"For a story on Cineplex Odeon attracting older audiences by streaming live classical music concerts on the big screen." Domenic Macri, art director; Clare Jordan, photo editor; Report on Business Magazine, client.
Personal work from India—Gingee Fort, Tamil Nadu.
"Portraits of kids attending a wine harvest, part of a story on the growing attention of the local food and wine movement in Prince Edward County." Annelise Dekker, art director; Pure Canada, client.
"A portrait of Chef Susur Lee in his Toronto restaurant, Madeleine." Jason Kang, art director; Arrival Magazine, client.
"Personal work: Musket hunting for deer in Strathroy, Ontario."
"From an ongoing project on county fairs; a high-school rodeo contestant prepares her horse."
"Portraits of chefs from Gilead Cafe, part of a story on Prince Edward County's growing local food movement." Annelise Dekker, art director; Pure Canada, client.
"JFK of MSTRKRFT." Jessica Rose, art director; Liz Ikiriko, photo editor; Toronto Life, client.
03.22.10
www.johncullenphot ...
Duration: Starting my sixth year. Staff: Myself, a few regular and excellent assistants, and my agent, Pamela Hamilton, at Sparks Productions. Education: A bachelor's in English from Dalhousie University, and a brief stint at the Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara. Five years of assisting some excellent advertising and food photographers is where I received my true education. Cultural Influences: I'm very much influenced by music—anything from 1970s jazz-fusion to Wilco to old Soul/R&B. I can get a bit giddy when I am booked to photograph a musician or a conductor or someone in that world. I also have a big thing for travel history; right now I'm reading books on the history of the spice trade. Environment: I do a fair amount of travel shooting, and although I love the familiarity of my Toronto studio, any project that takes me abroad is when I feel the most alive and in top creative form. Philosophy: I always aim for my shoots to be collaborative, low-stress affairs, and the way I have found to do that consistently is by having a group of talented and like-minded people working with me to make the details run as smoothly as possible. I'm fortunate enough to get to use photography as a tool to see the world, and I often have moments when I think to myself, “I can’t believe I get to do this for a living.”