Meet a Creative: Tara Kerzhner

Home Base / Boulder, Colorado | Bend, Oregon

Activities / Photographer, Cinematographer, and Documentary Filmmaker.

Why Tara

You know one of Tara Kerzhner’s climbing images when you see it. A splash of golden-hour light directs the eye towards a climber’s imposing objective. An athlete’s dynamic pose is juxtaposed against a cliff’s monumental lines. Through such contrasts, her still images convey remarkable movement, compelling you to look again, and to look longer. In an age of photographic saturation, endless thumbing past digital imagery, that’s remarkable.

Tara has been climbing for 20 years at a high level, and both proficiencies stem from ascending through a disadvantageous past. Let’s just say she once sold a camera to make rent. Her background makes her relish hard work. It’s an ethic she learned in the decade she spent in the food service industry while she was trying to break into photography. “I work my ass off because I learned how to hustle from a very young age,” she says. “I love even the toughest shoots—I’m always grateful to be on set. I thought I was going to be working in food service my whole life.”

Tara climbs at a high level, which gets her to more locations than most.

Tara has worked as a director and a DP, and as a photographer and a camera operator. Her photography credits and film projects, include National Geographic, HBO Max, Amazon prime, Nikon, and Apple, not to mention the gamut of climbing publications and brands. The work allows her to fulfill a childhood obsession with light. “As a high school art dork, I’d write poems about light,” she laughs. It still drives her. “Way before I pick up my camera I’m thinking about how the light will cross the frame,” she says. “I don’t like manipulating images later—I want to make it how I saw it, and I do the prep work to make that happen.”

Tara’s climbing prowess is an invaluable tool in several ways. On smaller budget projects, she serves as her own rigger. Her climbing background helps when she’s working with other athletes, especially in more personal film work. “They are often more willing to trust me because I’m one of them,” she says.

Tara received a National Geographic grant alongside Len Necefer to give an Indigenous perspective on the Covid 19 crisis on the Navajo Nation during the summer of 2020.

Specialized Skills

Tara is known for her artistic approach to climbing photography, but her portrait work is just as strong. On travel assignments for National Geographic, Tara displays a knack for traveling to new settings and efficiently documenting the culture of the place through the individuals she finds there. The key to those portraits is being perceptive to who the subject is, she says, but also, “working quickly and decisively.” It’s a skill that carries particularly well to her brand work.

“I love working with stylists and models,” says Tara, describing the process of documenting dozens of looks by directing models to best display them while, as always, deploying her trademark mastery of light and composition. The result is work that conveys the brand’s core sensibility—the models look authentic in the landscape and in the clothing.

Outdoor photography teaches artists how to use natural light.

Tara’s eye for capturing light and shadows, particularly, is unparalleled. She is an elite athlete herself, able to operate independently in difficult and technical terrain. Her working style is direct and frank and she always speaks up in favor of improving the shot or the storytelling.

Sarah Steele Co-founder, Well Travelled Collective

Situational portraits are an art form in themselves.

What's Next:

Most of Tara’s upcoming work is shaded by NDAs, but in her travels to climbing spots around the world, she is shooting constantly, landing photos in editorial galleries. “I’m at the crags where the pros congregate, so I’m there when the organic moments happen,” she says. That process also allows her to push her creativity forward in her own time, experimenting, and as she says, “leaning into the unknown and the uncomfortable.”