Neal Preston: Iconography
Neal Preston is to rock and roll what Norman Parkinson was to fashion or Richard Avedon to portraits. His photographs define the icons of the rock era. For 30 years Preston has toured with the likes of Led Zeppelin, The Who, Bruce Springsteen, Queen, and Billy Joel. He’s shot Fleetwood Mac, U2, David Bowie, and Madonna. His pictures have appeared on numerous Rolling Stone covers — not to mention Time and Newsweek — and are featured in his first-ever solo retrospective.
And that’s just the music photography, for which Preston is best known. He’s also a 25-year veteran of People magazine, contributing dozens of cover portraits of athletes and movie stars. He’s worked six Olympic Games for People, most recently shooting Sasha Cohen in Turin.
Bruce Springsteen on stage with Clarence Clemons. © Neal Preston
As if that weren’t enough to establish him as one of the leading celebrity photographers of his day, Preston has worked as the unit and special photographer on films including “Vanilla Sky,” “Elizabethtown,” and “Almost Famous” (which contains uncannily close echoes of his own life), capturing the still images essential to publicity and ad campaigns.
Still, Preston resists star billing. “For me,” he muses, “it was never about going backstage or hanging with celebrities or achieving fame. It was always about making pictures I think are beautiful. That’s what I love, and I’ve been very, very fortunate to be able to do it. But it’s not about me — it’s about the photos, and the people in the photos. Because when you start thinking you’re the fifth member of a four-man rock band, you’re in a lot of trouble.”
Mac-anchored Workflow
Preston’s first computer was a Mac. “It was the user-friendliness that attracted me initially,” he recalls. Now, a Power Mac G5 Dual anchors his office workflow and he’s a proficient user of Photoshop. “I use the Mac for all image manipulation and archiving,” he notes. “I’ve never done that on anything other than a Mac, and frankly, I can’t imagine using anything else.”
Though he still likes the look of film, his clients, he says, require digital. And even when he shoots on film, “my images are digitized before they go to press in a book, newspaper, or magazine.”
Mad Love
Since meeting Aperture at the Turin Olympics, the friendship has blossomed into a mad love affair. The story of Preston’s first date with Aperture reads like a classic when-you-find-your-soulmate-you’ll-know-it tale, wherein the reluctant suitor falls hard upon encountering the one who offers more than he ever dreamed possible.
Preston had spent just a few hours getting to know Aperture when, on assignment for People — and under a tight deadline — he snagged a coveted one-on-one session with Sasha Cohen. He would have only about 30 minutes to capture her silver medal mood. With his Nikon D2H in hand, Preston raced to Cohen’s hotel for the shoot. “I did the whole thing digitally,” he recounts. “Then I rushed back to the press center, where we had a G5 set up with Aperture. I said, ‘OK, let’s go for it.’
“I downloaded the material from compact flash cards to Aperture. And it was amazing. I was able to edit the entire take, do all the color correcting, and play around with adjusting and enhancing the frames I liked. I converted some of them into black and white images. I did all the stuff I like to do with RAW files. Then I transmitted the images to the picture editor in New York.”
Preston marvels: “The entire process — from the time I met up with Sasha to using Aperture to download, edit, correct, and transmit the images to getting the email that we’d met the deadline — took just two and a half hours.”
