- [olivia] everyone relates to an image. - [marcus] when you see a particular shot, there's just something you feel. - [julia] people's understanding of what a photography job is, is so different from what it actually is. it doesn't just pop up and happen. - [marcus] i've been shooting professionally for two years. - [dina] five years. - [ilvy] eight years now. - [pari] three years and eight months. and i'm learning all the time. - [diana] it's really competitive, but it's not just about making beautiful images. - [marcus] what we do is so subjective.

- [ilvy] there's so many stories to tell. - [katie] you can be a part of history and influence people with the way you're taking pictures. - [olivia bee] everyone has a camera on them at all times. - [marcus] there is this direct communication with the audience. - [olivia bee] but we're being bombarded by so many pictures. - [peter] now, as a photographer, you need to create a vision that people respond to. - [pari] in the sea of images, you have to keep asking yourself, what could i do to break through? (rock music) - i can get excited about a lot of different kinds of projects. i love taking a normal situation and making it into something that only exists in photographs. photography can be this whole dream.

i've been taking pictures since i was about 11, but i've been working professionally since i was 15. photographing myself was a whole thing of self discovery. and it became part of my language and how i expressed what was going on in my complicated 12 year old life. i was taking a lot of self-portraits and pictures of my friends hanging out. i started putting that stuff up on flickr when i was about 12. then by 14, converse had found my work. you know, i've always wore converse my whole life. and they were like, hey, we'd love to make some photos with you. it was the perspective of a 14 year old taking pictures of 14 year olds. people didn't really see that on a wide scale. you know, like things made for young people. they're made by old people. my career, just kinda snowballed from there. i shot for nike. i did the cover of the new york times magazine when i was like 17.

i'm really lucky because i'm 20 and like, doing stuff. this is my house. this is my really good friend, martha. i just like to keep things around me that are inspiring me. a lot of this stuff i've had for a long time or just like, things i'm looking at right now. now it's more about character studies. i take little parts of my personality and i make it into this whole character. and i can ask myself to do things that maybe i don't feel comfortable asking other people to do. you' hired for what you're good at. like, you did this thing for this shoe brand, you'll do this for the shoe brand. but when i photograph anything, i'm not trying to photograph, necessarily, that person or that product. i'm photographing the all encompassing feeling. this dream that can only be acceed through pictures. i just want to make good shit, basically. am i allowed to say shit by the way? okay, just making sure. 'cause i will maybe say shit more than once. there's definitely intrigue because i'm so young. i don't try to focus on it.

but at the same time, like 60 year old dudes, they don't know what it's like to be a 20 year old woman or really depressed and 15. i think people relate to my pictures because they are open-ended and they relate to a universal experience. it's all about authenticity and love, you know. - [marcus] more than anything, it's just getting images that feel real. i'm not gonna wait for somebody to hire me to shoot something i don't want to shoot. you know, that was how i jumped off my career in the first place. i was like, i want to shoot athletes. i'ma just go out here and do it myself first. i always wanted to be a boxer, but my mom wouldn't let me. so i grew up playing basketball on the south side of chicago, like all the time. that was my life. i really just wanted to photograph those players, doing what i had grew up doing and show the authenticity of the sport.

next thing you know, i was a working photographer and getting jobs and i've been fortunate enough that things haven't slowed down since then. my images being up in times square and working with professional athletes, it feels surreal to me today. it definitely didn't feel like itas just within arms reach. i always thought that if you're passionate about a certain subject, you're gonna shoot that subject better than anybody else. when i'm shooting sports, i'm usually looking for the moments that are taking place off the field. a shot that doesn't necessarily speak to the game, but shows a little glimmer of whoever the person is. and that littlmillisecond of tim you know, that could be a celebrity athlete, could be anybody. my style's photo-journalistic with a commercial flare. i like to build sandboxes, put people in that sand and still have a loose shoot.

photography is a powerful medium because of the decisive moment. it's that one frame that can tell the story. i put my work out there. if people like it, they like it. if they don't, you know what, screw it. i need to just go out here and find my audience. that's what makes you you, and makes somebody else who they are. - [julia] don't wrinkle it. let's try and make it more like, fluid. photography is different for everybody. for us it's about what we really love. for the next one, we'll have a lot more real estate. we shoot people and we shoot for all sorts of brands. like nike and hewlett packard and target. it's all over the place. like one day we'll shoot a rapper, and the next day we shoot a girl jumping out of a laundry machine. juco is julia and cody. - [stylist] she looks amazing. - [cody] she looks awesome. - [stylist] she looks insane. - [julia] when we first met in college

our pictures were similar in mood and style, bold and iconic and graphic. people respond to our color and clients hire us. when we build our sets, the challenge is making them feel cohesive. - [cody] the shooting part, for me, it's the most fun, put your fingers together. i'm more of a nerd photographer. - [julia] i think it's kind of like french eighties. i get off on the art direction. maybe we should have her stand up for this. we're gonna do that. i think growing into this duo, cody and i have had to really learn how to communicate since starting to work together. - [cody] you know, i'll get in real close and then i'll give it to her. you feel good? you wanna go? - [julia] yeah, yeah. that looks cool. - [cody] and she'll like pull way back or vice versa. - and then chin up. okay, i just want to look and review. we'll have to finesse it. we really need to retouch it. oh, that's pretty. we work for people who live and breathe design.

i mean, even for a photographer, brand is everything. you are your work and your work is you. if you can't tell by looking at me, what kind of work we're making, we're not doing our jobs. okay, so next look is when? - it's always different people, different locations, different setups, different models. but it's less about the colors and the design, as opposed to just an image that makes an impression. if it's good now, and it's good in 10 years, it will be good in 20 years, you hope. - [woman] definitely shooting with the 85 here. - our job is not only to make an amazing photograph, but also to make something that will stand the test of time. toby, can you get those. and then you did with a spun, perfect. - and then this is gonna be the 74 inch on chrome. - i have to experiment with different things. otherwise, i'm just constantly repeating myself. i work for the new yorker. when you make a photograph for the new yorker, there's only one picture that they will run. because of that, you really have to think about it

like you are creating a historical document. i'm part of the generation that was able to get the training in the dark room. if you want to get my look, it has to be film. everything's done in camera. it has to be done in camera for it to feel real and feel right. there's something about an image when you look at it. if something has been moved around or photo-shopped, you won't respond to it in the same way you would to a picture that hasn't been messed with. eyes at the camera, hold just a little bit. there. you see a lot of repetition out there. so whenever someone comes to me, i have to come up with a unique response. gq called me and they said, we want to do the music portfolio with you. we photographed 19 musicians in two and a half months, which turned into a 26 page portfolio in the magazine. i want to try to create something iconic that people will remember of that musician at that time of their life.

when you photograph celebrities, you don't know what to expect. you might have five minutes with them. how are you gonna find that moment as it's happening? that short interaction, the exchange of energy. i find that really fascinating. depending on flow and photographing, you get a little nervous, but you have to be a little nervous to care about it. to push yourself to show them in a different way. and something magical can happen. this beautiful, gentle moment. there is a lot of imagery out there on instagram. there are beautiful photographs today. you look at them and you're just like, wow, that's fantasc. it's an evolution that we're going through with technology and what it brings to the medium, which is incredible. but it's also interesting to see how our generation is responding to it. - [dina] how many pictures are around? how many cameras are around?

how many cell phones are everywhere? it's so close, you hardly notice it. if you're there, you're gonna get photographed. i came with my family from ukraine and i grew up in nework city. i have a psychology degree from nyu. my parents wanted me to be a doctor, so i was gonna be a psychiatrist. but instead of going to med school, i sat at home playing with the new camera they gave me for a couple of years. i started getting a lot of editorial assignments. fashion week, new york times, time magazine. i have an obsession with contemporary culture and how women are feeling, like at a bachelorette party. i've seen these girls just get crazy. and i like the psychological transformation. it's like, get a stripper, get drunk, play games. the point is to push boundaries. i found 80% of them through social media.

it's not really about the women itself, it's about the rituals and you can see how much they need this break from reality. this one night without being judged. five years ago, when i started going out and shooting some clubs, people didn't like when i took pictures of them. they would ask me to delete them, or would go like this. all of a sudden everybody's posing and loving it. it was a very distinct change. women are really being exhibitionists. i always look for girls with this uber confidence. they feel like they're celebrities. and they feel like i'm a paparazzi when i photograph them. everybody wants to be in the spotlight. she looks like a movie star and she feels like a movie star. and when she saw my camera, she went into this movie star pose. the camera becomes the main subject, often. a lot of it is our culture encouraging that. the camera feeds this internal need for attention. now with social media, you can have your own little virtl stage.

taking this picture and uploading this picture to get followers, to gets likes. and this becomes their platform to show off. - this is how we communicate right now. and through social media, there doesn't need to be this sort of gatekeeper. i've been published national geograpc, e new yorker, newsweek japan, and all over the world. but now there's this unfiltered way that we can get our own ideas out there and have control over the work in a way that we couldn't before. i spent my twenties trying to be this globe trotting, young photo journalist. within a year of graduating college, i went into the peace corps. at that point, i knew very little about africa. i had to look up ghana on the map when they told me that's where i was going. it was quite easy to volunteer and to shoot at the same time. i was just sort of photographing as a means of exploring the community. but when i started showing people the work, it never matched up with what i felt africa was.

and it started to occur to me. when people think of africa, it's war, famine or safari's. those things all exist in africa, but there's so much more to the continent that we never get to see. and it was frustrating not to have a place to show it. so right away, we started shooting with our phones. and it allowed us to use this casual device to shoot very casual moments. and that's what became everyday africa. we started on instagram and within a few months, we invited a lot more photographers to it. we started getting a lot of attention, which we were very surprised about. and it's all snowballed from there. we have 125,000 followers on instagram. the images that are showing up are almost entirely from native african photographers, both professionals and non-professionals. they benefit so much from getting their voice out there to the world. it's one thing to be able to say, like, look, they do things that are more familiar to us

that we don't normally see in mainstream media, but it adds a whole new level when you can say, and this happened 30 seconds ago, you know, it's happening right now. everyday africa was the first one, but now all these other ones started popping up. there's everyday middle east, everyday asia, latin america, everyday usa, australia, iran, and iraq. these regional collectives of people are determined to change the way the rest of the world sees their culture. and it has taken over my life in a way. it's just this giant movement now of raising awareness through photography. - [ilvy] photography is the perfect way to tell a story about a culture. because when you see an image, you get a feeling right away. (relaxing music) i'm a documentary photographer, born and raised in the netherlands. i'm interested in social behavior

and in social structures within families. and so when i got this assignment to photograph family, i thought, okay, where do you see your family? you see them on birthdays. i photographed a hundred birthdays, every age once, from one to a hundred. and when you see how a certain country celebrates, you get to learn a lot about the people who live in the country. what is a dutch person? what do we look like? and how do we connect to other people? i went hogeweyk to shoot a story for time magazine. it's a high care facility for people with dementia in the netherlands. i like to take pictures about news related stories or at least a current issue. and dementia, the problem is growing, more people with dementia every year. hogeweyk is a very unique place. it's a real village with a supermarket and a theater.

people with dementia are safe because it's clod off from the outside world. (speaking dutch) i'm really interested in daily life at this place, and to get closer to people. (speaking dutch) i like documentaries that say something about a certain group of people and then kind of step back. every year i go to south africa. democracy in south africa is so young and it's very interesting to see how people are dealing with this freedom. and to see how they get along or how they don't get along. especially this born free generation, basically all the kids born after nelson mandela became president in 1994. working with the dutch correspondence living in johannesburg,

we were experimenting with multimedia and we made a story about a camp called the commando corps camp. (speaking dutch) it's run by the colonel, that's what he calls himself. he's a leader from the old apartheid army and he's training young white afrikaners to hate black people. but in south africa, all the schools are mixed. black and white kids are equal, the rainbow nation and so on. but at this camp, they're taught something totally different. (speaking dutch) - he's even showing them how to shoot someone. (men shouting in dutch) it's very difficult to be impartial, but i don't want to push my point of view at all.

i just want to show people a story that was not really told before. there are not many stories that are untold, but i think as a photographer working today, you can actually show something that people didn't know existed. - [corey] i think a lot of people live vicariously through pictures. and i want to capture these moments that are just totally foreign to the average person. people often think of me when there's something to do with water or the ocean in any form. - good to see you. - [corey] i travel photographing five to six months out of the year. where we gonna head today? - [fisherman] what's going on, you ready? - [corey] yeah. (boat whirring) - but for three months out of the year, i'm also a commercial fishermen.

need more forward and then reaching out kinda. i like being thrown into situations and i was always seeking the ultimate adventure. i landed a job on a commercial crab boat in alaska. it was this totally otherworldly experience. luckily, my captain allowed me to snap photos, but i had to make sure it didn't interfere with my actual task as a deckhand. there's all these moments in fishing, these weird situations, the craziest storms, but nice light. i would come back with these stories and i started to realize that people were really fascinated. that's what got me thinking. this is an opportunity where i can start documenting the lifestyle. there's some really amazing characters. and i was just going to document for a couple years or so.

the next thing i knew i was doing that for seven years. i bought into that world and i'm there to stay. there's a lot of hardship in it, but in the end, there's this feeling of accomplishment. there's something addictive about escaping our bustling society, and it just becomes sort of an identity. so i like to take viewers on this journey along with me. - [katie] that's one of the reasons being a photographer is so wonderful 'cause, show up with your camera and just go for it. i'm based in new york city and i focus on real people in real moments. (speaking spanish) politics and social issues and activism came first for me. photography fit into that.

if i need to get on a plane in an hour, i can pack my gear in five minutes and be out the door. i would've gone anywhere that would have given me a nat geo job, and mexico just happened to be the place. (sirens blaring) in ciudad, juarez, the drug war was getting very bad. at the time, that was the murder capital of the world. there are 50,000 people who have been killed in this conflict. you could drive around and see this without trying to find it. i worked on this story for almost two years before it started to get published and get noticed in the us. but it's an important issue 'cause we're the ones buying the drugs. there are so many people who were caught up in the violence, but weren't gang members or criminals. they're just in the wrong place at the wrong time. the individual people have the most interesting stories. the quiet moments that are happening before and after these big moments of action. a lot of women were getting arrested and some of those girls look like someone

you're gonna see at the mall. t they're in prison for kidnapping. when you really look into their eyes, that's a way to just sort of question, are they victims and who's innocent and who isn't? people are tired. you know, they're tired of it. you have women that are really fighting and protesting, and you've got vigilante police trying to keep their communy safe. u've got 18 year old girls, you've got housewives in their fifties or sixties. and the head of the local police is teaching them how to use guns. it's the abuela's who are just like, i want my kids to walk to school and feel safe and i'm gonna drive around with a rifle and make sure that happens. i don't only photograph women, but i do go to places all over the world and focus on that woman's side of the story. you have to just be incredibly self motivated, build the projects that you care about. if you find a story that you love,

you have to just go and do it. - [diana] part of being a photographer is never really quite identifying with one place. part of what makes me explore this world is trying to figure out where it is that i belong. i'm 25. when i found photography, it felt like i found my language. the piece about my dad is something that i never expected to do. i was born in moscow and grew up with him, but he was an absent father. he would visit once every few weeks and then disappear for months. my mom woke me up one morning when i was seven years old and said that we were going on a trip. and the next day we came to california. she tried to destroy every memory i had of him. as an adult, i wanted to get to know my father,

but finding him felt a bit overwhelming. so i decided i was gonna go back and i was gonna take my camera. when i took these images, it was a way of getting to know who this person was. i saw my dad with his new family, holding his daughter, inga. and i don't think i would have been so open to getting to know him, had i not been a photographer. because i saw his vulnerability in these images. the story ran in the new york times, and within one week i had 2000 emails, mainly from fathers asking for advice about relationships with their daughters. i felt very responsible because you're not just making work for yourself. it really has to speak to others. when i started traveling to places like chechnya, like verma, i started finding my own voice within a story.

nat geo was never on my radar. so when they reached out to me, i was a bit surprised. i'm really looking forward to this experience because i know how many other photographers would have killed for this. we're doing this piece on the virgin mary. it's a very big responsibility. - so what's the story here? lly know it'swhat i was looking for,ity. except christmas. this is halfway through. we've been to four countries. we have four more to go. - [kathy] it's not going to make it. and that's not going to make it either. - it feels a bit intimidating because i've had to send my hard drive with 50,000 raw images. so they're seeing the way you shoot and they are seeing the way you think. - i love this though. it's got real power to it. - it was a bit scary because i thought you would think i was the worst photographer. - i think everyone is really pleased with where we are.

it really is about these images adding up to the story that we're trying to tell. - photography is not about the shots that i want to get, it's about the experience i want to feel. i don't get turned on by just making cool images. i really need to connect in a more meaningful way. and if i can find that personal connection, i know it's gonna be strong and that's pretty empowering. (bright music) - [marcus] hold on, let me get set first. - [man in blue] so we have two cameras, all set to go. - [cody] all right, come back straight on. - [olivia bee] it's not about the camera you use, it's about the picture you take. you work by making work and the right people will notice if you're doing something you love. - [marcus] the only way that you're gonna make it is if you have enough confidence to put yourself out there, just go and do your own thing. - [ilvy] just do it and go and don't be afraid to be disappointed. - [pari] just keep creating work that

you're passionate about. - [peter] i'll always love immersing myself in other places and meeting people. - [dina] photography feeds my desire to understand the world around me. - [katie] i'll tell stories till the day i die. i love nothing more than just finding really interesting stories and trying to share them. - [diana] you can say i'm a photographer, these are my followers. i think that's the way our profession is moving. - [julia] i think we're still emerging. we're still coming up. - [corey] we're all trying to navigate the waters. but there's always gonna be a place for photographers to shine through. - [diana] it's not about where you are. it's about where you're going. (bright music) - cool. ♪ no matter how long they said it would take ♪ ♪ how many bones in my body i havto break ♪ ♪ and even if i wanted to, i couldn't escape ♪ ♪ 'cause after i'm done, they pulling out yellow tape ♪ ♪ trying to run a business like a horse out the gate ♪

♪ even though at times it feels more like an eight ♪ ♪ but in entirety it inspires me to create ♪ ♪ i'd rather feel irey than being irate ♪ ♪ clear my head of everything that's making my mind race ♪ ♪ say goodbye to everyone who's making my time waste ♪ ♪ say hello to everything expanding my conscious ♪ ♪ and maybe then, baby, we'll be making some progress ♪ ♪ life is short, that's why i'm making the most ♪ ♪ sick of making dough for other people, i'm ghost ♪ ♪ but now we on the brink so it's time to for a toast ♪ ♪ soon as we touchdown i could see that we close ♪ ♪ we don't around with the mirrors and smokes ♪ ♪ don't hang on every word 'cause every word is a dose ♪ ♪ my language universal 'cause my verses are dope ♪ ♪ i'm on a quest, i got lyrics to go so i'm going for broke ♪

announcer: funding for the kcet "fine cut festival of films" is generously provided by the bridges larson foundation and by the national endowment for the arts, on the web at arts.gov.