The 11 Best Commercial Photographers in Pittsburgh

The world of commercial photography encompasses a wide range of niches. And for your brand to stand out, you need artists who know how to engage with your target audience. In a bustling city like Pittsburgh, marking your brand’s presence isn’t easy. But fret not! We have compiled a list of our favorite Pittsburgh commercial photographers to give your brand the facelift it deserves!

1. Juan Carlos Silva

Juan Carlos Silva, a Venezuelan photographer based in Pittsburgh, brings to life his love for photography through unique and extravagant concepts. His work focuses on fashion, beauty, editorial, and lifestyle images, bringing a very fresh perspective to each brand he works with. Silva is an expert at capturing the simplicity of his subjects while also capturing their most intricate details. He enhances his dynamic quality of work with strong visuals, precise angles, and bold colors. If you are looking for a bold and creative photographer, Sliva is your treasure!

2. Kristi Jan Hoover of KJH Studios

Powerful storytelling is the name of the game when it comes to working with Kristi Jan Hoover. Having worked with many clients, from prominent healthcare establishments to the US military, she has an incredibly diverse and rich portfolio. Owner of the KJH Studios, Hoover loves to fill the frame with her subject matter using wide to standard fields of view. Her craft is bold in impact, with rich contrast, illumination, and expressions that captivate the onlooker while leaving them wanting more. It’s nothing if not vibrant, full of motion and life — definitely anything but boring.

3. Jasmine Wilburn-Leftwich of J Visionary Visuals. 

We love how fashion and portrait photographer Jasmine Wilburn-Leftwich brings out colors freshly and uniquely that instantly make her clients utterly glamorous. In fact, she captures each shot with an incredible amount of balance between details, composition, and tones. Her commercial photography experience seems primarily centered on-brand photography. However, her energetic, colorful work demonstrates that she’d be a winner for product photography, advertising work, and all other types of commercial creative work. We love that she brings big vibes and bold colors better than just about anyone else in Pittsburgh.

4. Matt Dayak

If you are looking for someone to help you build a striking personality for your brand, then Matt Dayak is the man for you. Portraiture is this Pittsburgh commercial photographer’s strong suit, and his expert use of shadow and contrast makes for a complex yet exciting portfolio.

His product, food, and branding portraits help viewers better understand the products and the services offered by a specific brand. This is consistent, strong, professional work, and you don’t see a seasoned veteran every day. And his talents don’t end there. Dayak also specializes in videography and drone filming with an exceptional range of details. 

5. Christy Martin

Having studied visual communication and design, Christy Martin perfectly understands the role of photography in visual branding. This Pittsburgh commercial photographer is an expert at making everything look extraordinary, from dreamy, heartwarming lifestyle scenes to stunning shots of food platters. In many ways, her work feels like documentary photography. In fact, every frame feels authentic, and every scene feels alive. The SAT word we’d use is that it has a great deal of verisimilitude, which is just a fancy way of saying her work exudes realness.

6. Amanda Brisco

With her photographs published in magazines such as Whirl and Pittsburgh Magazine, Amanda Brisco is passionate about her job. She works with businesses (and individuals who are businesses) to create vivid brand imagery through her lens. She is a master at capturing smiles that genuinely radiate people’s personalities. So much so that her bright and airy style brings an effortless charm to each frame. While she’s got some product photography chops, she excels at executive branding and personal branding shoots, which offer opportunities for brands to express some personality and authenticity to form lasting connections with their audiences.

7. Justin Mackey and Alan Baldi of Cut ’N’ Run Studios

For photographer duo Justin Mackey and Alan Baldi of Cut N Run Studios, the commercial photography process is as essential as their impressive portfolio. To build a concrete story about each brand, this duo creates a diverse photo collection that includes live shots, poses, decor, and landscapes. However, their style is up close and intimate in a way that engages the audience to look for more. Whether it’s an on-location shoot or a studio set up with controlled lighting and composition, the duo’s combination of adaptability and creativity delivers excellent content that tells attention-grabbing stories.  

8. Missy Timko

Missy Timko loves capturing families, kids and newborns and at the same time does exceptional work when it comes to headshots, branding, and corporate photography. We are impressed by how well her headshots portray the unique character of each subject by using diverse backgrounds and compositions that go beyond head and shoulders captures. Timko’s clean, timeless, and modern style ensures that each brand has access to polished images with incredible visual impact. She makes perfect use of beautiful Pittsburgh outdoors for portraiture and adds custom elements to compliment her subjects creatively.

9. Brain Kaldorf

As a veteran product photographer specializing in beverages, Brian Kaldorf brings a lot of skill to the table. It’s remarkable how a good photo can communicate so much about the style of a product, as well as entice someone to try it out. In fact, one look at his Instagram feed will have you feeling thirsty for a sip of the products he styles. These are richly colored, perfectly lit photos that show a keen awareness of market trends and his clients’ needs and robust photo editing skills to jazz up the images when the ad or social media post calls for it. If you’re looking for a Pittsburgh commercial photographer to handle a product shoot, he may be the finest one you could hope to land.

10. Kaela Speicher

Kaela Speicher is one of our favorite Pittsburgh commercial photographers who also is an expert at brand development and content curation. Her love for fashion and art has helped her create a unique blend of contemporary style mixed with fine art, adding a dynamic dimension level to her work. In fact, Speicher’s love for tasteful vignettes, backgrounds that pop, and poses ranging from classic to quirky gives each portrait an individuality that’s rare with corporate headshots.

11. Theresa Glenn

Theresa Glenn brings her experience of 14 years to each collaboration she is a part of. Her background in photojournalism gives her shooting style a very distinctly captivating direction. So much so that her brilliance in the portrait genre, especially professional headshots, conveys confidence, openness, and individuality, all at once. Glenn makes excellent use of reflections, shadows, corners, and other elements of light and form, going from merely capturing her subjects to celebrating them artistically. She takes a personal interest in understanding the needs of every client she works with to perfectly capture their vision.  

Elevate your branding game

With so many businesses coming up, it takes an enormous amount of effort to stay relevant and original with your vision. Pittsburgh has brilliant creatives to help you narrate your story. We hope these talented bunch of photographers here can help you build your brand in the way you’ve always desired. In fact, we’re pretty confident whoever you choose from this list will tell your company’s story the way you want.

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