Tinseltown may act as the bright and shiny surface of Los Angeles, but once you peel away that layer, you discover a city that is clearly more distinct, diverse, and dynamic in what it offers. It’s turning into the world’s creative capital, and not because of its mammoth media and entertainment sector. The city is home to nearly 4,000 venture-backed startups, its international airport is a major hub for passengers and air cargo, and its twin ports receive 40% of all inbound containers in the United States. And there are more engineers in LA than in any other American City. With billions spent on venture deals, infrastructure projects, and public procurement every year, the city pursues much through hard labor that needs documenting. And for documentation in the form of pictures, we’d better call the best industrial photographers in Los Angeles. To help you out, we scoured our directory to find seven of the best options available.
At Wonderful Machine, industrial photography shows people building and making things (especially on a large scale), including construction, mining, manufacturing, transportation, and energy. From one industrial photographer in Los Angeles to the next, our list will demonstrate a range of shooting styles and aesthetic approaches across these operations, giving you plenty of choice for your next photo assignment.
While he focuses mainly on the lifestyle and portraiture specialties, John Davis makes his way into our list of industrial photographers in Los Angeles through his environmental portraits of blue-collar workers. Whether in the factory or construction site, he captures the beauty of physical labor, seen through the countless happy faces in his portfolio. There is genuine warmth in his photos, harnessed through his use of warmer color tones and ample light, aided and abetted by the sunny disposition of all his subjects. John would be an ideal candidate if your assignment requires people in industries to be featured prominently.
John’s client list includes the likes of Popular Mechanics, Forbes, Americorps, TV One, Under Armour, Fast Company, Inc. Magazine, and many others. Additionally, he has worked with numerous institutions in the education sector.
Having over 25 years of experience puts Ed Carreón in exclusive company. In addition to his creative abilities, he’s an industrial photographer in Los Angeles with exceptional problem-solving skills. This is best encapsulated in a project he handled for Prologis, shooting their facilities at Los Angeles International Airport. His images required a cargo plane with active loading facilities in the background, but when the airport schedule wouldn’t accommodate this, he had to shoot the various items separately at different times and assemble the parts in post-production. In short, he finds a way to fulfill his clients’ requirements despite obstacles, facilitating different media deliverables across photographic specialties.
Ed has collaborated with organizations such as Gilead Sciences, Accura, National Geographic, Discovery Channel, Forbes, New York Times, USC, Cedars Sinai Hospital, Amgen, Pratt and Whitney, Owens Corning, PIMCO, Chivas Regal, CVS Pharmacy, Chase Bank, Herbal Life, Life Magazine, Red Cross, Target Corp., Valspar, and Transdev.
Jonathan Young has covered the many facets of industrial photography in Los Angeles, from close-ups of sewing and welding to vistas of cranes and cargo containers. His portfolio runs the full gamut, proving himself capable of handling various commercial and editorial assignments across economic sectors. His compositions are sharp and clean, showcasing different perspectives of the production, manufacturing, and transportation sectors. Through angles high and low and distances far and close, he’ll frame his human and mechanical subjects in a variety of ways, exhibiting true visual versatility with the camera.
Jonathan’s clients include RUBICON Engineering, Newlight Technologies, Maersk, AAA Facility Services, Scheme Machine Studios, NAI Capital, The Colony Group, and many others.
From a very young age, Spencer Lowell’s passion and effort paved the way for him to be an exceptional industrial photographer in Los Angeles. He started working in a photo lab at the age of 16. Later, his graduation project at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena caught the attention of NASA. He’d go on to document the construction of the Mars rover “Curiosity,” having his photos appear in numerous publications, including Time Magazine. Since then, his images have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Wired, Fortune, and Popular Science, while he has completed assignments for brands such as Budweiser, Google, and IBM. That’s all on top of winning awards and recognition from American Photographer, Communication Arts Photo Annual, and PDN Photo Annual.
Over the years, his career has taken him far and wide: to a research ship in the Mediterranean, a desalination plant in Dubai, the Global Seed Vault in Norway, and the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. He has been to exceptional places while taking portraits of extraordinary people, including the likes of Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg.
For assignments connected to science, technology, and industry, Spencer should be on speed dial.
If his industrial portfolio is any indication, Hal Bergman loves hanging outside. His portfolio is exclusively focused on outdoor industrial environments, from oil refineries and shipping yards to rail tracks and wind farms. He has a good mixture of photos shot during the day and night, showing comfort in harnessing both natural and artificial light. In fact, his lighting setups deserve mention for transforming buildings and machinery into visual spectacles, playing with light, shadow, color, and distance to create compelling photo compositions. Something so ordinary as an outline of factories can look as majestic as a cityscape, exhibiting Hal’s eye for the creative.
Hal’s clients include American Express, Apple, Microsoft, Planar, CBS, CNN, Dolby, Al Jazeera, and many others.
Originally from Bulgaria, Hristo Shindov is a veteran traveler who ended up in Santa Barbara, California, to study photography. He also made several trips to New York and learned from some of the best photographers in the city, or the world for matter. After graduating, though, he set his sights on Los Angeles, with his passion for music embedding him firmly within the city’s rock ‘n roll scene, photographing the biggest names and bands in the genre.
Today, Hristo has expanded his scope beyond the music industry. He’s an industrial photographer in Los Angeles who pays keen attention to the hardworking men and women behind industries. And he does so in style, using dramatic compositions with a cinematic gloss to bring the spotlight on blue-collar America. He’s also unafraid to get up close and personal, inches away from the drilling and hammering that gets things made.
Hristo’s clients include Toyota, Lexus, Sony, Decibel, Kerrang!, Sony Music, Magna Carta Records, Newell Rubbermaid, Stanley Black & Decker, the World Steel Association, and many others.
For images that exude a tone of grit, guts, and mental toughness, we’d highly recommend Gary Copeland. Gary achieves this mood by holding back color and getting very close to the action, close enough to see the dirt and grime plastered on his subject’s clothes and faces. This proximity allows him to create intimate portrayals of blue-collar workers, diving beyond the hard labor to narrate more profound stories about his subjects. Gary would be quite the match for assignments requiring certain storytelling sensibilities.
Armed with the knowledge of these industrial photographers in LA, your next commercial or editorial campaign must feel less daunting. They have the creative and technical expertise to accomplish your visual objectives, even in the most challenging environments out there.
Further Reading
See more industrial photographers in Los Angeles on our Find Photographers page.
Learn more about other types of photography on our Specialties page.