Our Facility and Equipment

Celebrity Photo Studio is located in the heart of downtown St. John’s, Newfoundland & Labrador. From our studio, you might see palm trees and cruise ships or violent Atlantic storms and 10’ snow drifts.

The studio sits at the intersection of Duckworth and Prescott Streets in the TD Place. It occupies 2000 square feet on the second & third floors of the  building. About half is dedicated to studio shooting areas and half is for production, editing and administration offices. We have great computer systems, four Apple and eight Windows computers all linked together with a brand new Gigabit intranet. This all speeds up editing and processing the thousands of photos we usually produce each week. People are the main strength of any creative business. Three fulltime staff are augmented by any number of occasional additional staff.  On Fridays you can usually find five people huddled around the coffee pot.

From a print production side of our business we have a couple of Epson 8 colour and a Canon 6100, 12 colour wide format printers. We have a medium sized dry-mounting press, laminator and matt cutter for framing and we actually still have a functional Black & White Darkroom.

Most of our clients don’t really care what kind of cameras we use, as long as they get great photographs. Photographers on the other hand love to see what the other guys are using.

Well here is a partial list:

Hasselblad H4D-40, Hasselblad 35-90 AF HCD f4-5.6, Hasselblad 120mm Macro AF f4, Zeiss 30mm F-Distagon f3.5,  Zeiss 50mm Distagon 1:4, Zeiss 80mm Planar f2.8, Zeiss 150 mm Sonnar f4, Zeiss 250mm Sonnar f5.6, Hasselblad 500c, Hasselblad 501c, dozens of magazines, grips, close-up and tele-extender tubes along with all the filters.

A couple of Sony α350’s, Sony R1, Sony DSC-f828 (Infra red), Zeiss 16-80mm AF f3.5-5.6, Zeiss 85mm f1.4, Sony 50mm f1.4, Sigma 14mm f2.8, also a bunch of incidental Canon, Nikon and Pentax cameras and lenses.

For studio lighting we have a Norman P2000 with a couple of heads, a half dozen Bowens mono-lights, portable sets of Elinchrom and Opus Pro kits. We use a Bogan Pro Pole system for our backgrounds and Manfrotto tripods & light stands.

Our location truck (Ford Flex) is equipped with a 1000w sine wave inverter and hundreds of feet of extension cords to power location lighting anywhere. Like any 25 year old photographic business there is also a dump-truck full of backgrounds, clamps, grips, stands, makeup, props and stuff that we use to make pretty pictures.

Lynn Young

Lynn hails from the small community of St. Lawrence, situated on the Burin Peninsula of Newfoundland. As a teenager she excelled in sports, with a natural prowess in soccer and volleyball; she became involved with a number of art projects and found creative ways to earn money doing odd jobs.  From then on, she knew she wanted to do something creative that allowed her the control of an athlete and the flexibility of an entrepreneur. In 1985, Lynn completed her education in Business Management and Marketing, then set out to make her mark.

She opened a successful framing business in 1988 called “Framed by Lynn”, in the bustling downtown area of St. John’s. This was closely associated with Robert’s photography business, and from there, she herself became serious about photography. Under the guidance of her photographer/husband, she evolved from assistant to co-photographer.

In 1996, Lynn and Robert incorporated Celebrity Photo Studio.  Her education allows her to direct the financial and business-development side of the company.  Plus, her management qualities spill over into the photography aspects of the business, from eyeing details, to settling shy or fussy children, to calming a nervous bride.  She’s in control, and everyone loves her cheerful approach.  This all shows in the final product.

Ultimately, her hand reaches into every area of Celebrity Photo Studio.  She sits with customers to help choose the ideal photographs. Plus, she is heavily involved in digital restoration work and in the creation of custom digital wedding albums.  Though these projects are time-consuming, the results are well worth the effort; customers are in awe of this work and attention.

Personally, urban panoramas are Lynn’s favourite subject… London, New York, Paris….Lynn has produced panoramas of all these iconic cities and has many more on her list.  As for her dream photo, she’s determined to shoot an at-dusk panoramic of the giant stone heads on Easter Island. Yet this is on land! Her passion is aerial photography, and she will jump at any chance to take photos from a plane or helicopter.

There is always something new and exciting in the world of photography, and Lynn will be there at the cutting edge.

Robert Young

Robert has been a professional photographer since 1983, and has owned various photography businesses since 1985. His earliest photographic memories revolve around his father’s darkroom in Labrador in the mid 1960's. His true love of photography began with his first medium format camera that was a gift from his parents in 1975.

“I was active in the Photo Club at Prince of Wales Collegiate, but we always had a better darkroom at home.”

In his second and third year of a cartography program at Memorial University, Robert was exposed to the “science of photography” in the university Remote Sensing Lab. “I was hooked” Robert said. “I knew from the moment that I picked up my first Hasselblad camera, that this is what I want to do for the rest of my life.” Robert worked at CameraMUN until 1985 when he and another CameraMUN photographer started Campro Photography.

In 1992 Robert and his wife, Lynn, purchased a studio and lab building on Pennywell Rd. in St. John’s where Robert operated a professional services lab called The Photo Studio. In 1996 they opened Celebrity Photo Studio and continue to operate Celebrity at there current location in the TD Building on Water Street in St. John’s.

As a professional photography business, Robert’s company is locally known for dramatic and documentary style Industrial Photography, for Commercial Portraits and publicity / advertising photography.  “The business of photography is all about the client. It is very technical, you have to interpret the clients artistic concept and use your own technical skills to achieve their vision.” Robert says. “Whether it’s underground in a mine, climbing around an offshore oil rig or shooting from an open door of a helicopter, I always aim to capture something extraordinary.”

Robert shoots industrial photography using one of the worlds most incredible and high resolution camera systems. The Hasselblad H4D-40 is arguably the biggest, sharpest and most versatile industrial camera in Atlantic Canada. Augmented with 7 Hasselblad / Zeiss lenses, Robert can capture everything from intricate detail on small products to striking, dramatic details of massive architectural construction. Always looking for new and magical ways to light his subject, Robert relies on all the latest soft and hard technology. He combines a quarter of a centaury of experience with a constant thirst for new and innovative ways to craft his images.

Robert has taught various photography courses through the Division of Lifelong Learning at Memorial University. He has taught Art-Smart and Pin-Hole Photography programs at several schools in the St. John’s region.

As an Artist, his current projects are photographing derelict farm machinery around the Avalon Peninsula using a 50 year old 8x10 view camera and a massive project to celebrate characters we see around St. John’s every day. This project will display 40 huge portrait images in three major galleries across Canada.

Robert is a member of the Professional Photographers of Canada (PPOC), Editorial Photographers (EP), The Adobe Photographers Directory, The St. John’s Board of Trade and is a board member of The Random Passage Trust and the Royal Newfoundland Regiment Advisory Council.