i am a los angeles commercial advertising photo studio, specializing in lifestyle, portraits, and animals for advertising, design, and corporate clients worldwide.

Los Angeles Commercial Photographer

Working on a commercial photography production in Los Angeles is an exhilarating experience for our crew and clients. Randy's dedication and talent to get the perfect shot on each and every set ensures that his clients get a unique style that they can call their own. Shooting commercial stock photo libraries for some of the best known pet industry companies in the country is the ultimate thrill for one of the best pet and animal photographers in Los Angeles.

Pet and Animal Photographer in Los Angeles

Back in photo school, they used to say "just don't photograph kids and animals," much less both on the same set. As one of the elite pet and animal photographers in the country, Randy Schwartz brings a sense of childlike wonderment to all of his animal photo shoots. He gets down on the ground to the animals level and plays in their world and lets them be, well, animals. Companies looking for a lifestyle or commercial pet photographer in Los Angeles hire Randy because of his skill with animals, as well as the way he engages with people.

California Lifestyle Photographer

To be a true lifestyle photographer one has to understand that all of the little, often most simple, overlooked moments in life are at the core and are the beauty of what we remember most about our lives. As an observer of life, Randy's photographic technique involves more than just looking at people with a camera. He gets to know who they are, what they are about, what they most want to remember about themselves when they are old and look back at their story. He takes moments from his own life traveling the US and abroad as a photographer and researcher of life's moments and often will utilize those as examples for his subjects to reflect on their own moments. Once that is established he is able to walk them through a photo shoot so it becomes their own. Some of the most amazing moments happen when the subject thinks the cameras are down. Much of the beauty of a lifestyle photo shoot happens in the shadows when the subject is only slightly aware they are in front of Randy's lens. Having spent over half his life in California (the last 13 years in Los Angeles) and his childhood on the East Coast, Randy's lifestyle photographs encompass all walks of life.


Los Angeles Advertising Photographer in Redondo Beach

Living in the beautiful Hollywood Riviera section of Redondo Beach, Randy's backyard, so to speak, is a plethora of locations that can look like anywhere in the United States. Some of our advertising location shoots have taken us less than 10 miles from our studio for major advertising campaigns that have required more than 30 different "anywhere USA" locations-- all shot right in the South Bay of Los Angeles. Randy knows the South Bay well having photographed numerous location shoots all around the beach cities, of Redondo Beach, Hermosa Beach, and Manhattan Beach, California. Our clients love where we live, getting the best of a premier Los Angeles photographer while finding peace and tranquility at some of the most beautiful beaches in Southern California.


Lifestyle Advertising Photographer in Los Angeles

Los Angeles is one of the best place in the world to shoot advertising campaigns, because of the accessibility to all of the best production people around. As a digital photographer working in Los Angeles for the past 13 years, Randy is able to tell a client's story without all of the production nightmares of locations in other places in the country. Working with some of the best models and actors in the country, Randy is able to direct his talent with an ease of effort that gets to the root of the story his advertising clients want to tell. Randy has saved his clients thousands of dollars because of his and his teams' knowledge of the production capacity available to the Los Angeles advertising photography community. His team can accommodate nearly every client request from actors and talent to sets and prop to exotic locations, as well as every other aspect of a commercial photography production.


South Bay Photographer

One of the challenges of any lifestyle photographer working with commercial advertising clients around the country is the availability of locations that look like they could have been photographed in any part of the United States. The Southbay of Los Angeles is known for it's beaches as well as the Palos Verdes peninsula. With numerous wilderness, park, and ranch locations, this area of the South Bay is perfect for the look and feel of rural America. Randy is in touch with the pulse of the South bay in that he not only photographs in and around the area, but he also teaches adult and child beach volleyball classes in Manhattan Beach, Redondo Beach and Hermosa Beach. The people he comes in contact with come from all over the US as well as the world. He will often utilize his contacts as talent for his photography shoots giving his pictures a very real look. As a digital photographer he is able to easily share his work not only with his talent, but also with his clients.

He is often hired by local South Bay residents to create portraits and headshots, as well as animal and pet photographs for their personal and professional use. His portraits of his subjects both four legged and two legged capture who they are and their place in this world. Randy Schwartz' ability to engage with his subjects on a very personal level, makes him one of the best lifestyle and pet photographers in the South Bay.

Location Lifestyle Photography

Having spent his childhood on the east coast and attended the Academy of Art College in San Francisco, Randy Schwartz has seen a lot of the country and this gives him inspiration for his photography shoots. The essence of location photography is to get down and dirty and into the place, to find the feel and vibe and put the subject in that space. Randy is able to make a location photo shoot feel familiar in a sense by allowing his subjects to ease into the scene. Much of the successful subject matter that comes out of a location photo shoot is the stuff that is happening in the periphery, in the shadows so to speak and by being ever vigilant and attuned to that, Randy is able to make his work feel very real.


Studio Lifestyle Photography

Many of Randy's earlier years as a commercial photographer were spent in the studio working on catalogs for company's like Macy's, Nordstrom, and many other fashion and product importers. Understanding lighting for a specific look and feel is extremely important. From this experience comes his ability to create any kind of lighting scenario from hard sunlit looks to soft shade. His preferred look is never in the middle of the lighting for photography spectrum, but rather the extremes and he rarely uses softboxes and other standard issue modifiers. One of his favorite tools in the studio and on location is a silk, which creates beautiful skin tones in his photographs and, when enhanced with harder sources, helps to achieve a very realistic daylight look. As an advertising photographer these techniques are essential to working with new clients. This ability to create natural looking environments from artificial sources is essential in making his photographic sets areas of play, where the actors can move and create scenarios in a very natural way. With the still photography industry moving more and more in the direction of video and moving pictures, having an understanding all of the lighting and camera equipment and all of the specific nuances that each lends to creating successful photographs for his clients is all the more important moving forward.


Pet Commercial Photography

The challenges of successfully photographing another living creature whether human or animal, can take on many different levels of intrusion into their physical space and mental psyche. Randy Schwartz's ability to find the fine line between getting to their level, letting them be who they are and being far too distant or far too abrasive is what makes looking into his photographs feel like what it's like to know the subjects life a little better. This is especially important when it comes to photographing animals and pets. Comparing his animal photography to others attempting to make animal photographs one needs to look at the body of work side by side. Randy's work always has that polished and finished feel that comes from getting down to the subjects level (often in the dirt and mud) and using his skills with light and shadow to bring a very real image to life.