The Anti-Instagram Photographer
In an era when automotive photography has become a volume game -- spray hundreds of frames, filter the best, post to Instagram, repeat -- Michael Alan Ross represents something closer to a dying breed. David Von Bader's interview for Chance Ops reveals a photographer whose methodology is almost perversely deliberate, rooted in film-era discipline and a conviction that emotion, not pixel count, is what separates a photograph from a snapshot.
Ross's career trajectory alone makes the piece worth reading. He spent nearly 25 years as a professional musician before stumbling into modeling and acting after a producer's wife scouted him while he was singing on a Chevy commercial. From there he absorbed the craft of photography by watching crews work from the other side of the lens. He describes the process with characteristic understatement:
I ended up with the Ford Agency and Don Buchwald's agency doing commercials, soap operas, and print work. I wasn't the fashion guy, but I'd get the guy next door gigs. I found myself surrounded by these amazing creative crews and traveling all over for shoots and I was always asking the crews questions about their work -- things like "Can you explain why you lit it that way?" I eventually became a full-time shooter by learning from the other side of the lens. It was osmosis.
That word -- osmosis -- is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Ross did not attend photography school. He did not apprentice under a master. He simply paid attention while doing something else entirely, which may be the most honest account of how creative careers actually develop.
Intentionality as Rebellion
The central argument Ross makes throughout the interview is that slowing down is itself a radical act in contemporary photography. His process involves extensive pre-visualization: scouting locations, building shot lists, creating storyboards, and then waiting for precisely the right light before pressing the shutter. He is emphatic that he does not fix things in post-production.
I want to feel the image before I release that shutter. So much of my work is about logistics -- getting things in the right place at the right time. I don't shoot spontaneously and I'm not the guy that's going to fix it in post. I'm an old school film guy because that's where my roots are, so I want to be able to look in that viewfinder and know that I've done everything I can to make it work before I release the shutter.
This philosophy stands in stark contrast to the dominant workflow in commercial photography, where digital capture has made the marginal cost of each additional frame essentially zero. The prevailing logic is rational enough: shoot more, pick the best. Ross argues that this abundance comes at a cost -- specifically, the loss of compositional rigor and emotional investment that happens when a photographer knows they have only one chance to get it right.
His anecdote about shooting the original Porsche Boxster prototype in Wolfsburg crystallizes the point. After months of planning, he arrived at the Porsche Pavilion at sunrise, positioned the car, and then simply stood there, captivated, until his art director broke the spell. Ross compares the moment to a scene from The Secret Life of Walter Mitty where Sean Penn's photographer character is so moved by a snow leopard that he refuses to raise his camera.
Emotion is the goal. If you get choked up about the shot, you've done it right and you should feel something in your chest. That moment of emotion and that same feeling is what you want to inspire in other people.
Composition as Storytelling
Ross's comments on negative space and composition reveal a photographer who thinks more like a cinematographer than a typical stills shooter. He describes composition as a form of guided storytelling, where the photographer chooses where the viewer's eye enters the image and where it exits, while leaving enough open space for the viewer to construct their own narrative within the frame.
This is a sophisticated understanding of visual communication, and it explains why Ross's images are frequently described as cinematic. A car photograph that merely documents a vehicle's appearance serves a catalog function. A car photograph that creates an emotional narrative -- through placement, background selection, and the interplay of natural light with sculptural form -- does something else entirely.
His advice on developing a personal style is equally grounded. Rather than studying Instagram feeds, Ross recommends watching films, visiting architecture, and printing ten favorite photographs to spread on a floor and analyze for common threads. The tactile, analog quality of that exercise is telling. In a world of infinite scroll, Ross believes the physical act of looking -- really looking -- at a printed image reveals patterns that screen-based review cannot.
Finding your signature in the way you see things and finding the joy in showing that different vision is something you have to work on every day. You have to get to a point where you can't help but crop the situations you find yourself in in your head.
The Counterpoint: Is Deliberation a Luxury?
There is a tension in Ross's philosophy that the interview does not fully explore. His approach works because he has reached a level of reputation where clients hire him specifically for his vision. A photographer early in their career, scrambling for work and competing on price, may not have the luxury of spending months pre-visualizing a single shot. The run-and-gun approach Ross criticizes is often born not of laziness but of economic necessity -- editorial rates have collapsed, social media demands constant output, and the market rewards volume and speed.
Ross himself acknowledges this indirectly when discussing corporate clients. Even at his level, he notes, clients have parameters that need to be met. The romantic image of the artist waiting for the perfect moment must coexist with deliverables, deadlines, and brand guidelines. His story about pivoting from Porsche photography to shooting hydrogen plants for the Department of Energy illustrates this pragmatism -- he recognized that his compositional style translated to industrial subjects with reflective surfaces and architectural geometry, and he adapted.
There is also the question of whether the 10,000-hours framework Ross invokes still applies in an age of computational photography, where smartphone cameras handle exposure, focus, and even composition suggestions algorithmically. Ross hedges on this point, saying "technology changes everything these days" before immediately affirming that "you have to do the work." It is a reasonable position, but it sidesteps the deeper question of what "the work" means when the technical barriers to competent photography have largely vanished.
The First Frame Problem
One of Ross's most provocative claims is that the best portrait is usually captured within the first five frames. Von Bader draws a parallel to recording music, where first takes often carry an energy that subsequent attempts cannot recapture. Ross agrees, attributing it to authenticity:
I think it's because it's real in the beginning. The first take or the first frame is the real one. Then we go "Oh, let me polish that up a little bit" and it loses something.
This idea runs counter to the dominant culture of iteration and refinement in commercial photography. It also raises an interesting paradox in Ross's own methodology: if the best shot happens in the first five frames, why spend months in pre-visualization? The answer, presumably, is that all that preparation is what makes the first frame possible -- the logistics, location scouting, and mental rehearsal ensure that when the shutter finally opens, everything is already in place. The spontaneity is manufactured through meticulous planning.
Bottom Line
Von Bader's interview with Michael Alan Ross is a compelling portrait of a photographer who has built a career by swimming against the current. Ross's insistence on pre-visualization, emotional engagement, and compositional discipline offers a genuine alternative to the volume-driven approach that dominates automotive photography. Whether his methods are replicable for photographers without his reputation and access is debatable, but the underlying principle -- that slowing down produces more meaningful work -- transcends photography and applies to nearly any creative discipline. Ross's own career, built on saying yes to unexpected opportunities and absorbing knowledge through sheer attentiveness, is itself the strongest argument for his philosophy.