Pulitzer-prize winning photographer Brian Smith opens up about shooting stars

Adrien Brody, Serena and Venus Williams, Maria Sharapova, Enrique Iglesias, Drew Barrymore, Donald Trump and Arnold Schwarzenegger... these are just a handful of the several big names that Brian Smith, celebrity portrait photographer, has captured on his camera. But from the over 280 celebrities he has photographed, a few of his favourites include "Anne Hathaway and Antonio Banderas. In terms of business people, there's probably nobody as cool as Richard Branson", he says. "I photographed Branson for Time magazine. He put us up on his private island in the Caribbean, and was willing to wake up at 5:30am, put on a spacesuit and stand on the beach, on the morning of Christmas Eve."

Growing up, Smith always wanted to do something different, and discovered early on that with photography. It wasn't a chance to do something different every six months, it was a chance to do something different every day. Even though portraits are his specialty, "every experience is different; we've photographed billionaires and rap stars on the same day", says Smith, on his maiden trip to Mumbai. The Pulitzer-prize winner was brought to India by Sony India for the Pep Asia Photography Workshop and Conference, held last weekend.

It's been about 40 years since Florida-based Smith started off by clicking pictures for the local newspaper, back when he was in high school. He studied journalism and photo journalism at the University of Missouri, and spent his summers doing internships. After graduating,he started his career as a newspaper photographer. "I really pictured myself being a newspaper photographer forever and I ended up spending the first 10 years of my career working for three different newspapers," he says.

On the job, Smith had to photograph different celebrities during their press tours, and shoot portraits of athletes. "I enjoyed photographing athletes (as opposed to just shooting them with a telephoto lens), as much as I enjoyed shooting large sporting events like the Super Bowl, World Series or NBA Championships in the United States. But I realised that to get that type of access, magazines were better," says Smith. So while he was still working for newspapers, he started taking freelance assignments in his free time for magazines like Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, Sports Illustrated and Time. "Eventually, I got too busy with freelance work. So after 10 years, I knew it was time to make the jump."

When he's not shooting for work, he still likes to click portraits, but also enjoys photographing streetscapes and landscapes and tries to challenge himself by experimenting with different types of photography like extreme long-exposure photography.

Being a celebrity portrait photographer, his biggest challenge perhaps is "not having a lot of time. If I'm lucky, I probably get an hour with them, two hours if I'm really lucky, but it's not uncommon to have only 30 or 15 minutes, sometimes even 5 minutes. So I try to do the most I can in the time I have and respect their time", says Smith, whose first camera was a Minolta SRT 102. He currently uses two Sony Alpha 7 R Mark II cameras.

Of all the celebrity portraits he has clicked, the ones that are closest to his heart are the photographs that he clicks of his wife, which she posts on Facebook. His advice to budding photographers? "Shoot more slowly and pay attention to what you're doing. Give thought to your images instead of seeing how quickly you can shoot."