January 30, 2017

Meet Jared Cowan of Jared Cowan Photography in Sherman Oaks

Local Stories

Today we’d like to introduce you to Jared Cowan.

Jared, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
Movies and photography – basically anything that allowed me to handle a camera – have been passions of mine since I was a kid. Throughout high school and college – I graduated from The University of the Arts in Philadelphia in 2002 with a degree in film – I studied still photography while at the same time cultivated my knowledge of movies and filmmaking.

After working various film jobs in New York I moved to L.A. in 2005 and got a full-time position at a production company in Burbank. That job afforded me many opportunities to get more experience in digital cinematography. I was responsible for the company’s production equipment and worked in the field operating cameras and lighting interview subject for shows that would air on networks like Discovery, History, and TLC just to name a few.

In 2012 I was a little burnt out. Though I got to travel a little bit and work outside of the office on occasion, I wanted to try something besides the Monday – Friday work week I had done for the last seven years. I decided to go out on my own as a freelance camera person. I also started my own photography company so that I could work on personal projects that kept me engaged creatively at times when I wasn’t employed as a camera person on documentaries.

While photographing portraits and events for clients, I continued shooting photos for my own projects. In 2014, I was working on a series of photos of shuttered L.A. restaurants. On a whim, I decided to send some emails out to local news websites wondering if anyone would be interested in running my photos on this topic. I never expected to get even one reply. One day, though, I got an email from an editor at L.A. Weekly informing me that she was interested in putting something together based on my photos of these closed-down restaurants. Needless to say, I was thrilled. “A Brief History of Great Shuttered Restaurants of L.A.” was my first written piece and photo slideshow for L.A. Weekly.

I should back up and say that while I was working my day job at the production company, I would sometimes spend my weekends seeking out and photographing filming locations from some of my favorite movies. (I think film connoisseurs and casual movie-goers will tell you that there’s something extraordinary about standing at a place where a favorite movie was filmed.) Flash forward to 2014 and I have a few projects for L.A. Weekly under my belt – mostly food related – and I pitch a story about the San Fernando Valley filming locations from one of my favorite films, “The Karate Kid,” to celebrate the movie’s 30th anniversary. The idea was to photograph the film’s locations, talk to the movie’s location manager and maybe even interview the film’s director if I was lucky. I ended up getting in touch with both of them and interviewing most of the main actors from the film. The project that was supposed to be a brief article on the locations turned into a piece about the making of the film entitled “How a Movie Shot in the San Fernando Valley Made Us All ‘The Karate Kid.'” The article appeared as a cover story in the print edition of L.A. Weekly.

For the last two years, while still traveling for documentary work and shooting portraits and events, I’ve written and shot photos for over thirty articles and slideshows on filming locations and film-related topics.

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
As many people in L.A. can relate, the freelance life is not always easy. There are the obvious challenges of finding work and making sure work finds you. Though my work interests have similarities – documentary camera work and still photography – they’re two different jobs. I do photography work mostly on my own, but I sometimes rely on friends and contacts in the industry to refer me for camera operating gigs. I think I sometimes fall into this trap where people see that I have a lot of photography and writing work going on and therefore I might not be the first person they think of when they’re looking for a camera person. The truth is, while it can be a challenge, I’m quite adept at balancing these two areas of my work.

We’d love to hear more about your business.
As a photographer, my specialty is photographing places, which, of course, ties right into my love of shooting movie locations. However, I’ll be the first one to say that I’m not the only person who goes out and photographs cinema’s hallowed ground. Just do a search on the web for movie locations and you’ll get a list of a number of really good websites run by people who are excited about the subject. I would say where I differ is in the quality of the photographs. When approaching a filming location I always keep in mind that this place was chosen by a filmmaker to be used as a setting for a cinematic experience, and it should, therefore, be respected as such when taking photographs of it. I try to create something beyond a basic snapshot.

Certainly, I’m most proud of the fact that my photos and articles on filming locations have been recognized by some of the people who made the actual movies. There’s nothing better than Pee-wee Herman Tweeting your photo slideshow on the locations of “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure,” when the writer/producer of “Back to the Future” personally compliments your article about the movie, or when you get invited to moderate a Q&A with the director and stars of “The Karate Kid” based on the success of your article. These are people I’ve admired and respected most of my life. In a way, receiving their admiration is better than money.

What were you like growing up?
I was certainly never one of the so-called “cool kids.” I loved movies from a very young age. During high school, I had an interest in theater and I worked backstage and designed sets. Though there were aspects of high school I didn’t love, it was a very informative time me. Tim Burton’s “Ed Wood” had come out and that film, along with a handful of others, got me obsessed with the idea of film as an art. I had a great teacher, Mr. Weaver, who was in charge of the technical theater department, and he really made me feel like it was OK and cool to seek out a career in the arts.

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