Jesse Dittmar, a celebrity portrait photographer specializing in celebrity images, may have photographed some of your childhood idols – some may have even been his. But to do the type of portrait work Jesse does successfully, one must set aside any fanboy mindsets and go in without biases and expectations.
Dittmar has been shooting high-profile celebrities since late 2013. Recently, he published Work, his second edition monograph of images captured during those early years of his career – with portraits of many major figures from entertainment world. We recently caught up with Dittmar to gain more insight into how he creates these striking celebrity portraits.
How did you begin creating celebrity portraiture?
Photography was what got me into photography; I loved looking at photos taken by Avedon, Annie Leibovitz, Irving Penn and other photographers who photographed people like the ones I now photograph. Finally an opportunity presented itself and it all started happening soon thereafter – by 2013-2014 things really started moving and I photographed several individuals within a relatively short period; Sharon Jones for Village Voice’s cover, Adina Menzel for The Washington Post arts section cover cover as well as Mike Myers from NYT all in quick succession; it just kept rolling from there on.
Before that I assisted some amazing photographers. When 2012 hit, I quit cold turkey without having any work at all until 2014 rolled around; by that point I had done 80 photoshoots – going from zero to sixty very quickly with key opportunities popping up every month or two at first, but soon afterwards it all just came pouring out like the floodgates had opened!
Who were you assisting before beginning shooting?
Assisting for some of the top celebrity photographers such as Annie Leibovitz, Martin Schoeller, Peter Yang, Ben Baker and Andrew Hetherington was an opportunity for me to learn as I attempted to be on as many sets possible to gain experience of every type of photoshoot possible and gain more knowledge on being a photographer.
As an assistant you get exposed to an abundance of experiences.
Assisting is different than photography; the two jobs don’t compare at all. Although talented assistants might make great photographers, poor ones — like myself at first! — also often end up becoming successful ones.
