Exploring Photographer Mark Seliger’s Process Few photographers can hope to achieve as much success as @markseliger. In just over three decades, he has created iconic photographs of everyone from #bradpitt to the Dalai Lama, and thousands of culture’s foremost actors and creatives in between. Seliger's career began with his move to NYC from Texas, but really kicked off when he got his dream assignment for a Rolling Stone shoot in ’87. A devout music fan, he made the most of the opportunity - within 5 years, he was the magazine’s chief photographer, and shot over 100 covers before his departure in 2001. Since then, he's been equally prolific, balancing his work across a myriad of publications. As Seliger told collaborator @ronniefieg, “I go into shoots knowing that I’m going to fall in love with my subject. If I don’t, then I’m not doing my job.” His archive reveals relationships with his subjects spanning decades and careers, like Lenny Kravitz - he’s shooting hundreds of photographs of the musician, and even co authored a book on him. Nonetheless, he treats each shoot like it’s his last opportunity to capture a subject, a part documentarian, giving a window into cultural figures. #Markseliger’s process goes through finding “spots”: engaging a subject, moving through, finding their essence, and disengaging. He describes his portraits as a blend of finding that “essence”, and applying the “craft” of technical #photography. As such, his photographs give an immediate understanding of their subjects, like Obama showing the “weight on his shoulders” and the playful Tom Hanks with a chimp. Seliger's career began in a DIY darkroom in his family's bathroom, and print making has been essential to his practice ever since. As he explained: “I think it’s important to understand the idea of printmaking and making something tactile. It’s essential to know your story. But more than all that, you have to be enthusiastic and optimistic that you have the ability to follow through your work to the end. These days, we’re so interested in immediacy, and problems are either immediately resolved or forgotten. So many people don’t take the time to make art with substance.”