Top 14 Emerging Fashion Photographers in Los Angeles
Cover image credit: Olivia Savile Katz
Los Angeles is one of the world's most important cities for fashion photography with well over 3,000 permitted photoshoots happening in the city every year. With year round sunshine, the city has established itself as an ideal staging ground for Spring Summer shoots - typically shot here in late winter.
As LA's largest library of film-friendly locations, the team here at Giggster has helped coordinate locations for thousands fashion productions ranging from mega-brands like H&M and Zara to design houses like Valentino, Hermes, and Louis Vuitton. Over the years our close proximity to these fashion productions has helped us appreciate the incredible range of talent within LA's community of professional photographers.
While the majority of Giggster's fashion shoots have been with bigger name photographers, we've also helped provide locations for hundreds of smaller portfolio projects and brand shoots. And though these indie projects may not have huge location budget the quality of the work is consistently awesome.
To celebrate the work and incredible potential of LA's next generation of fashion photographers, we decided to put together a list of some of the hottest up-and-coming names in fashion photography. If you own a brand and want to hire any of this talent, move fast - they'll be famous before you know it.
You can find the rankings below (not ranked in any order).
1) Lucas Passmore
Someone had to be first on this list, and Lucas Passmore seems like a safe choice. His retro-cool aesthetic is hard not to love, offering a rare degree of story and setting within every photograph.
Rent a location for your next film or photo shoot project on Giggster – A better way to book locations.
Click Here to View His Portfolio
2) Robby Mueller
Robby Mueller is easily one of the most accomplished photographers on this list - with a deep portfolio of vidid portraiture, and professional fashion work. Built around deep stares, and subtle expressions his photography communicates a mastery of framing the close-up portrait, and getting the most from every model.
Click Here to View His Portfolio
3) Olivia Savile Katz
Olivia Katz is a supremely talented Los Angeles photographer - evidenced by my choice to use TWO of her photographs in this article (the cover photo is also her work). A high-fashion artist by trade, her work has a vintage grain that communicates a coastal identity defined by strong sun and salt air.
Click Here to View Her Portfolio
4) Luke Gottlieb
Luke Gottlieb boasts one of the most popular Instagram accounts of any photographer on this list. While he benefits from the consistent 'hot-girl' theme of his feed, hidden beneath all the TnA is a consistently impressive command of composition and artistry.
Click Here to View His Portfolio
5) Michelle Terris
Michelle Terris' portfolio looks like the work of a dozen talented photographers, containing a rare amount of diversity, and a clear mastery of the photographic format. If there's one commonality, it's that her work displays a consistent warmth - not only in the choice of orange and red highlights, but in the open and inviting expressions of her models.
Click Here to View Her Portfolio
6) Elaine Torres
Elaine Torres shoots like an abstract painter. Carefully composing color and form to fill the frame of her photography. Unlike a lot of the people on this list, that shy away from full saturation, Torres embraces it, boldly blending brighter than real-life faces, backdrops and makeup into beautiful works of art.
Click Here to View Her Portfolio
7) Kris Evans
Kris Evans is a talented multi-disciplinary photographer based out of Long Beach, with a background in lifestyle, fashion and skateboard photography. His work captures the under appreciated blue collar cultures of Southern California focusing on human physicality and the impermanent boundaries of suburban life.
Click Here to View His Portfolio
8) Benjamin Askinas
Ben Askinas is an accomplished LA-based photographer and director with a multitude of high-profile projects in his portfolio. An expert of integrating props and set pieces within his studio shoots, his work suggests a mastery of the discipline and a willingness to subvert norms and expectations.
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9) Kent Avery
Kent Avery is another top-talent specializing in the ever-popular category of lingerie and bikini photography. Avery stands out within that crowded community, not only for a consistently warm hue, but also based on his willingness to continually stretch the boundaries, well maintaining a tasteful vintage charm to his pin-ups.
Click Here to View His Portfolio
10) Monica Henriquez
Monica Henriquez is an artful portrait and fashion photographer with an impressively diverse portfolio of work. In addition to bringing out the beauty of her subjects, she uniquely talented at integrating the color and shapes of her backgrounds to frame each model and elevate each composition.
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11) Kiyana Tehran
Kiyana Tehrani's bold, maximalist portraiture is fun, free and fearless. She uses heavy editing and intense saturation with a confidence that matches the expressions and poses of her models. Her portfolio demonstrates a range of photographic interests while maintaining consistent focus on irreverent experimentation.
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12) Katie McGehee
Katie McGehee is a multidisciplinary talent that balances a passion for photography and filmmaking with several of other creative endeavors, including working as the editorial director of the fashion and culture magazine Rogue. Her photo work focuses primarily on studio portraiture and demonstrates an obvious comfort with art direction, wardrobe and staging.
Click Here to View Her Portfolio
13) Jeremy Gudac
Jeremy Gudac is another up-and-coming lifestyle and fashion photographer whose work consistently transcends the crowd-pleasing format of simple lingerie pin-ups. His choice of models and skillful arrangements, and willingness to photograph women with their clothes ON suggest a bright future as an LA fashion photographer.
Click Here to View His Portfolio
14) Nicole Spencer
I'm a big fan Nicole Spencer's work. While her style is not as flashy or attention grabbing as some of the other photographers on this list, it's among the most beautiful - blending soft pastels and bohemian textures with sharp shoulders and disrupting glances. Her portfolio and Instagram feed also demonstrate a supreme comfort at curation, balancing fashion shots, with macro portraiture and artful still life settings.
Click Here to View Her Portfolio
Still missing your photography location?
This list should have you pretty much covered when it comes to tracking down a talented (and relatively affordable) fashion photographer in LA. But what about the actually on-site location for the shoot? That's where Giggster comes in! We've got thousands of unique photo-ready properties from millionaire mansions to desert shacks.