The wait is over! Adorama has teamed up with fashion photographer and television personality Nigel Barker to find the“Top Photographer.” The five-episode series is slated to premiere on AdoramaTV in November of this year. Nigel Barker (a frequent guest judge on “Top Model” and star of “The Face”) hosts and will be enlisting the critical eyes of other professional photogs to assess the skills and talent of selected competitors vying for the top spot. Not only that, the last shooter standing will win a package of photo gear valued at $50,000 and an exhibition in New York City with Nigel Barker.
According to Barker, his involvement with “Top Photographer” was motivated by the desire to show the nuts and bolts of his art. “You get to see the glossy magazine,” he recently stated in an interview with NBC New York, “but you don’t get to see the process.” Thanks to the advanced sensor technology made available to smartphones, Nigel feels everyone has the potential to be a photographer. This is particularly true due to the popularity of social media. “You may have thought you were just a social media photographer,” he continues, “so it’s high time we do this.” “This” being the opportunity to test one’s skills against talented image creators regardless of your experience. Barker affirms, “the reality is it’s not necessarily about the camera. It’s about your eye.”
As for his approach to the job, Nigel Barker is interested in what he calls the “personality of the shot.” In other words, he’s all about people and the attempt to capture their personality by tapping into his own emotion via the lens. For example, Barker loves photographing his children, especially his daughter. “I have special ways to capture those moments,” he says. “Usually from a distance because she doesn’t know I’m there. Literally the hair on the back of my neck stands up on end. Because I realize I’m capturing a special moment. People will see it and then they’ll know the love and they’ll know that is my daughter.”
Nigel also strives to catch a specific moment in time, something that couldn’t occur at any other time or somewhere else. He alludes to rather exciting incident involving a photo shoot and a “two-thousand pound bull” within a bullfight ring. “Until they screamed my name I got up and saw the bull charging down the barrel of my lens. It actually scraped the bottom of my back.” He was afraid the matadors would kick him out of the arena. Instead Nigel received the flattering complement, “Mr. Barker, you have the heart of a bull.”
Barker himself began his career not as a photographer but as a model. Once he made the transition to the other side of the lens, Barker then opened his own studio, StudioNB. Since then his credits include GQ, Interview, Tatler, Seventeen among many, many other fashion magazines. There were the regular appearances on “Top Model,” of course. And a stint as host of Oxygen’s “The Face.” It appears that Mr. Barker has accumulated a vast portfolio of work provided by and seen in front of the camera.
Finally, Nigel Barker offers this sage advice to those aspiring contestants potentially appearing on this season of “Top Photographer.” “Ultimately, you have to be your own judge,” he says. “You have to know when you’ve got the shot. Don’t ask anyone else when you should add another stroke of paint to the picture. It’s all up to you.”
If you think you have the artistic chops to compete, you can register on Adorama’s website right here.
