sundance

I Shot Polaroid-style Celebrity Portraits at This Year’s Sundance Film Festival

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.

Moving Portraits of Hollywood Celebrities at the Sundance Film Festival

Photographer Victoria Will received both attention and praise last year for her gorgeous tintype photos of Hollywood celebrities at the Sundance Film Festival.

This year, Will returned to the festival on assignment for Esquire magazine, but instead of tintypes, Will was tasked with creating animated GIF portraits with a dash of movement -- commonly referred to as cinemagraphs.

Tangerine is a Magnolia Pictures Film Shot Entirely on the iPhone 5

Director Sean Baker’s latest film, Tangerine, features two transgender prostitutes in Los Angeles on a hunt to find a cheating boyfriend. If that premise isn’t interesting enough to attract your interest, then consider how it was filmed: the movie had a budget of $100,000 and was filmed entirely using the iPhone 5.

BTS: Shooting Portraits of Celebrities at Sundance in a Tiny Tent Studio

Here's a short 2-minute behind-the-scenes video showing how Getty's Chief Entertainment Photographer Larry Busacca shot celebrity portraits at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival. Busacca had to shoot all the portraits in the same tiny, green-walled tent studio, so he had to get creative with posing to shoot unique portraits of the actors.

Film Shot with Canon 7D Bought for $4 Million, Hits Theaters Later this Month

If you decide to watch the new indie film "Like Crazy" when it hits theaters on October 28th, keep this in mind: it was shot using a Canon 7D. The movie won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival this year, which led to Paramount snapping it up for a cool $4 million -- much better than $200,000 in profits using a Canon 5D, wouldn't you say?