Spotlight: Darren Carroll

Aug 23, 2010 View Comments

spotlight: Darren Carroll
location: Austin, TX
specialty: portrait photography
web: www.darrencarroll.com
twitter: @dcarrollphoto

Austin, Texas-based freelance photographer Darren Carroll specializes in location portrait work. An action photographer by training, he has since shifted his sights to portraits, combining a keen interest in lighting and working with people with the lessons learned from years of experience with the ever-changing, unpredictable nature of photographing athletes and the games they play. His ability to adapt to fluid situations–whether they be unfamiliar locations, cantankerous subjects, rapidly-changing conditions, or neurotic handlers and publicists (or most often, a combination thereof)–has earned him the confidence of editors at his two main editorial clients, Sports Illustrated and Golf Digest, for more than a decade.

Although just as comfortable shooting in a studio, most of his assignments make use of his preference to work on location with a small crew, with a minimal amount of fuss and and intrusiveness into his subjects’ schedules and environments. The ability to quickly evaluate a location, define the scene, and to light and shoot on the fly lends a sense of “organized reportage” to much of his lifestyle and action portrait work–a style that has been drawn upon by other clients, both commercially (Ford, JWT, Mizuno USA, Kolar Advertising, Baylor University) and editorially (Texas Highways, Time, People, Smart Money, and Texas Monthly magazines, to name a few), as well as by private individuals, design firms and custom publishing houses.