Working in Salt Lake City
Salt Lake is a strange, good city to photograph in. It is a grid of enormous blocks laid out by people who expected wagons to turn around in the streets, which means the light gets into places it would not reach in a denser city. It has a mid-century downtown that nobody bothered to tear down, a west side of rail yards, grain silos and smelter ruins, foothills that start four blocks from the Capitol, and a lake so large and so empty that standing on its shore feels like standing on another planet. Within an hour you add alpine canyons and, going west, the salt flats.
I moved here and started shooting in 2010. The studio is downtown. Most of my personal sessions happen there or within twenty minutes of it. The list below is where I actually take people.
Where I shoot around the city
Downtown and the Granary District
The blocks south of 600 South between State and 400 West, once warehouses and now half warehouses, half breweries. Long shadows, brick, loading docks, very few people on a weekend morning. The city's film permit technically applies to commercial shoots on public right-of-way; for a single portrait subject on a sidewalk, nobody has ever asked.
The Avenues and the Capitol foothills
Steep streets, old houses, and at the top, Ensign Peak and the trails above the Capitol with the whole valley behind you. Good for portraits with a horizon in them. The light is best in the last hour before sunset when the sun drops behind the Oquirrhs to the west.
Sugar House and 9th & 9th
Neighbourhood streets with mature trees, small storefronts, a park with a pond. Softer than downtown. Useful for headshots that need a bit of environment without looking like a postcard.
The west side and the rail corridor
The most underrated part of the city for pictures. Industrial buildings along 500 West and the tracks, the old smelter stacks, the Jordan River trail. Empty, raw, and unmistakably Western. Some of my favourite editorial work was made within a mile of the Amtrak station.
Great Salt Lake and Antelope Island
Forty-five minutes north-west. The lake itself, at the marina or along the causeway, is a white and grey nothing with mountains floating on the far side. Antelope Island State Park requires a $40-per-day Portrait Photography Pass for hired photographers and a Special Use Permit for commercial shoots; day-use fees apply on the causeway. Worth every dollar at sunrise.
The canyons
Big and Little Cottonwood, Millcreek, City Creek. Aspens in autumn, granite the rest of the year. Fall weekends are crowded with family photographers; go on a weekday. Filming in the canyons falls under Salt Lake County and may need a US Forest Service permit for commercial work.
The full list with notes on light, parking and permits is in the journal: best photoshoot locations in Salt Lake City.
What I photograph here
Everything on the services page: personal portraits, fine art nude sessions, headshots for actors and executives, editorial and fashion, beauty and brand campaigns. The common thread is people, mostly one at a time, mostly in black and white.
Weather and seasons, honestly
Salt Lake City has real seasons and each one changes the work. Summer light is brutal from ten to four; we shoot at dawn or in the studio. Autumn is the best outdoor season, September into early November. Winter brings the inversion, a lid of grey haze that sits on the valley for a week at a time; it is ugly to live under and beautiful to photograph in, all soft and flat and silver. Spring is unpredictable. If we have a location session booked and the weather turns, we reschedule at no charge.
Serving the valley
Studio sessions are downtown. For location work and team headshots I travel across the Salt Lake valley at no extra charge: Sugar House, the Avenues, Millcreek, Holladay, Murray, Cottonwood Heights, Sandy, Draper, South Jordan, West Valley, Magna, the whole grid. Park City, Provo, Ogden and further afield are on the Utah page.
Questions I get asked
Downtown Salt Lake City. The exact address comes with your booking confirmation; I do not publish it for privacy reasons.
No. Anywhere in the Salt Lake valley is included. Park City and beyond carry a small travel fee.
For a single subject on public property, in practice, no. Commercial shoots with crew on public right-of-way need the city film permit, which costs $142 for up to three locations and takes four business days. I handle it.
September through early November. Dawn sessions in summer are also excellent. Winter inversions produce a soft silver light that works beautifully in black and white.
