About Josh Separzadeh
I'm a Los Angeles–based key art and entertainment-marketing photographer. Multi-time Key Art Award winner. 15+ years inside the production system that builds movie posters, streaming campaigns, and entertainment-marketing imagery for HBO, Universal, Sony, Marvel, YouTube Originals, and Interscope.
Most photographers describe themselves as photographers. The work I've done sits inside something larger: campaign-production reality. Casting, prop sourcing, wardrobe coordination, visual development, compositing workflows, retouching pipelines, talent management, and cross-department creative collaboration are all part of the same job. I work the full pipeline — capture, post, asset management, multi-platform delivery — as one engagement. That's the difference studios book me for.
How I got here
I came up inside Cold Open (Venice Beach, 2009–2019), one of the industry's defining entertainment-marketing agencies. That's where I learned the difference between a beautiful photograph and a campaign image. The first is decorative. The second has to survive studio executive review, work in multiple formats, composite cleanly with other elements, and translate across cultural markets. Cold Open taught me that the photographer who solves all of those at once is the one studios call back.
Since going independent, I've shot campaign-led work for the studios above, plus AMC, FX, Cinemax, Magnolia Pictures, Focus Features, 20th Century Fox, Disney+, Hulu, Amazon, and others. The work has earned:
- Gold Key Art Award — Game of Thrones (HBO, S3 one-sheet)
- Gold Key Art Award — Catfish Teaser (Universal)
- Bronze Key Art Award — Whiplash International One-Sheet
- Gold Graphis Poster Annual — The Collector One-Sheet
- Gold Graphis Advertising Annual 2018 — Lindsey Stirling, Brave Enough (YouTube Originals)
- Merit Graphis Advertising Annual 2018 — Mind Field S2 (YouTube Originals)
- Nomination Golden Trailer Award — Apartment 143 (Magnolia Pictures)
How I work
Photography. Key art for theatrical, streaming, and franchise campaigns. Celebrity portraiture. Compositing-ready capture for multi-element campaign builds. Commercial product and editorial work.
Post & assets. Full Adobe Creative Suite. Capture One certified. Retouching oversight. Asset management, naming conventions, versioning. Multi-platform delivery — theatrical, streaming, OOH, social, all formats.
Creative operations. Production coordination across photo, post, and platform teams. Cross-department creative collaboration. AI-assisted workflows: prompt engineering, generative reference imagery, asset variation at scale, retouching acceleration. The AI fluency is real and current — not a buzzword.
Creative direction. Campaign-level visual planning. Concept development. Brand and visual identity strategy. Entertainment-marketing fluency built from 15 years inside the production system.
Why this matters for your campaign
Hiring a photographer who only does the shoot day leaves you stitching together asset management, retouching, compositing, and platform delivery across three or four other vendors. Each handoff is a place where the work loses fidelity, schedule slips, and budget creeps.
What I offer is the alternative: one creative partner who already speaks every part of the language. Capture One on set. Photoshop and full Adobe in post. Asset management and platform delivery on the back end. AI-assisted iteration where it accelerates the work without compromising executive defensibility.
Premium experience, approachable pricing. Studios and agencies that have hired me come back because the value math works: one specialist replacing three vendors at a per-deliverable cost that's lower than the cheaper-per-day option.
Beyond entertainment
While entertainment marketing is the specialty, the same production discipline translates directly to commercial brand work, celebrity editorial, product campaigns, and high-end editorial portraiture. If your project needs cinematic visual treatment, technical compositing precision, or campaign-grade asset management — even outside the studio space — the framework is the same.
Based in Los Angeles
LA-based. Travel available for studio campaigns nationwide and internationally. Studio access in the LA area; remote production coordination for distributed teams.
For commissions, agency partnerships, and senior creative-operations engagements:
joshsep01@gmail.com
joshsep.com · LinkedIn /in/joshsep