Sam Cornwall Studio

Welcome. I'm Sam, an artist and a true photo nerd at heart. I picked up a hand-me down Pentax SLR before high school and never looked back. The human connection, the art, the craft, the science, the exploration, the puzzle, the discovery, the challenge and, ultimately, the journey of photography draws me into this complex art form everyday. 

​

After being immersed in shooting through the skateboarding and snowboarding scenes, and classical fine art training in both high school and college, my photo education hit a wall.  I moved to NYC to learn the old-fashioned way; working for big name photographers and climbing up the assisting ladder. I never stopped shooting and quickly applied the hard skills I learned on big sets to my own shooting style. I got into digiteching, co-founded a Chinese snowboard magazine, got a job shooting for GoPro in California,  and wound up in LA. 

​​

The LA photo scene fostered my growth in so many ways. After digiteching on big ads with industry legends, lighting celebrity photos that were viewed billions of times and falling in love with shooting natural sunlight all over again, I realized my masters education in lighting, on-set workflows and production was finally complete.

In order to focus exclusively on shooting, I decided to pass the assisting and digitech baton to other colleagues. And, so began The Photo Glossary. So much industry-knowledge was lost in the transition from film to digital. Now, we're losing systemic knowledge in this transition of "professional" to "creator". The Photo Glossary was started as a free resource for everyone working on-set, especially those who never got a chance to learn all the production methods from the best. 

​

Now back in NYC, my work draws from a wide range of influences, but I always find myself returning to documenting the flow state. The beginning of my career was catching athletes in their perfect moment of action, their zen, their flow state. Now it has moved towards photographing places that encourage flow, like gardens, parks, wild lands, homes, third spaces, and the persons realizing themselves there. 

​

Professional photography allows me access to a world of spaces, places and stories that otherwise I would miss out on. Allows me to make photos I otherwise wouldn't be able to. And, that is one of the many reasons I love being a photographer. 

​

We're all, in this modern world, addicted to our screens and too busy. Any moment I can create that encourages finding one's flow offscreen and in the real world is a success. 

​

​Thanks for stopping by. Reach out anytime, sam@samcornwall.com.

​

Thanks,

Sam

​​​​