Meet Danielle Herzog of Downtown LA Arts District

Today we’d like to introduce you to Danielle Herzog.

Hi Danielle, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
I first fell in love with portrait photography as a kid. Every weekend, I would go to the grocery store with my dad, and I was completely enamored by the covers of magazines like Vogue and Vanity Fair. My family was very into film, music, and the arts, so seeing actors and musicians beautifully styled and placed in these incredible environments captivated my imagination. I remember thinking, “I want to make beautiful images like this one day.”

From there, I applied to several art schools in California and the UK and was accepted into all of them. However, without financial support from my father, I decided I didn’t want to put myself into debt to attend art school. Instead, I went to Palomar Community College in San Marcos, California.

While I was there, I fell in love with self-portrait photography. It started mostly because I didn’t have access to models, so I became my own guinea pig and test subject. I had some amazing teachers who encouraged my creativity and allowed me to incorporate self-portraiture into our landscape photography field trips. We traveled to beautiful desert locations throughout Southern California, including Death Valley and Anza-Borrego Desert, and those experiences had a huge impact on the way I saw photography and storytelling.

After that, I got a little lost in my 20s. I spent a few years following an ex-boyfriend from music festival to music festival, which eventually led me to move to Colorado with him. That relationship ended pretty quickly after I moved there, and I remember thinking, “Oh my God… how do I get back to California? I need to be in LA. I need to become a portrait and celebrity photographer.”

For the last two years I was in Colorado, I drove for Uber full-time to save enough money to move back to California and pursue photography.

Then, in July of 2019, just months before COVID-19 hit, my life changed completely. I found out I was seven months pregnant, and within that same week, my dad died by suicide.

On the day my dad died, I got on a plane and left my partner at a home we had only just moved into. I never went back to that house. My partner and his family packed up my belongings and brought them back to San Diego so I could be with my mom and brother during such a difficult time.

In October 2019, I gave birth to my precious daughter in the same hospital that I was born in.

After having some time to process everything that had happened, along with the enormous transition into becoming a new mom, I was determined to move to Los Angeles and finally focus on my photography career. Then, in February 2020, COVID hit.

My family and I ended up bunkering down at my dad’s house while it was being prepared to be sold. Eventually, in January 2021, I was finally able to move to the Downtown Los Angeles Arts District.

Since then, I’ve been rebuilding, growing, and working on my portfolio while continuing to develop my voice as a photographer. I’m still working toward the dream I had as a kid in the grocery store, creating beautiful, cinematic portraits of people that feel like they belong on the cover of a magazine.

It’s been a long and unexpected road to get here, but photography has always been the thread that has connected everything. I’m excited to see where it takes me next.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Absolutely not! Honestly, when I first moved to LA, I thought that if I just took beautiful pictures, people would find me. Clearly, that is not the case.

I’ve had plenty of struggles along the way, from trying to figure out how to navigate the industry to having shoots canceled that I was genuinely excited and proud of. I’ve also been told that my work is “too experimental” or “too artistic.” At first, I took that as a negative, but I’ve realized that those are actually the qualities that make my work mine.

I’ve been fortunate to work with Greay Magazine, and that experience has given me a glimpse into what it’s like to work in this industry and has helped me understand where I want to take my photography.

Now, instead of trying to make my work fit what I think people want, I’m choosing to lean into the weird, artistic, and experimental side of my photography. I want to work with people who are looking for something beyond a pretty picture.

I’m not interested in simply putting someone in front of my camera and taking a nice photo of them. I want to create something with them. I want to use art direction, styling, lighting, and storytelling to create an image that feels timeless and genuinely represents the person in front of my camera.

Anyone with a nice camera can take a decent picture. I want to create art through my camera. That’s what keeps me excited about photography, and that’s the direction I’m choosing to pursue.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I studied film in college and spent most of those four years shooting black-and-white film, so I have a real appreciation for the foundation that gave me. But I truly love color, especially bright, bold color, and you can see a lot of that come through in my work.

I also love props, and I have a particular love for flowers. If I could have flowers in every shoot, I’d be a happy camper. I think props can take you so much further with art direction and storytelling. They can completely change the feeling of an image and help create a world around the person you’re photographing.

More than anything, I believe every person is completely unique, and I love finding the little things that make someone who they are and bringing those qualities out in a shoot.

What I’m most proud of is that I feel like I’m constantly getting better. With every shoot, I learn something new, whether it’s from myself, the person I’m photographing, trying a different lighting setup, or experimenting with something new in post-production. I really enjoy playing around with new effects and seeing how far I can push an idea.

What I think sets me apart is how quickly I can come up with an idea and turn it into something visually strong. I tend to have a strong sense of art direction from the beginning, but I’m also very comfortable pivoting when a shoot takes on a life of its own. I’m easy to work with, I’m open to collaboration, and I always treat everyone on set with respect. Making people feel comfortable and creating an environment where everyone can do their best work is really important to me.

What were you like growing up?
From the age of three to eighteen, I danced full-time, both in and outside of school. I was pretty heavily immersed in the arts from a very young age, and everything from the costumes to the music had a huge impact on my artistic imagination. Dance also taught me a lot about discipline. It was physically and mentally demanding, and I learned to both love and hate the hard work that came with it.

I was a little shy as a kid, but I was also very sweet, curious, and sensitive. I went to school with a lot of Hispanic students, and being around so many people who didn’t look like me from such a young age made me curious about what makes each of us different. I think that experience taught me early on to accept and embrace people for who they are. Because I was a very sensitive kid, I also learned pretty early that I wanted to treat people the way they treated me and, more importantly, the way I wanted to be treated.

My mom is an insanely talented painter, and watching her paint while I was growing up was incredibly inspiring. She was always really supportive of whatever artistic craft or project I wanted to pursue. She made me feel like creativity was something worth exploring, no matter what it was.

My dad was a health insurance broker, but he had a huge passion for cooking, and you could tell that was his own form of artistic expression and release. Our relationship was difficult at times. I think he wanted a lot for me and worried about whether being an artist could actually be a successful career path. Because of that, it was sometimes difficult for him to fully support my decision to pursue art.

Looking back, I think all of those experiences shaped me in a big way. Dance taught me discipline, my mom taught me to embrace creativity, and growing up around different people taught me curiosity and empathy. I think a lot of who I am as an artist today started there.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.danielleherzogphotography.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/danielleherzogphoto
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DanielleHerzogPhotography
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielle-herzog-865256186

Image Credits
Cover photo- Self portrait
Photo 1 – Self Portrait in Studio
Photo 2 – Me taking a photo of Elijah Cooper
Photo 3 – Self Portrait stills from Herz and the Bloomz’s music video
Photo 4- Photo from shoot with Olivia Taylor Dudley
Photo 5- Photo I took of Robert Ri’chards
Photo 6- Me taking of photo of Eva Harlow
Photo 7- Photo I took of Raven Grim
Photo 8- Photo I took of Eve Harlow
Photo 9- Me taking a photo of Regan To
Photo 10-Self Portrait