interview, we chat with Lake about his life, photography, and current project.

Jill Greenberg is a commercial and fine art photographer who is famous worldwide for her daring and original portraits of people and animals. Her new series Paintings is currently being exhibited at the Clampart Gallery in New York City. I had a chance to ask Jill about her photographic beginnings and where her journey in photography is going.

Arne Svenson is a well-known fine art photographer who is currently represented by the Julie Saul Gallery in New York. For his last exhibition, Arne experienced quite a controversy recently when he was sued by one of his subjects for his series The Neighbors, after they learned that he photographed them without their knowledge with a telephoto lens from his apartment.

The news made worldwide headlines, but Svenson won the case in August 2013 (the subject is currently appealing the ruling). Many viewed the outcome as a victory for creative artistic rights. I spoke with Arne recently about this and other aspects of his innovative viewpoints on life and art. His new exhibition Workers is due out in a few weeks.

Erwin Olaf has been one of the top advertising and people photographers in the world for over twenty-five years. His current show Waiting: Selections from Erwin Olaf: Volume I & II is being exhibited at the Hasted Kraeutler Gallery in New York. While continuing to do innovative commercial work, he has increasingly become focused on his personal work. I had a recent opportunity to ask about his career and future artistic ambitions.

Martin Schoeller is a highly successful German portrait photographer who just finished a show called Portraits at the prestigious Hasted Kraeutler Art Gallery in New York City. I recently had the opportunity to gain some unique insights into his history and working process.

To mark the 60th anniversary of its M line of rangefinder cameras, Leica recently interviewed 10 well known photographers about their experience with the camera and their favorite photos captured with it.

Editor's note: Some of the imagery in the video might be considered NSFW, proceed with caution.

Here's an oldie but really goodie from Pix Channel, who put together a set of short clips of some of photography's greatest names talking about their craft and what makes them ‘click’.

Everyone has fears, even the most successful photographers in the business. The key to overcoming those fears is to …

Earlier today, B&H officially launched a new online resource called the Canon Lens Experience. It’s a dedicated microsite that takes a comprehensive look at the various lenses Canon offers, presenting unique and interactive features that demonstrate the various capabilities.

Even more interesting is the series of interviews which features 15 well-respected photographers from different fields, each of whom talk about their experience as a photographer and how their respective Canon gear have helped them make the iconic shots they’ve captured.

We love seeing and hearing about the process of creating an image. The motivation behind a photo combined with a glimpse at how it was shot can be both inspirational and educational, which is a powerful combo.

But while there are plenty of behind the scenes videos and articles dedicated to studio photography, one of the genres you don't get to hear as much about is photojournalism. That's where The Image, Deconstructed website comes in.

Andrew Nelles is a 26-year-old freelance photojournalist based in Chicago, Ill. A graduate of Columbia College Chicago, he began freelancing in Chicago in 2009. Andrew was one of the 28 photojournalists laid off from the Chicago Sun-Times in May 2013 after spending 9 months at the paper.

You know his work. You may have been one of the thousands of people who exposed their hidden beauty and the flaws that all humans have on their physical being to be a part of something magnificent.

His photographs of nude bodies are immediately recognizable. The same can’t be said of his subjects en masse. Humanity in all shapes, sizes and colors coalesce with each other and nature’s beauty. They form tessellations that wind through architectural wonders. His subjects become human cityscapes.

Pony Lott and Brett Seamans are a fashion and editorial photography duo currently stationed in New York City. Their edgy style captures the imagination with a vulgar elegance and hard sexual attitude. Often inspired by historical figures, classic art, and vintage cinema, they play on classical forms while adding their own lavish vision.

Flip through the pages of any major magazine published in the last few years and it's likely you've seen a picture snapped by Martin Schoeller therein. The German-born award-winning photographer got off to a rough start upon moving to the United States in the early 1990s, only to find himself as an in-demand iconic picture taker today.

He's covered every major celebrity you can imagine with his trademark close-up portraiture and fashion photos alike (though, he admits fashion isn't quite his bag). From Paris Hilton to Barack Obama, Schoeller has worked with Hollywood's elite and America's most influential politicians. He's seen it all.

Pursuing a career doing something you love can be a terrifying thing, and so we often look to the people who have "made it" in our field as sources of inspiration. We see the work of a Heisler, Hobby or Arias, and it helps us to push through when times get tough, as they inevitably do in any pursuit.

And if, once in a while, we get the chance to hear these successful people to talk about how exactly they made it, and what it takes to be a successful photographer (or anything really), then we've gotten really lucky. In the video above we get exactly that, from eight of the world's best known and most successful photographers.

Yesterday, we wrote about how Academy Award-winning actor Jeff Bridges brings his love of photography onto movie sets, snapping photos of the casts and crews. Last night Bridges was honored by the International Center of Photography in New York with a prestigious Infinity Award.

Seven other photographers were also presented with awards, and prior to each one receiving their prize, a short video feature was played to introduce people to the photographers and their work. We've collected the videos here for your enjoyment.

Tim Kemple is an action-sport and lifestyle photographer based out of Salt Lake City, Utah. Visit his website here.

PetaPixel: Can you tell us a little about yourself and your background?

Tim Kemple: Sure. I'm a photographer and film maker based in Utah. I grew up on the East Coast and spent my weekends as a kid climbing, skiing and wandering. I started carrying a camera to document my adventures.

Oliver Monroe is a Los Angeles-based photographer who has photographed some of the world's most famous bands and music artists in concert. Visit his website here.

PetaPixel: Can you tell us a little about yourself and your background?

Oliver Monroe: I grew up in the Washington, D.C. area, where my dad worked for the Department of Defense. In 1979, I moved to Los Angeles to further my career as a photographer. After nearly 10 years in the music/entertainment business, I hung up my camera bag and became a commercial film editor for the next 5 years. Wanting to see daylight again, I left editing and started a multimedia development company. I currently own a video encoding company, which caters to the entertainment industry.

Thomas Hawk is a San Francisco-based photographer and popular photography blogger. Visit his website here.

PetaPixel: Can you tell us a little about yourself and your background?

Thomas Hawk: I grew up down in Southern California. Went to college in Santa Barbara and then moved up to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1990 after college. I took a photography class in high school at Glendale Community College in Los Angeles, but other than that course am entirely self taught. I'm married and a father to four beautiful children.

I've been around photography pretty much my entire life. I was the editor-in-chief of my high school yearbook and editor-in-chief of my college yearbook and later college newspaper, so back in the film days I pretty much had constant access to the darkroom that came with these jobs. I've spent a lot of hours in the darkroom.

Nick Ut is the Pulitzer Prize-winning AP photojournalist who shot the iconic Vietnam War photo that most people refer to as "Napalm Girl". PetaPixel sat down with Ut about his life, career, and his most famous photo that is instantly recognized around the world.

Tom Anderson is a photography enthusiast and the former President of MySpace. You can find him online on Facebook, Google+ or Twitter. Check out his Burning Man photographs here.

PetaPixel: Can you tell us a little about yourself and your background?

Tom Anderson: Well most of you probably know me as the first friend from MySpace. I was a founder and President. It sold in 2005 and I left the company completely in early 2009. The MySpace first friend tends to overshadow all the things I was or will be...

I've lived many lives, so to speak. At one time I was in a band (both as a singer and guitar player) and that was all I did every day. If you knew me in college, you would have assumed I was going to be an egghead professor. I was a very serious scholar. I've always been attracted to creative things. Just before my photography obsession began I was having a lot of fun learning about architectural design, but photography has taken over and kind of pulled me away from that.

Benjamin Von Wong is a photographer based in Montreal, Canada. Visit his website here.

PetaPixel: Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your background?

Benjamin Von Wong: Hah, where to begin. I'm a 25-year-old Chinese Canadian who's been to thirteen different schools in three different countries, in three different languages. I grew up in a loving family that believed that experiencing the world was a must, had the opportunity to try all sorts of things, from playing violin for 10 years, to getting a black belt in taekwondo, to graduating from Mining Engineering in 2008. I pick up hobbies sporadically, from parkour to bartending, painting to paintball. Photography is one of the more recent hobbies that I picked up that happened to stick just a little longer!

Love it or hate it, you have to admit that Instagram is making a huge impact on the world …

If you’re a fan of hearing from photography greats and have some free time, check out his awesome documentary …

Late last year, during the Day of Photography in Amsterdam, PhotoQ interviewed nine photographers about the challenges facing them and photography as a whole from both an economic as well as social perspective. The resulting videos offer nine different perspectives on the business of photography, how it's changed, where it's headed, and how to adapt. Some viewpoints are more negative and others more positive, but in the end you can tell that each of these photogs love what they do, and just want to make sure they keep getting to do it for a long time to come.

Afghan photographer Massoud Hossaini won the Putlizer Prize yesterday for his …

For those of you who are interested in the business and technology side of things, here’s an interesting 45-minute …