jaylclendenin

As a staff photographer at the Los Angles Times, the majority of my assignments are celebrity portraits, often taken in non-descript hotel rooms during harried press junkets. Eight years of trying to photograph as many different looks as possible in the 5-to-10-minute windows we’re granted, usually without an assistant, have given me plenty of practice for the chaos that comes with a major film festival.

This year marked our fourth L.A. Times photo studio at the Sundance Film Festival. Celebrities and their entourages file through our studio nonstop over the first five days of the festival and one of the biggest challenges I feel every year is creating a body of work that sits apart from what the other publications are doing in the same environment.

Los Angeles Times Jay L. Clendenin spent four weeks leading up to the Olympics traveling around Souther California, making portraits of athletes on the US Olympic Team. While he certainly wasn't the only one shooting the athletes, Clendenin chose an interesting way of capturing them: in addition to using Canon 5D Mark IIs for digital photos, he also used a 4x5-inch field camera and a 100+-year-old Petzval lens. When displayed side-by-side, the photos show an interesting contrast between "old" and "new".