A Brief Note On Photographing Celebrities
An editor from Format Magazine reached out to me earlier this month asking to give their readers advice on breaking into the business of celebrity photography. Since they only really needed a few snippets for the article as it featured several other photographers, I personally wanted to share my full response to them with you all here. Enjoy!
What would you say to an emerging photographer who wants to shoot celebrities but doesn’t know where to start?
Id say to reach out to new artists and talent who are up-and-coming but not so overexposed that they often don’t have time for you. New and unknown artists need promotional shots more than the famous ones and they usually are the most fun to work with. They don’t have representatives that can control how creative you want to get with your shots and often have all the time and patience in the world for you to practice your craft. We’re all still learning, but know the basics of your technical and make as many mistakes as you can before you’re in a tiny room with Jay-Z for 2 minutes. Build your online portfolio this way. I’ve always used Format as my editors have always loved the quick/easy presentation and navigation. It wont hurt to start familiarizing yourself with video as a medium as well. The industry is shifting and its a competitive time now where we all need to have a lot of skill hats to survive, especially in editorial. Another idea is finding a celebrity photographer’s work you admire and reaching out to see if they need any assistant help or want to get a coffee/beer and chat. Most of us love to do this with other passionate shooters when we have time, and if they aren’t open to chatting you probably wont want to work with them anyhow. I wouldn’t. Be persistent and genuine, yet not annoying when reaching out as it is an extremely busy profession with a lot of emails to keep up with. If you’re in college, internships are going to be your greatest foot in the door.
What challenges have you faced in this field?
Its very rare that you get a decent amount of time with a celebrity anymore. Majority of the shots on my site were done between 2 shutter releases allowed (seriously) up to 5 minutes. I got to spend a good amount of time with Adele as she was early in her career and just an all around really down to earth lady. But most times there are about 50 others of you they need to see that day and it is a lot of hurry up and wait. You’ll come into this with big David LaChapelle crazy portrait dreams and find you only get that kind of shot when its someone you’ve become trusted friends with or a major magazine budget and that is very rare these days with the big names. PR has always been our biggest hurdle because quite frankly it is their job to protect their celeb client from making an ass out of themselves or be projected in a negative light. Celebrities are human too. So it often takes a lot of trust building and communication/prep to do anything risky but always try!
How did you initially get into it?
I went to UMBC, a state school to learn photography. Art school was way too expensive and I found that reaching out to the right internships while being genuinely passionate about it opened many doors. I reached out to John Harrington, a DC based photographer about his internship. This guy literally wrote THE book on business practices for photographers (buy it! its the bible) and I had no idea how to make money in this business. At the time they weren’t teaching it in school. From what I learned there and people I met through him I ended up at AOL as an editor and moved to NYC. I became a shooter there as celebrities kept coming in for interviews. You really never know what gig is going to lead to the next so be open minded, patient and flexible. I shot a cat fashion show once and it led to major work with Coca-Cola. I truly believe you don’t need school for this though if you are disciplined enough on your own to learn, practice and its helpful to have a professional mentor. Some of the biggest shooters in the world never went to school for photography, they were just in love with it enough to go out and do it on their own and reach out to the right people.
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