Photographing Celebrities

In the 20 years I have been a photographer I have had the opportunity to work with several celebrities from the music and sports world. Whether it is a magazine cover or spread, an ad or promotional shot for the celebrity themselves, the experience is usually one that requires a great deal of patience.
Rule #1: Celebrities Are Just Normal People – Don’t be in awe and don’t be so star struck that you forget how to be a good photographer. Light falls on the face of a celebrity just like it does on anyone else. Shadows don’t dance differently based on number of Oscars, Emmys or Grammys. You still have a person in front of your camera and you need to capture a fantastic image for them.
Rule #2: Celebrities Are Not Just Normal People – Once you have a firm grasp on how must think about the person in front of your lens remember that they are actually a famous person. They are coddled and taken care of most of the day and will expect to be thought of and treated as royalty. They will probably show up late, give you mere minutes to capture an image that they expect to dazzle everyone that sees it.
Take your ego out of the equation when you shoot celebrities. Unless you are one of the top celebrity photographers in L.A. or New York you will need to check your pride at the door and just do the job at hand and reap the rewards later. You will not be treated as a great photographer. You will be treated as though you are lucky to be there, and the truth is that they may be right.
Sports stars are intriguing to shoot. They can be so confident and commanding in their sport, dominating other powerful athletes with consistency, but they are amazingly vulnerable on camera. This is not a comfortable situation for them. They may be able to tear down a backboard or throw an amazingly precise pass with a 300 lb. lineman bearing down on them, but they are not comfortable on camera many times. The studio is usually not their ideal field of play and photography is not their arena. If you put any powerful creature in a vulnerable position their actions can be unpredictable.
Some may be surprisingly gracious, but that is rare. Shaquille O’Neil was actually fun to photograph. Julius Irving was hilarious and teased my makeup artist while we shot a magazine cover. These are exceptions, not the rule. Most celebrities just want out of there as quickly as possible. My shoot with Grammy winner Nelly lasted just a few minutes. The preparation for the shoot took all day. I can honestly say the he spent more time getting a haircut in my studio than he did in front of the camera, and I couldn’t even see any difference before or after the haircut.
Celebrity photography is entertaining and the rewards are certainly worth the challenges and headaches that come to pass.