Robert Emery Smith

I have been making pictures seriously since 1981. I specialize in portraiture and fashion work. I've also become interested in digital panoramic images of places I've traveled.


The folks I'm lucky enough to photograph are usually acquaintances met in my day-to-day life. Some are friends, some are strangers who have become good friends.


Photography and portraiture are my artistic outlet: I'm much more interested in the experience of making images with someone than in making a business from that process.


When my subjects have allowed it, I have sometimes shared their images with publishers or gallery owners, and this has sometimes resulted in commercial opportunities for us to explore together. Several of my subjects have explored modeling careers as a result of our working together. At all times, my subjects own and control the images we make together, and I hope their comfort in knowing this will free us to collaborate on making beautiful images.


I make my images with a range of equipment, including 35mm film cameras, digital cameras (I shoot with Nikon gear), and medium format film cameras (Bronica and Hasselblad). Film still offers some very attractive characteristics in an increasingly digital world, especially in medium format. Film images are scanned using a Nikon medium format scanner, enabling beautiful large-scale prints.


I'm no stranger to studio lighting, but most of my images are taken in natural light, not only because of its inherent beauty, but also because I've found it's much easier to get a natural photograph of a person at their ease in an ordinary environment without having lots of high-voltage lighting equipment looming over them.


A long-time fan of Apple's computers and software, I manage and print my images from Apple's Aperture to Epson printers.


Some images on this site portray people without much clothing. Children and other impressionable creatures should exercise due caution while exploring.