Howard Schatz, a photographer and author, has images displayed in galleries and museums across the world. He has received international acclaim for his work. We asked him to answer a few questions for our readers.

You have a wide variety of work showcased on your website. What’s your favorite genre to shoot? Why?

I photograph to surprise and delight myself. Virtually everything interests me. I’m especially interested in people; and therefore this includes portraiture, the human body, motion sports, and dance.

 My 25-year retrospective is just now being published. This is the web site the publisher has composed: schatzimages25years-glitterati.com.

It contains the work from 32 separate projects, which indicates my broad interests in photography.In the large two-book boxed set there are a total of 832 pages and 1083 photographs.

You have some great underwater photos. Tell us a little about one and how you go about taking it.

This is a photograph of “The Last Supper” underwater. The making of the photograph was not particularly difficult; the greatest challenge was in the many months of preparation.

The costumes were made from raw material including the unitard, which went from ankle to wrist and neck; and also the bustiers, the gloves, and hats.

Secondly, choosing the correct models, models who could go underwater, and pose naturally was vital to the project. This takes perfect casting and a great deal of  training because not everybody can do this. These particular models were very adept underwater; they were able to stay underwater for up to a minute;  maintain any pose and face and looked perfectly natural and beautiful.

The third aspect of this project had to do with the makeup; I met with the makeup artist and we went over 5 or 6 dozen drawings until we got it right for each of the 13 characters in this photograph.

Finally, we needed to build and set, underwater, the set and backdrop.  We used strips of mylar in back and suspended the plastic table on by monofilament. I then rehearsed with the models as to the pose of their particular character. We placed large scrims over the pool and lights were strobed through the scrim to create a large broad flat not too contrasty light to make this photograph.

Please share a picture that you’ve taken that has meaning to you. Explain why it’s important.

Having much experience working with dancers, I’ve learned they can do things physically not available to others. With each shoot I would challenge my subjects to try something different, a contortion or distortion, and sometimes even asked them to make a pose more peculiar or bizarre.

At one of these sessions, I was using a wide-angle lens when two dancers tangled themselves into the semblance of a mass – and so a “Body Knot” was born and a project begun.

I would direct dancers into a range of various shapes and circle around them, looking through my camera, searching for images. I saw “biologic sculpture” and then set about coloring the resulting structures using my computer.

You have several books out. Tell us a little about your work as an author.

For the boxing project, “AT THE FIGHTS – Inside the World of Professional Boxing“, I spent 6 years researching championship boxing for my 19th book. I interviewed as well as made portraits of everybody in boxing whom were not boxers but were important to boxing; this included managers and promoters, commissioners, referees, judges, ringside physicians, writers, television announcers, trainers and retired champions.

Each of them taught me about the intricacies in the world of boxing.  I also interviewed and photographed about one hundred champion boxers; champions in all weight classes.

I was especially interested in their courage: how does a man get hit in the nose and come right back to do the same to the other rather than run away. I made these “boxing” images in my studio; I worked very hard to try to make images that said “boxing” and that were also unique and surprised and delighted me.

In my book, “CAUGHT IN THE ACT – Actors Acting” I had included 85 actors in this project.  I did extensive interviews and I told the actors I was interested in  creativity, imagination, i.e. “work.” I wondered how one transformed oneself into another totally different character.

The interviews were not about gossip, drugs, divorce, etc.  The actors were smart and insightful. Additionally, I made a portrait of each actor,  attempting to make an image that was different from anything they had before and different from anything I had done before so that the range of portraiture in the book is quite varied.

Finally, and the very important part of the book was that we wrote scenarios and characters and lines and asked the actors to become those characters and deliver the lines. This was done in an improvisational and extemporaneous fashion. The actors were fantastic; I had a front row seat as  a solo audience member–it was an amazing experience.

What advice would you give an aspiring photographer to make it in the digital world of photography?

There are few necessary things: one has to have a vast visual databank which means one has to look at many  hundreds of thousands of pictures.

Photographers must realize that the people who hire them or buy their photography look at  tens of thousands of photographs every day.

The photographer has to be at the very least as good as photo-editors,  art directors, art buyers,  gallery owners, etc.  So,  one must study everything visual.

One also has to work very hard to make images that have not been made before; this is very challenging and very difficult and it usually works when one can be true to oneself and not try to worry about what somebody else is thinking and whether somebody else is going to like his or her photography.

Schatz’s 25 year Retrospective is ready for pre-order here. You can also check out his work on his website.