AFS Film: The Best Chef in the World
Brandon Somerhalder is a cinematographer and producer born in Colorado and raised in the beautiful state of Kansas. He studied film photography before transferring to the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts, where he graduated with a degree in Film Production. While in school, he began photographing issue-driven documentaries around the world; in Tanzania, highlighting local female community leaders working toward change in their communities around Dar Es Salaam, and in Cameroon, another profiling a community of freight ship stowaways fleeing poverty and instability. He was the co-director of photography on the Oscar-nominated short documentary A Concerto Is A Conversation, directed by Kris Bowers and Ben Proudfoot. He has produced and lensed two short documentary series with The New York Times and Breakwater Studios; Almost Famous, documenting people on the fringes of the history books who found happiness anyway, and Cause of Life, documenting lives lost early in the Covid pandemic and humanizing an ever-growing death statistic. One of the Almost Famous pieces, The Queen of Basketball, documenting the life of Mississippi basketball legend Lucy Harris, which he lensed and produced, won the Academy Award in 2022 for Best Documentary Short. Recent projects as Director of Photography include the recent Netflix documentary series Untold, recounting some of the most interesting sports stories of the last few decades with a personal and nuanced lens, and the upcoming Netflix series Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones, profiling 100+ year olds from the world’s longest-living regions of the world and hearing their secrets to not only a long life, but a happy and healthy one. He resides in Los Angeles and enjoys developing film photos in his home office while not out shooting.