tenebrism

Los Angeles Actors Headshots Brian Kolb

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Los Angeles Actors Headshots Brian Kolb

There's a particular kind of session that arrives when an actor steps back into the room after time away. The face is the same. The man behind it isn't — and the work, if it's any good, has to hold both.

Brian Kolb came to the Main Street studio to mark exactly that: a return to acting after a break, and the new narrative that comes with it. The brief was not one look, but range — the proof a casting director needs that a man can be cast in more than a single drawer. So we built six, and we built them to argue with each other.

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A Privilege — Babs Olusanmokun in London

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A Privilege — Babs Olusanmokun in London

I had the privilege this week of photographing Babs Olusanmokun in my London studio, and as I worked I found myself thinking, not for the first time, about how often I get to say that word — privilege — about the Black actors who find their way to my chair.

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The Singer's Silence — Nick Pritchard at the Los Angeles Studio

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The Singer's Silence — Nick Pritchard at the Los Angeles Studio

There is a particular quiet that settles over a portrait sitting when the subject is, by trade, a maker of sound. The performer who fills a room — who has stood in front of seventeen thousand people at the Coca-Cola Arena and held them — arrives in my studio and discovers that the only instrument I am asking him to play is his own stillness. Nick Pritchard understood this faster than most.

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An Olive-Wood Cross and the Studio Skull

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An Olive-Wood Cross and the Studio Skull

Most of the best things that happen in this trade arrive sideways, by way of a handshake you weren't expecting. This was one of those.

I had been asked to speak at Samy's, here in Los Angeles, on the subject of Godox lighting — a perfectly cheerful evening of light shaping and the usual debates about modifiers, where two photographers can disagree for an hour and both be right. When it was over a gentleman came up, introduced himself, and put a card in my hand. Edward Goldstein. He mentioned, almost in passing, that he did some modelling.

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The Los Angeles Experience — New Headshots for Sasha

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The Los Angeles Experience — New Headshots for Sasha

There's a particular kind of luck in photographing someone you know completely. With Sasha I've now made more portraits than of any other subject I've ever worked with, and these latest frames from the LA studio are some of the ones I keep returning to. The cropped platinum hair, the stacked silver ear pieces, the Adidas track top with its three stripes — there's an austere, almost sculptural confidence to her here that the lighting was built to serve rather than soften.

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Recreating Caravaggio: Photography Workshop Saturday 23rd May 2026 Los Angeles

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Recreating Caravaggio: Photography Workshop Saturday 23rd May 2026 Los Angeles

On Saturday 23rd May 2026, from 10am to 3pm, I'll be running a one-day portrait workshop at the Downtown LA studio on Recreating Caravaggio. Five hours, two lights, professional models, and a small enough room that nobody can hide at the back. Tickets are $450, places are limited, and the date is closer than the calendar makes it look.

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Five Years Late: Portraits of Babs Olusanmokun

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Five Years Late: Portraits of Babs Olusanmokun

Portraits of Babs Olusanmokun, London | Rory Lewis

Portrait photographer Rory Lewis on capturing actor Babs Olusanmokun (Dune, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds) at his London studio — five years in the making.

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