Author Photos, Celebrity Photographs

Portrait Photography by Laura Sawchuk

Portrait Photography by Laura Sawchuk is something special. She specializes in images of writers, mainly from British Columbia. She has taken many cover shots for BC BookWorld, Canada’s largest independent publication about books and authors.

She excels at book cover photography or dust jacket prtraits. Her subjects have included the United Nations’ designated “boy soldier” Ishmael Beah, author of A Long Way Gone, and actor Stephen Miller of Da Vinci’s Inquest and numerous Hollywood films. For Random House Canada (McClelland & Stewart), she shot the cover image for Alan Twigg’s hardcover memoir, Full-Time: A Soccer Story. Her travels in South-east Asia and Europe have also resulted in many startling images not included on this specialized site. You can view more photos on Laura's blog, which she updates frequently.

It is Laura Sawchuk’s ability to engage her subjects one-on-one, to encourage them to enjoy the process of portraiture, that makes her subjects shine. Her images invariably portray artists in a comfortable setting, feeling good about themselves, fully participating in the cooperative act of photography, rather than being posed in artificial circumstances.

She is not seeking to be the next Annie Leibovitz, shooting only the stars. A new, emerging writer is just as important to her as W.P. Kinsella, who wrote Shoeless Joe that resulted in the Kevin Costner movie, Field of Dreams, and the phrase, “Build it and they will come.”

Luisa Maria Celis' historically accurate Arrows (2009) is the
first novel by a Venezuelan to be written and published in English.
Leilah Nadir won the George Ryga Award for Social Awareness
for her family history, The Orange Trees of Baghdad (2007).
W.P. Kinsella is a prolific novelist and short story writer who has received
the George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award (2009).

To arrange for your session, or to discuss options for locales, special events, pricing and prints, etc contact Laura Sawchuk Photography.