Welcome to BTB’s The Bottom Line, our deep dive with the leaders, creators, and disruptors who’ve rewritten the rules of success. We skip the rehearsed answers and dig into the contradictions, what actually works versus what sounds good, the moments that changed everything, and the hard truths they’d tell you off the record. Less corporate speak, more real talk.
Celebrity photography is not a discipline for the fragile, and few understand its demands more clearly than Lee Malone. For over a decade, the Irish-born photographer’s portraits have appeared in landmark publications including Vogue Arabia, Flaunt, and Numero, capturing subjects as varied as Yerin Ha, Rita Ora, Ellie Goulding, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Kaya Scodelario, and heavyweight champion Tyson Fury.
Be it geographically, from Dublin’s smaller creative circles to the crowded streets of London—one of the world’s most competitive markets—or artistically, from emerging actors to household names, Malone’s career has been defined by navigating scale without losing precision. He treats every shoot as a conversation through the lens, built on trust, respect, and the ability to move quickly while still holding to vision.
His journey has unfolded against a backdrop of constant transition. Film giving way to digital, digital now challenged by AI, and editorial budgets thinning even as social media democratises image-making. Through it all, Malone has been blunt about what endures: longevity belongs to those who keep working, keep learning, and keep finding new ways to see.
We ask him 11 questions about the balance between vision and compromise, and what survival looks like in a saturated industry.
1. Moving from Dublin’s smaller scene to London’s competitive market is no small shift. What did that transition teach you about risk and resilience?
Dublin gave me my start, but it’s tiny, you can hit the ceiling fast. London is the opposite, it’s massive, and that can be overwhelming. But the opportunities are just as big as the competition. I learned that you can’t really play it safe here. You have to back yourself, stay consistent, and be open to evolving all the time. Risk is part of it—you either lean into it or you’ll get swallowed up.
2. Celebrity photography demands balancing the needs of the subject, their team, the publication, and your own vision. When those interests collide, how do you decide what wins?
It can be a hard one to navigate if you don’t have the years behind you. But the reason you’re booked in the first place is because of your vision and your energy, not because you’re just going to say yes to everything. You’ve got to stick to that. Most of the politics happens before you even get on set—moodboards, direction, all that. Once the trust is there, it should flow. And if you can make the person in front of your lens feel at ease, that’s when everyone walks away happy.
3. You’ve worked with stars at very different points in their careers from global icons to people just starting to break through. How does that difference play out on set?
Honestly, I don’t really see a difference. I treat everyone the same way I’d want to be treated, putting respect first. Whether it’s someone in the middle of a massive Netflix run or someone who’s just arrived, the job is to make that connection quickly so they feel themselves in front of the camera. Once that happens, the images speak for themselves.
4. You often shoot people at their most constructed—full glam, styling, controlled lighting. In an age where “authenticity” is supposed to be the ideal, what role does fantasy still play?
I think we always need fantasy! If I sit down to read, I want to be taken somewhere else, not stuck in day-to-day life. It’s the same with photography. Look at the box office, the biggest films of the last 15 years are all fantasy or sci-fi. People want that escape. When I’m planning a shoot, I’ll pull in elements from old movies or icons, and that makes the end result feel like a little world people can step into. That’s what makes it special.
5. Social media has made everyone a “photographer.” Celebrities can post directly, and audiences lap it up. What do you think is missing in that?
The tech is amazing, don’t get me wrong, but it’s also warped how people see composition. Everything’s square, everything’s centred, because that’s what Instagram wants. A phone will give you an image, sure, but not necessarily a story. A photographer thinks beyond the crop, beyond the feed. Fast images blow up and disappear, but real craft—composition, space, patience—that lasts.
6. The industry has shifted from film to digital to AI. What do you feel has been lost, and what’s been gained?
AI is definitely here to stay, but there’s only so far it can go before the work feels cold. Once you lose the heart, you lose the image. Film, on the other hand, has made a big comeback. The return of 90s aesthetics in fashion has pulled younger photographers back into analogue, and you can see it everywhere. It’s why film stock is so expensive again, there’s still a hunger for that tangible quality.
7. The most successful photographers today are often as much business operators as artists. What’s the business side you lean on most?
Work ethic, plain and simple. That’s the thing I think a lot of younger photographers miss. You have to be your own PA, your own PR, your own producer. Nobody’s going to do it for you. Learn how to email, learn how to call a client, show up on time. Once you build those habits, you start attracting collaborators who work at the same level, and that makes the whole process stronger.
8. Sustainability is changing every industry. Are you seeing it reshape photography?
Honestly, not enough. Fashion’s obsession with speed is still driving so much waste, for example clothes straight into landfill that don’t even get reused. Shoots haven’t shifted much in how they’re planned, at least from what I’ve seen. People talk about it, but on the ground? It feels a long way off.
9. Every photographer has a shoot that didn’t go to plan. What’s the biggest lesson those moments taught you?
Preparation matters, always. But even with that, things go sideways sometimes. The key is learning to adapt in the moment without letting anyone else know something’s gone wrong. That ability only comes from experience. Doing the shoots, making the mistakes, and fixing them quickly the next time. You can’t fake it; you just build that skill over time.
10. If you had to predict the biggest shift in photography that most people aren’t talking about yet, what would it be?
Budgets. Clients and magazines cutting costs, not paying for the level of work they’re asking for. The saturation of images means there’s more quantity than quality. The shift is going to be about who can survive that, and who can keep their standards even when the resources shrink.
The Bottom Line:
Work hard and keep it fresh. Enjoy what you do. Patience is key, because the camera is basically your eye—you’ve got to trust it. If you believe in the work, it’ll show.