THE PRO INTERVIEW

Is there anything that Emmett Sparling can’t shoot? He’s captured fashion models, luxury cars, remote mountain ranges, and even whales. Keith Wilson tries to keep up with this prodigious mover from Vancouver…

01 EYE IN THE SKY

Emmett used a combination of fast shutter speed and fast timing to capture this helicopter, with its rotor blades frozen, over the centre of the famous Great Blue Hole, in the Lighthouse Reef, Belize

Lens Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L II USM

Exposure 1/1250 sec, f/4.5, ISO200

LISTENING to Emmett Sparling’s story and looking at his portfolio, you might think he is a young man in a hurry. The self-taught photographer has already worked professionally in fashion, travelled extensively to shoot landscapes and cultural portraits, won commissions from blue chip brands to photograph cars, beer, airlines and hotel rooms, as well as produce videos for big ad campaigns. On top of this, the Vancouver-based photographer is a budding film-maker with aspirations to direct feature-length movies. And did I mention his underwater photography? Yes, Emmett has even found time to learn freediving, so he can swim with whales. All this and he’s still only 22! Given what he’s packed into his life and career so far, you might think he’s perhaps a restless, hyperactive, fast-talking social media influencer, wanting to race through our time as quickly as possible. On the contrary, Emmett comes across as a very chilled and quietly spoken individual who speaks as he might when meeting a long-absent friend for a drink in his local bar. This is your round Emmett…

02 MODEL BEGINNINGS

One of Emmett’s early fashion photos, which gave him his first break in professional photography

Lens Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L II USM

Exposure 1/4000 sec, f/2.8, ISO160

03 MOUNTAIN VIEW

Two mountaineers picked out sharply by the early morning sun in late September as they walk a snow-covered ridge in the French Alps near Chamonix, France

Lens Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8L III USM

Exposure 1/1250 sec, f/7.1, ISO100

04 RAINBOW MOUNTAIN

It took a 4-day trek to reach this summit view in the Peruvian Andes, which shows how the Rainbow Mountain got its name

Lens Sigma 14mm f/1.8 DG HSM Art

Exposure 4 secs, f/2.2, ISO100

So, where did it all start?

I started when I first picked up a camera. I was doing macro photography, just wandering around my back garden and trying to find bugs and stuff, then eventually taking picture of my friends. My first professional gigs, where I was making money, was doing events and headshots, just being paid a couple of hundred bucks to take photos of an event.