Let’s take a step behind the lens of a seasoned fitness photographer, Cameron Michael as he shares how he masterfully freezes those defining moments in the world of fitness. Cameron’s goal with imagery is to not only capture the motion but the soul behind each image.

Website: cameronmichael8.com

Instagram: @cameronmichael8

Describe your signature style or approach to photography.

Describing my style is tough for me. My goal is for the final image to come out as clean as possible. Meaning, I want the viewer to see and understand what the point of the picture is. Whether it’s for a brand or personal work, I always want the point to be obvious. With that being said though! I do enjoy working in grittier settings and locations. When I started taking pictures, my wife and I were living in downtown Chicago and I fell in love with the grit and urban landscape of the city. I felt like it added character to a lot of my shots even back then. So, If I can combine both urban grit with clear subject matter, I’m happy!

What are your strengths as a photographer?

I feel like I have two major strengths as a photographer. The first one is capturing motion. 90% of what I shoot is fitness-based. So, being able to capture how an athlete/model moves is vital. And even within those movements, making sure to capture the one shot where they’re not making a funny or weird face, but still capturing that emotion can sometimes be tricky.

And my second strength is just making people feel comfortable in front of my camera. Whether it’s a shoot with a model that’s just starting their career or an athlete who’s never modeled before, I tell them the same thing at the beginning of the shoot “All we need is one! The people on the other end of this image won’t know if we got this shot on the first try or the 20th. So, just relax and have fun!” I feel like that energy or vibe can be felt throughout everyone on set. We throw on some music, laugh, and get to work! We get to take pictures for a living!! We’re not solving geopolitical conflicts here haha. So let’s just have fun and create some great work!

Who’s your ideal client?

My ideal client is Nike. I’ve always loved their marketing even before I paid attention to things like that haha. They always had my favorite athletes in their ads. Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, Bo Jackson, etc. I always loved how they told stories. However, I’d love to work with any of the top activewear brands like Adidas, Lululemon, Under Amour, Vuori, and the list goes on and on. I love how campaigns now blur so many lines. You can get fashion, sports, and lifestyle all in one project.

Is there any software or system you use for your business you can’t live without?

Yes, there’s two! Google and YouTube hahaha! I say that jokingly but I’m serious haha. I feel like I owe half of my photography career to YouTube. When you’re self-taught you make a lot of mistakes and you have a lot of questions. So with sources like Google and Youtube at your fingertips, you can generally find the answers to what you’re looking for. Then it’s all about going out and trying it.

Could you describe a recent project that challenged your creativity and required innovative problem-solving? 

Sure, the last project I worked on was for a hearing aid company. You can’t get any more different from the stuff I normally shoot than shooting a hearing aid campaign haha. However, before I went full-time with commercial photography, I was a sales rep in audiology for over 10 years. So I had an idea of how to shoot those types of images. However, the brand I was working with is trying to target a different demographic and tell different stories through their marketing. They didn’t want the typical older person reading to their grandchild type of vibe. They wanted younger, diverse, and active people. And they let me staff the shoot with my friends. A good buddy of mine is literally covered in tattoos from head to toe, and they saw him, LOVED HIM, and asked if I thought he’d do it. I reached out and he was happy to! We also had a personal trainer, a guy that’s a curator at the Smithsonian, a former NFL player, and two actual models. I’ve worked with all of them previously but in a more fitness setting. So while getting everyone on the same page for this shoot wasn’t necessarily ‘challenging’, it was very different from what we’ve previously done. None of them had ever worn hearing aids, so they didn’t know how to showcase them. That’s where I had to pull on my experience from being in audiology for so long and get creative with how to capture everything. At the end of the day, the client was thrilled with everything and it stretched me a bit at the same time. So it was a win win.

In the realm of commercial photography, what do you find most rewarding and fulfilling about your work?

This is a tough question to answer!! I’ll try my best though haha. For one, it’s the memories I have that are attached to certain images. For example, I recently shot an ambassador campaign for Lululemon here in Northern California. This was the biggest project I’ve done at this point in my career. We shot 9 ambassadors in one day. All of them had different disciplines that we were showcasing. So one may be a yoga athlete, and the next would be a running athlete. It was a VERY long day, but I had an absolute blast doing it! And now, those images are hanging up in different Lululemon locations all over The Bay Area. So, whenever I walk into a Lululemon store and see one of my images up on the wall, I always go back to that day and how much fun it was. That shoot was also a year to the day I left my corporate job to go full time with photography. So, that shoot was a sign that I can actually do this! Another rewarding aspect is looking back through my portfolio and seeing situations I can’t believe I found myself in. And this is more on the musical side of my portfolio. I grew up playing drums, so music was and still is a HUGE part of my life. So, being able to see artists like Jay Z, Robert Glasper, Yasin Bey (Mos Def), Thundercat, Raphael Saadiq, Emily King, or even Dave Chappelle who was hosting a music festival I shot (my musical taste is all over the place haha) in my portfolio is kind of wild to me haha. It’s very rewarding to look back and see where my camera has taken me.

If you could choose only one song to play every time you walk into a room, what would it be?

Anything from Bob Marley. I think it’s humanly impossible to be in a bad mood whenever a Bob Marley song is on haha.

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