​Corey Pollack
Capturing Art: Portrait Photography
Written by Heather Kuchma

Corey Pollack © Gilles Simard

Taylor was part of a portfolio fashion assignment © Corey Pollack

Travis was a model who wanted something dark and gritty © Corey Pollack

The guest speaker for May 2015 was Corey Pollack, IACC’s NAIT Scholarship Award recipient. Corey was selected by his classmates as the person who had exhibited exceptional congeniality and helpfulness toward peers during his first year of the Photographic Technology Program at NAIT.
 
Corey considers himself to be more of a ‘Photo Artist’ than a photographer; his goal is to create art with his photos. Originally, he wanted to be a concept artist for games and movies but felt that he lacked the ability to draw. So, he changed his focus to learning photography, Photoshop, and Illustrator to use as the tools to share his creative vision with the world.
 
His presentation, Capturing Art: Portrait Photography, started off by walking members through his various class assignments at NAIT, including his very powerful thesis assignment, Emotions of Fire, a collection of 15 images that took over three months to complete. Corey used fire (done digitally for safety reasons) as a supporting character for each of the emotions included in the collection. An extremely well-done collection. It was clear, by the reaction in the room, that IACC members were very impressed with his work.
 
Corey also walked members through the post-processing techniques he used for this 1930’s style mugshot collection. The final images are well worth seeing on Corey’s website at www.edmontonportraitphotography.com. The examples he shared certainly highlight his attention to detail, pre-visualization, and methodical approach to all his work.
 
To conclude the presentation, Corey shared a series of images that were done outside the classroom and that illustrated the direction he was going with his work; a strong emphasis on portraiture and creative photography. His personal style tends to be on the darker and grittier side of things, but does include the use of vibrant colours, especially red.
 
It was a real pleasure meeting Corey, and I am very grateful he took the time to share his work with us. I really enjoyed watching his change in levels of enthusiasm when he talked about the images ‘he had to do’ for class, versus the images he ‘wanted to do.’
 
Thank you to Corey for a wonderful presentation.