Portrait: A Documentary About a Popular Instagrammer and a Pro Photographer

Portrait is a new 20-minute documentary film by Columbus, Ohio-based filmmaker Andy Newman that explores the question, “In the age of Instagram, what sets a professional photographer apart?” Newman compares the lives and work of two people who are both crazy about photography, but who have chosen very different careers and mediums.

The first is Andria Lindquist, a Seattle-based lifestyle and wedding photographer who makes a living with her photographs. The second is Cory Staudacher, a Seattle-based web designer who has attracted over 174,000 followers on his Instagram account @withhearts.

When asked about Instagram and the term “photographer”, Lindquist states,

The core there is: [Instagram] changes the way [people] look at things and how they watch things, and that’s a photographer. So maybe that’s the definition.

Whether you’re doing it with your phone or you’re doing it with a $3,000 camera, it changes the way you look at things, and so I think that is the thing that ties us together.

The project was funded back in May after 68 donors contributed $2,655 through Kickstarter. At the time, Newman wrote,

I recently connected with Cory Staudacher, a web designer from Seattle. He’s friends with Andria Lindquist, one of the professional photographers I had hoped to feature.

As it turns out, Cory has never owned a DSLR and is in no way a professional photographer. Yet Cory, going under the name withhearts, has over 50,000 followers on Instagram.

What a better way to […] explore the creative process than to compare two friends: one professional photographer who makes a full-time living at what she loves to do, and an avid Instagrammer who has risen to some level of fame in the digital age due to his creative eye and iPhone photography skills.

Newman succeeded in creating a beautifully shot documentary that may remind many of you of why you fell in love with the art in the first place.


P.S. Back in May, we shared another short film by Newman: a BTS look at the work of street fashion photog Nick Fancher.

Discussion