Celebrity Photography

Celebrity photography is a subsection of portrait photography and photojournalism. It is simply pictures of celebrities! There are three main sections of celebrity photography; celebrity portraiture, event photography and paparazzi photography.

Celebrity portraiture is when a photographer creates a set and photographs a celebrity. These photographs are usually used for press, as journalists can use these in their articles for magazines and blogs ect.

For big events such as award ceremonies and premieres you need photographers to document the event and take pictures of the celebrities to share with the world. This is what the red carpet is essentially for, for celebrities to walk out and be interviewed and photographed.

Paparazzi's tend to be looked down on as they are known for being intrusive or rude. If you are a paparazzi your job is to photograph celebrities whilst they are out and about to sell to publications. But most of the time these celebrities don't want to be photographed and won't wait for pictures to be taken. Also paparazzi's sometimes intrude on celebrities personal events such as weddings or they will sneak onto their property.


A celebrity photographer that I like is Martin Schoeller. Martin Schoellar is an acclaimed photographer who has photographed many people from Barack Obama to Angelina Jolie to Robert De Niro. He has become famous for his "hyper detailed close-ups" which are portraits with stong lighting and as you can imagine and very close-up. He also does a lot on conceptual photography. Here are some examples of his works:

Photographer: Martin Schoeller

Photographer: Martin Schoeller

Photographer: Martin Schoeller

Although I'm not particularly interested in celebrity photography as a whole, I really like Schoeller's work because he takes a very different approach to this genre. He focuses more on the art of photography than making the celebrity look good.

Sources:
http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/jesse-eisenberg-celebrity-portraits-martin-schoeller
http://www.awwwards.com/creative-celebrity-portrait-by-martin-schoeller.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celebrity_photography
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Schoeller