Annie Leibovitz, Mark Seliger, and the New York Era of Magazine Photography
For several decades, New York magazine photography occupied a unique position within visual culture. It existed somewhere between portraiture, cinema, journalism, advertising, and mythology, creating images that shaped how entire generations imagined celebrities, musicians, actors, politicians, and cultural icons. Long before social media turned image-making into a constant stream of content, magazine photography carried enormous cultural power. A single portrait on the cover of a magazine could define an artist’s identity for years.
At the center of this world stood photographers who understood that portraiture was never simply about documenting a face. It was about constructing atmosphere, narrative, and psychological presence. Among the most influential of these photographers was Annie Leibovitz, whose work transformed editorial portraiture into something cinematic, theatrical, and emotionally charged on a scale rarely seen before.
Emerging through her work for Rolling Stone during the 1970s, Leibovitz developed a visual language that moved far beyond traditional celebrity photography. Her portraits often felt like fragments from larger stories rather than isolated images. Musicians, actors, and public figures were placed inside carefully constructed emotional worlds shaped through lighting, gesture, costume, symbolism, and atmosphere. The camera no longer simply observed celebrity culture from the outside. It participated in building its mythology.
One of Leibovitz’s greatest strengths was her ability to balance intimacy with spectacle. Even her most elaborate productions often retained a psychological vulnerability beneath the surface. Her portrait of John Lennon curled around Yoko Ono hours before Lennon’s death became one of the defining magazine photographs of the twentieth century partly because it transcended editorial photography itself and entered cultural memory as emotional symbolism. Other portraits — from Demi Moore’s famous Vanity Fair cover to her cinematic celebrity tableaux throughout the 1980s and 90s — helped redefine what magazine photography could become when treated with the scale and ambition of filmmaking.
New York during this era became a creative ecosystem where photographers, magazines, musicians, designers, stylists, filmmakers, and editors all influenced one another constantly. Publications like Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, and Interviewturned editorial photography into a major cultural force, and photographers became almost as recognizable as the people they photographed.
Within this lineage, Mark Seliger emerged as another defining figure whose portraits helped shape the visual identity of music, film, and celebrity culture during the 1990s and early 2000s. While Leibovitz often leaned toward theatrical narrative and cinematic scale, Seliger brought a different kind of intimacy and emotional texture to editorial portraiture. His photographs frequently balanced technical precision with imperfection, allowing grain, shadow, muted color palettes, and subtle emotional ambiguity to remain visible within highly polished magazine environments.
Seliger’s work for Rolling Stone became particularly influential because he understood how portraiture could humanize fame without diminishing its mythological power. His images of musicians and actors often felt quieter, stranger, and more psychologically layered than traditional celebrity photography. Rather than flattening personalities into glossy surfaces, he allowed tension, fragility, exhaustion, humor, and uncertainty to remain present within the frame.
Part of what made this entire generation of New York magazine photographers so influential was their mastery of light itself. Studio lighting during this era became highly sculptural and cinematic, drawing inspiration from classical painting, Hollywood cinema, fashion photography, and documentary realism simultaneously. Large soft sources, controlled shadow falloff, tungsten practicals, textured backgrounds, mixed color temperatures, and carefully restrained retouching all contributed to photographs that felt rich, dimensional, and emotionally believable.
This fascination with the tonal richness and cinematic atmosphere of classic New York magazine photography became one of the foundations behind the development of New York Studio Vol. 1 & Vol. 2. Rather than nostalgically reproducing vintage editorial imagery, the collections were shaped around the distinctly different visual languages that photographers like Annie Leibovitz and Mark Seliger brought into magazine culture during the 1970s through the early 2000s.
Leibovitz’s work often carried a warmer and more cinematic tonal palette — luminous skin tones, controlled golden highlights, deep atmospheric shadows, and carefully sculpted color relationships that gave her portraits a sense of theatrical intimacy. Even highly constructed images retained softness and emotional depth beneath the production itself. Seliger, by contrast, frequently leaned toward cooler, moodier, and slightly more restrained tonal worlds, where muted color separation, textured shadows, subtle desaturation, and imperfect atmosphere created portraits that felt psychologically quieter and more intimate.
The collections were developed around this tension between warmth and restraint, polish and imperfection, cinematic scale and emotional vulnerability.
Introducing the "New York Studio - vol 1" Lightroom preset, a powerful tool for photographers seeking to emulate the iconic look and feel of the great New York portrait and fashion photographers such as Annie Leibovitz and Mark Seliger. Artists that had a major influence on the world of photography in magazines like Vogue, Vanity Fair, and Conde Nast.
With its subtle desaturation and warm, earthy tones, the "New York Studio - vol 1" preset creates a moody, cinematic atmosphere in a warm green color palette. Whether you're shooting fashion, portraits, or street photography, this preset is sure to give your images a professional, polished look that will set them apart.
The "New York Studio" preset draws inspiration from the distinctive color grading techniques used by these famous New York photographers and brings that sense of style and sophistication to your photos. Whether you're looking to create a moody, urban vibe or add a touch of New York City glamour to your images, this preset is the perfect tool for achieving the look you want.
What is in the pack?
1 hand crafted New York Studio profile
9 custom presets
Remember - You can adjust the amount of profile effect by pulling the profile slider in the develop panel (at the top). No preset can give you a perfect result with one click - depending on your camera, exposure, light, and composition the result will differ. Use the different tools inside Lightroom to adjust exposure and contrast and you will have a great result.
IMPORTANT NOTICE This Lightroom presets is compatible with Adobe Lightroom versions of:
Adobe Lightroom CC
Adobe Lightroom Classic
Adobe Photoshop CC (Camera Raw filter)
Adobe Lightroom Mobile App (you will need a Creative Cloud subscription to import the profiles. You can do this by importing through the Lightroom CC desktop app and they will appear in your mobile app)
Please make sure you have the correct software before your purchase - refunds can NOT be given for digital downloads. Also, make sure to update your Lightroom to the latest version, so it can handle the included profile. (Older versions of Lightroom might have problems finding profiles).
Finally - we are so happy to introduce "New York Studio - vol 2" Lightroom preset, a fantastic tool for photographers seeking to emulate the iconic look and feel of the great New York portrait and fashion photographers such as Annie Leibovitz and Mark Seliger. Artists that had a major influence on the world of photography in magazines like Vogue, Vanity Fair, and Conde Nast.
With its subtle desaturation and warm, earthy tones, the "New York Studio - vol 2" preset creates a moody, cinematic atmosphere in a warm yellow color palette. Whether you're shooting fashion, portraits, or street photography, this preset is sure to give your images a professional, polished look that will set them apart.
The "New York Studio vol 2" preset draws inspiration from the distinctive color grading techniques used by these famous New York photographers and brings that sense of style and sophistication to your photos. Whether you're looking to create a moody, urban vibe or add a touch of New York City glamour to your images, this preset is the perfect tool for achieving the look you want.
What is in the pack?
1 hand crafted New York Studio profile
10 custom presets
Remember - You can adjust the amount of profile effect by pulling the profile slider in the develop panel (at the top). No preset can give you a perfect result with one click - depending on your camera, exposure, light, and composition the result will differ. Use the different tools inside Lightroom to adjust exposure and contrast and you will have a great result.
IMPORTANT NOTICE This Lightroom presets is compatible with Adobe Lightroom versions of:
Adobe Lightroom CC
Adobe Lightroom Classic
Adobe Photoshop CC (Camera Raw filter)
Adobe Lightroom Mobile App (you will need a Creative Cloud subscription to import the profiles. You can do this by importing through the Lightroom CC desktop app and they will appear in your mobile app)
Please make sure you have the correct software before your purchase - refunds can NOT be given for digital downloads. Also, make sure to update your Lightroom to the latest version, so it can handle the included profile. (Older versions of Lightroom might have problems finding profiles).