Graduates
Image
Michael
Totten
He/Him/His
Academic Program
BFA in Photography and Imaging
Specializations
Seasoned across both large-scale productions and quiet, one-on-one shoots, able to carry a project with professionalism, sensitivity, and an easy adaptability to any environment.
Fluent with continuous, strobe, and natural light, drawing on film-industry experience with tungsten, HMI, and LED systems to adapt to any lighting scenario and shape tone and atmosphere.
Well-versed across both film and digital formats, including black-and-white and color negative processes, allowing me to move seamlessly between mediums while maintaining a consistent visual language.
Distinctions
Graduation with Distinction

Projects

About

Portraiture at the Intersection of Documentary and Cinema

My work lives at the intersection of portraiture, narrative, and fine-art practice. I spent years working as a camera operator and DP in the film industry, and that background continues to shape how I make images today.
I am drawn to quieter, more suggestive forms of storytelling, the tension between stasis and motion, the feeling that something is happening just beneath the surface. I make photographs that feel like they belong to a larger unseen story.
My influences are eclectic, and my work tends to sit where different visual languages blur together—the intimacy of documentary, the constructed world of cinema, and the interpretive quality of fine art. I try to make room for reality and imagination to meet within the same image, letting one inform the other.