About Matthew Gillooley

A photograph must survive contact with the world: the day it was made, years of handling, whoever holds it next. I chose that standard at sixteen, on the first wedding I was responsible for photographing. More than fifteen years later I am a commercial and editorial photographer based in the San Francisco Bay Area, still photographing weddings. The training came in three parts.

First, printing. I ran archival production at a fine-art print lab in Santa Clara under master printer Mike Chambers, matching pigment to substrate, stretching canvas up to 12 feet. A print is permanent, a file is provisional.

Then the field. Commissioned documentary assignments in Kenya and Uganda, including work with UCSF Global Health Sciences, meant clinics and communities where access had to be earned before the camera came out. A signed form gets you in the room. It doesn't get you the photograph.

Then scale. Seven years on imaging and camera-quality programs at Amazon, Meta, and Apple, including a 3D product-imaging pipeline at Amazon that processed more than 750 million photographs.

That training now runs through both halves of the work: documentary wedding coverage, and commercial image libraries built to hold together.

Campaigns end. Wedding days become anniversaries. The photographs remain.