In 2006, while his high school classmates were busy with extracurriculars like football, basketball, and other sports “on grassy old fields,” Blair Caldwell was hyper-focused on honing a new passion he discovered his sophomore year while waiting for a ride home from school.
Since his parents would pick him up late due to their demanding work schedules, Caldwell would pass the time by staging photoshoots with his older sister, who loved modeling. He captured his shots on a Razr flip phone he borrowed from his sister.
“My sister and I would take that time after school to go to the library to print out all the photos I had taken of her,” the Tyler, Texas native told Fortune. “Eventually, instead of doing homework, we would be emailing photos to the printers in the library.”
It wasn’t long before the images caused a buzz around the school. “My sister’s friends started noticing her photos and asked who took them,” Caldwell recalled. “She told them it was me, and from then on, I started taking pictures of everyone.”
Caldwell’s newfound popularity as a photographer motivated him to dream bigger.
“I would write it on my homework,” he said. “When I got done early in class, I would turn my paper over and just draw Hollywood and cameras and all that stuff.”
Now 33, Caldwell has a successful career as one of Hollywood’s well-established photographers, snapping celebrities like Grammy award winners Beyoncé, Cardi B, and SZA, plus the likes of Kylie Jenner, Normani, and Michael B. Jordan.
In an interview with Fortune, the photographer revealed how he went from juggling novel jobs to shooting Hollywood’s most notable stars, and how he’s leveraging artificial intelligence for his most recent work.
The art of opportunity
The path to Hollywood success for Caldwell wasn’t glamorous at first, and started with just $1,000 in his bank account.
After graduating from The Art Institute of Dallas with an associate’s degree in photography, Caldwell packed up his belongings and moved over 1,300 miles to Los Angeles, a city he’d idolized as a child watching music videos on MTV and BET.
“My family was like, ‘okay, go, just make sure you’ve got a plan,” he said. “I literally had no plan … I hit the ground running.”
To make ends meet while finding gigs, Caldwell accepted an array of odd jobs, like auditioning for competition shows including The X Factor, The Voice, and American Idol, volunteering to be a live-studio audience member, and offering to take $50 headshots for people in a local park.
“I was doing whatever I could to try and get my name out there and try to get in touch with someone that can help me get to the next spot,” Caldwell said.
His connections paid off. While sleeping on a mattress in a friend’s living room, Caldwell was awoken by an urgent phone call from his mentor in the city, asking if he could conduct a photoshoot for R&B singer Chrisette Michele. Without any preparation or planning, Caldwell immediately grabbed his equipment and sped off to meet the artist, who needed to document her Grammy nomination.
Caldwell said Michele “took me under her wing” and enlisted him to travel around the country with her, shooting album covers, maintaining her YouTube vlog, and capturing images for her Instagram account.
Other stars took notice. Glee actress Amber Riley and then-Fifth Harmony singer Normani asked Caldwell for their own shoots.
“I remember [Normani] saying, ‘I want to hire you as my personal photographer,’” said Caldwell. “ I finally felt like I was getting my foot in the door.”
Opportunity calls
As his résumé grew, so did the amount of calls he fielded from eager clients, including a chance in 2018 to photograph one of music’s biggest titans. But it was an opportunity he almost turned down.
“I was sitting in church one day, and I got a text: ‘Are you available to do photos?’” he recalled. “I’m like, ‘sure, who’s it for?’”
His question went unanswered, and his friend replied saying their mysterious client could not be disclosed.
“I was like, I have to go lead worship at six o’clock, so I kinda need to know who this is because I can’t just leave church,” he said. “At that time, I literally was begging God to give me a sign to show me something.”
Caldwell had convinced himself that he hit the end of the road in his career, and would have to stop pursuing his dream in order to secure a traditional 9-to-5 job for stability. But he gave this mysterious opportunity a shot: He drove his car—a 2007 Toyota Scion that “only blew out cold air”—up the Los Angeles hills to an unknown location for the shoot.
When he arrived, he was greeted by a drop-top baby blue Rolls-Royce in the driveway, plus a security guard at the entrance who requested that he sign a paper.
“I didn’t read it. I didn’t care,” Caldwell recalled. “I said, ‘I’m just glad to sign it.’”
As he made his way past security, he spotted a woman on a balcony. “She said, ‘how are you? I’m Beyoncé.’”
Over the course of the photoshoot, the two bonded over Caldwell’s accent and their shared Texas roots.
“I just couldn’t believe it, everything I had prayed for had come,” Caldwell said. “That was the beginning of everything.”
Homecoming
Days after his first photoshoot with Beyoncé, Caldwell eagerly refreshed his Instagram feed, waiting to see the pictures he just captured pop up on his timeline. Eventually, a few days of anticipation turned into a month, and the original cloud-nine feeling started to fade.
“I thought that she hated the photos because I didn’t see them come out,” he said, recalling times he couldn’t get out of bed until four o’clock in the afternoon from depression.
But a month later, while sitting in a living room with friends, Caldwell received another vague text asking if he knew how to shoot live shows, a skill he learned while working with his earlier clients Chrisette Michelle and Amber Riley. He rushed to the location, and was greeted with dancers, bands, lighting crews, and videographers all preparing for one of Beyoncé’s most notable productions yet: her 2018 “Homecoming” performance at Coachella.
“It was just like a huge entertainment college,” Caldwell said. “I just was bright like a kid on my first day with my little bag.”
An homage to Black HBCU culture, the performance netted 41 million viewers in 232 countries, surpassing the record of most-viewed performance at any festival.
Today, Caldwell still serves as the singer’s frequent photographer—he even did the cover art for Beyonce’s eighth studio album, Cowboy Carter, which released Friday.
AI-infused photography
Capturing Beyoncé’s Coachella performance required Caldwell to present his vision to her team with mood boards well ahead of the performance, a strategy he previously had not followed. Years later, he’s embraced the mood-boards strategy and is utilizing a new tool to make them more effective: artificial intelligence.
Caldwell says tools like AI platform Tome refine his workflows and cut down on production time by planning shoots in advance.
“When I discovered Tome, it was as if I had an assistant helping me,” he said. “I would input some images, and Tome’s AI would lay it out in a visually compelling way that helped not only me to crystallize my vision, but it actually became something I could share with clients.”
Although he’s still tinkering with the technology, Caldwell says he can appreciate the versatility of AI.
“If I needed to find photos, I could just type in the type of photos I wanted and AI would find the right picture,” Caldwell said. “It’s literally a lifesaver … it’s made my job so easy.”
The AI tool helps Caldwell visualize the “mood, aesthetic, lighting, clothing, scenery and photographic style” he aims for in each shoot.
“I do love that it gives you an outlook on what you might not have,” he said. “You can be looking for something in particular and an AI will give me an example of what I’m looking for, but show me in a different way.”
A 2023 Pew survey shows Americans are increasingly cautious about the growing role of AI in their lives and jobs, but Caldwell says he’s in favor of the tech and doesn’t believe AI will replace human photographers anytime soon.
“[Photography] is real, shooting someone is real,” Caldwell said. “Being in front of someone is an experience.”
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If Gregg Wallace is looking to sharpen up his soundbites he could do worse than enlist Eileen Murtha-Brown in Tish (BBC Four). “Your memories are black and white but the blood’s always red,” was one gem she shared as she mined her recollections of her sister, Tish Murtha, aka “The Demon Snapper”, whose striking black-and-white photographs chronicled working-class lives and struggles in the northeast in the 1970s and 1980s.
We all like to think we are photographers these days, the digital age allowing us to rattle out images ten-a-penny hoping we’ll strike it lucky. By contrast, Tish Murtha, a political firebrand remembered affectionately but with a hint of fear, even by her nearest and dearest, had to rely on old-school equipment and her own remarkable eye to capture the lives and struggles of a community she felt had been overlooked by history.
Her daughter, Ella, proved an empathetic guide in Tish, Paul Sng’s expertly framed documentary that’s part celebration of an overlooked talent, part study of a tumultuous political period as unemployment soared and economic recession bit deep. Through Ella we met Murtha’s extended family and gained a clear understanding of how her mother’s photographic style was forged in the fire of a world she believed was loaded against her and her like.
What comes into sharp focus is the sheer honesty of Murtha’s images. Authenticity is an overused word nowadays but it shines through here, the inspiration drawn from the streets and people she knew intimately. It makes for a powerful and intimate portrait of an undeniable talent who deserves wider recognition, even if at times the polemic feels troweled on with a heavy hand.
“You can’t teach somebody how to have passion,” recalled one of Murtha’s former photographic tutors and it’s passion that burns off her monochrome prints, whether it’s street kids in South Shields or sex workers in Soho, one of her later projects. For all the family anecdotes and readings of Tish’s formidably trenchant view, it’s the pictures here that are worth a thousand words.
When speaking to art dealers about Dallas, the refrain is that Dallas buyers can’t be rushed into making purchases like collectors on the coasts, true to the idea that Texas and the American South move at a slower pace than the rest of the country.
“They like to take a little bit more time. In Los Angeles at Frieze, you’re sort of closing deals on the spot. In Dallas, people are more likely to ask for some more information to be sent to them. They want to sort of ruminate and do some research. It’s a little bit of a slower burn,” says Adrian Zuñiga, the director of Various Small Fires’s Dallas outpost, which opened in 2022.
That’s not to say Dallas is a sleepy, regional art market. The 16th edition of the Dallas Art Fair (4-7 April) will bring in 91 galleries to downtown Dallas, up from 88 last year. The number is beginning to approach the typical number of participating spaces just before the Covid-19 pandemic, when the fair would feature nearly 100 exhibitors. And Dallas is home to a number of serious, world-class art collectors.
Local galleries returning to the Dallas Art Fair this year include 12.26, Erin Cluley Gallery, Conduit Gallery, Cris Worley Fine Arts, Galleri Urbane, Keijsers Koning, Sputnik Modern and Valley House Gallery and Sculpture. Dallas galleries Tureen and Pencil on Paper will mark their first years taking part in the fair. Anat Ebgi, Patel Brown, Perrotin, Sulamit Nazarian and The Hole will also participate.
Austin gallery Martha’s is returning to the fair and doubling-down on its Texas-based artists. Owner and director Ricky Morales says the gallery will fill its stand with works by Conner O’Leary and RF. Alvarez, both based in Austin.
“Dallas is a really interesting city and fair because it’s a lot more laid back,” says Morales. “Those Miami and New York fairs are really intense, and there’s a lot of other fairs kind of going around at the same time. There’s the Dallas Invitational now, but it’s just across the street. I think the Dallas Art Fair kind of stands on its own. It’s a much more laid-back, Texas kind of fair.”
The Partner (2024) by RF. Alvarez Courtesy Martha’s
The Dallas Invitational (4-6 April), which was launched last year by James Cope, the owner of Dallas gallery And Now, is also gaining traction. It’s being held at the the Fairmont Hotel across the street from Dallas’s Fashion Industry Gallery, the venue that hosts the Dallas Art Fair, during the same week. Dallas’s ability to accommodate two separate fairs is evidence of the growing importance of the city’s art market, according to art advisor Adam Green, who splits his time between Dallas and New York.
“Dallas is one of the few art scenes to have two fairs occurring simultaneously,” Green said. “It’s the result of a lot of demand from galleries wanting to get their foot in the door of the Dallas art scene. It’s also a testament to just the growing collector base here and the fair serving as a good time for galleries to check in with existing clients and expose their artists to the community.”
The 14 galleries taking part in the Dallas invitational include Various Small Fires, James Fuentes, Hannah Hoffman, Lomex and Night Gallery. Various Small Fires previously took part in the Dallas Art Fair for several years before opting to switch to the invitational.
“I don’t really see it as a sort of competition,” says Zuñiga, the gallery’s director in Dallas. “It’s just more just like a reflection of Dallas’s growing market importance.” He adds that the smaller scale of the Invitational was a significant factor in the gallery’s decision.
“We found that we might be able to have some more intimate conversations. It’s a much smaller scale,” Zuñiga said. “More people are starting to pick up on it, and the quality of the galleries that are there are in line with our approach and with our programming. We also had a busy season of fairs, so the scale of it really worked as well in terms of our overall programming.”
This year’s Dallas fairs back up to the Great American Eclipse on 8 April, the last total solar eclipse to be visible in the contiguous US until 2044. Dallas is the largest city in the eclipse’s path of totality, where the full scope of the eclipse can be seen. The city said it projects a 35% bump in the number of visitors during the week of the eclipse, which some Texas dealers say they hope will translate into extra foot traffic for art events in the area, though it has caused flights, rental car and hotel prices in the area to soar.
Dallas Art Fair, 4-7 April, Fashion Industry Gallery, Dallas
Dallas Invitational, 4-6 April, Fairmont Hotel, Dallas
Operation Pets Alive, in partnership with Lenora Stein Photography, is happy to announce its 2025 Dog Calendar Contest! Proceeds from the sale of the calendar and photo contest will assist Operation Pets Alive with the spay and neuter of animals in the Montgomery County, Texas, area, as well as, medical bills, vaccines, and heartworm treatments for foster dogs and cats.
The Woodlands portrait photographer, Lenora Stein of Lenora Stein Photography, has chosen to partner with Operation Pets Alive for her inaugural dog photo calendar contest in an effort to raise $5,000 or more for this local rescue.
Montgomery County dog owners may enter their dog in this online contest by submitting a photo along with a $5 entry fee that is donated directly to Operation Pets Alive to help the rescue continue its efforts.
Entries and votes will be accepted from April 1 to April 26, 2024, and will be used to help determine the top 13 grand prize winners that will be photographed by Lenora Stein Photography during a professional studio portrait session to capture their image for the 2025 Operation Pets Alive Dog Calendar. The highest vote-getter will be featured on the coveted calendar cover.
A reserve-a-grid-space option for $10 is also available for those who wish to purchase an empty grid space and guarantee their pet a small square in the 2025 calendar.
The calendar contest fundraising goal is set at $5,000, all of which will benefit Operation Pets Alive and programs like Flight for Life, Pups on Trucks, adoptions, foster care, and more.
Copies of the 2025 Operation Pets Alive Dog Calendar will be available mid-September 2024 once Lenora completes photographing all 13 grand prize winners.
For more information on this fundraiser, please visit https://www.gogophotocontest.com/operationpetsalive2025 or contact Lenora Stein with Lenora Stein Photography at 713-417-1633 or lenora@LenoraSteinPhotography.com.
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About Operation Pets Alive
Operation Pets Alive (OPA) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, all-volunteer organization striving to elevate Montgomery County to a No-Kill community through innovative programs that raise community awareness, reduce the number of dogs and cats who enter our shelters and increase the number of dogs and cats who leave our shelters alive.
At OPA, we depend entirely on volunteers to implement our life-saving work. Each year, we rescue thousands of homeless pets, and impact the lives of hundreds more through our Core Programs. All thanks to countless volunteer hours. Join us and learn how you can make a difference in the lives of the homeless animals of Montgomery County by visiting operationpetsalive.org or following us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and X (formerly Twitter).
About Lenora Stein Photography
Lenora Stein is the owner and photographer of Lenora Stein Photography, which celebrates the joy and love between Texas pets and their people. Lenora specializes in both studio and on-location sessions throughout The Woodlands, Spring, and greater Houston areas. She loves helping pet parents decorate their home and office with beautiful signature wall art, fine art albums, and other heirloom products that showcase the ones they love most.
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