Manifest

I am doing highly creative work for clients who value what I do and are just as invested in building long-lasting professional relationships built on trust and respect.

My clients encourage me to bring my ideas and concepts to the table. They recognize that my creativity is one of my most valuable parts. There’s a difference between just taking pictures and telling a story and creating a narrative.

My clients hire me because my work has a unique voice and aesthetic. There’s a level of taste and sophistication that is rare, especially at a time when so much focus is placed on trends.

I work with people who yearn for authentic human interaction and create content that truly stands out. We value the importance of the creative process and the artisans and craftsmen who have influenced the world around us as much as anyone in the tech industry.

I am grateful to follow my passion and do what I truly love for a living. I am happy and content knowing I am fulfilling my life’s purpose.

-Phillip Istomin

SCELTO Restaurant Interiors

I had the pleasure of photographing a gorgeous new restaurant - SCELTO. The interior design element was executed by two incredible, multi-talented people: Gary Vlasic and Jamie Clyde. The space has a dark, moody, swanky, sexy vibe. I love the richness of velvet, the sleekness of stone, and the warmth of wood throughout the interior. Gary’s own original art is also on display in the private dining room as well as the bathroom entryway. Salt Lake City keeps growing and evolving into a place that I feel proud to be a part of. The food scene here is pretty fantastic, and SCELTO is just one of the latest additions. Hope you see and taste it for yourself.

iDKHOW GLOOM DIVISION

I was fortunate enough to be contacted by Concord Records last summer to see if I’d be interested in shooting the album artwork as well as press photos for Dallon Weekes and his band I DON’T KNOW HOW BUT THEY FOUND ME. I jumped onboard with little hesitation since music was my first love and form of creative expression prior to photography. I’m always excited to have the opportunity to combine the two mediums. Dallon’s vision for this project matched my aesthetic perfectly, it was a natural fit. I had a great time collaborating with everyone involved to bring Dallon’s vision to life. I recently got my hands on an actual physical copy of GLOOM DIVISION and was blown away by the the quality and execution of the packaging. Here are some snaps:

iDKHOW GLOOM DIVISION credits:
Photography: MANICPROJECT
Creative Direction: Dallon Weekes
Graphic Design: Sage LaMonica
Styling: Farasha
Hair&Makeup: Paula Dahlberg / Nikki Breedlove

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Press photos and magazine covers that have come out recently:

Inside Angie Harrington’s Haute House: A Utah Style & Design Cover Story

Coming off the success of our first shoot for People Magazine, Angie and I were looking to see if we could go '2 for 2' with another major feature. This session for Utah Style & Design was the perfect opportunity to capture the synergy between Angie’s personal fashion sense and the incredible, eclectic interiors of her home, designed by Jessica Bennett of Alice Lane Interior Design.

Angie is a dream collaborator—a welcoming hostess who is as kind as she is stylish. She has an innate ability to take direction while bringing her own creative energy to the frame, ensuring every shot is on point. It was a privilege to document how her fashion-forward sensibility lives within such a beautifully curated space.

The Ashton project interiors

This is a recent favorite interior design project I photographed for Katie Conner & Lisman Studio. Katie is talented beyond her years and this is the latest of several shoots we’ve done together. Here’s what she had to say about the project:

“This luxe interior in the heart of Salt Lake City combines ultimate comfort with sleek and refined craftsmanship. When our client approached us looking for a luxuriously sophisticated second home, we jumped at the chance to bring their dreams to life. Their only requirement for this entire project was, "Wow". I mean, what more could a designer ask for? 

Bringing a strong skillset and intense creativity was a must. We spent nearly 6 months simply refining the palette and diving deep into unusual materials and processes. After working very closely with our most trusted local craftsmen and builders, we pulled together a uniquely stunning home with incredible architectural features and luxurious furniture.”

-Katie Conner

Suddenly it's now

We’ve all been hearing about AI for a while now, but up until last year or so, it was a somewhat alien concept looming in the not-so-distant future. But now we all find ourselves a part of some great experiment, whether we are ready for it or not. Someone likened it to a 20-mile-wide asteroid that has made an impact with the world as we know it. I think that’s an apt analogy. Will we fare as well as the dinosaurs did? This remains to be seen. 

BBC.com

I wanted to share my thoughts specifically on the way AI is affecting and will surely continue to greatly impact the area of life in which I found my calling—creativity. Photographers, retouchers, and digital artists have been manipulating images for years. I’m sure most of us are grateful for the advancements in computer software that have made this process abundantly easier, more user-friendly, and far less time-consuming. I’ve personally never been a big fan of heavy digital manipulation. Complex, Marvel-like photo composites just never did it for me. In most cases, that type of work just came off as fake to me—more digital skills than art. The same goes for films, my main source of influence. I don’t want to be able to easily tell what’s CG and what was clearly shot on a green screen. That’s why I admire a director like Christopher Nolan so much. He thrives on making his films as real as possible by doing the vast majority of his effects in-camera while shooting on film with giant, burdensome IMAX cameras. His new film, Oppenheimer, is said to not have any CGI effects whatsoever. That’s an INCREDIBLE feat in this day and age. Sadly, Nolan is a dying breed of film director.

My favorite director working today, David Fincher, is someone who embraces the latest technology but only uses it in subtle ways in service of the story. He will meticulously obsess over every detail in order to achieve a level of realism that becomes impossible for the viewer to decipher from the special effects he deploys.

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And now we have Hollywood writers and actors on strike, partially due to AI’s "existential threat." We’ve reached a point where someone with no credible skills or experience can simply download an app and make Arnold Schwarzenegger sing and dance like Whitney Houston. Isn’t that "fun?" More mind-numbing entertainment to consume while scrolling on the toilet. AI can write you a script good enough for a Netflix night in.

Los Angeles Times

But getting back to photography... I remember the first time I saw some of the Midjourney-produced images that exploded all over Instagram and the internet at large a few months ago. For those of you unaware, Midjourney is a generative AI program that generates images from natural language descriptions called "prompts." Basically, you type in key words and key phrases in order for the AI to generate whatever creative concept you have in mind. These "creations" were impressive, to say the least. Some of them were incredibly wild, surreal, and unreal, which of course they were. Suddenly, people were given the ability to create Wes Anderson-like film stills from the comfort of their homes. After a while, I learned how to spot them. Everything in the image was either too weird or too perfect. The beautiful human level of slight imperfection was missing, unless you count odd hands and fingers that AI seems to produce… Midjourney and other programs like it completely bypass most stages of the creative process. The prep, the planning, the scouting, the sourcing, the casting, and most importantly, the collaboration with other humans, as well as the actual shooting, are completely unnecessary. You can just sit in your house and feed prompts into the machine. It’s yet another shortcut created to make our lives "easier." Another "technological advancement" to keep us from having to interact with other people in the physical world. I personally value human creation over artificial generation. 

It comes as a shock to realize that the creatives of the world make up a segment of society seriously threatened by the implementation of AI, before the blue-collar workers or individuals with seemingly more "mundane" jobs.

Of course, some people will say that these are just more tools to aid the artist in their creations. What’s the harm in building out your fantasies in a world that is starting to resemble a kind of "virtual reality" with every passing moment? Well, it becomes a problem when you can alter someone’s appearance beyond recognition. You can literally turn someone’s frown into a smile, take off 20 years and 20lbs and call it good. Put out more fake content into the world. Distort reality; create your own version of reality. Life imitates art, and vice versa.

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I think a lot of us have a love-hate relationship with technology. In some ways, the tech industry has produced some of the greatest inventions of our time, but it’s a double-edged sword, like most things. Social media was sold to us with the promise of connecting with other people, but the side effect so many of us are experiencing now is an epidemic of loneliness and isolation. We are slowly losing our humanity to the machines that we’ve created. Everything has become instant gratification: instant result, instant dopamine hit. We’ve cut out the journey of discovery, which to me is what makes life and being a human so beautiful. We’re growing more numb, needing more and more stimuli with each software update and the latest gadget unveiling. We’re also overwhelmed by the amount of information and visuals broadcasted into our minds via our precious, shiny hand-held monoliths every single day. The tech industry is creating a world of machines. What will be our purpose as humans? What’s the end game? The next few years will be fascinating and very telling, no doubt. We have no choice but to adapt and fight for our survival so we don’t end up obsolete, like the dinosaurs.

Angie Harrington People Magazine Interview

I’ve always had dreams and ambitions when it comes to my career and life in general, but I never thought that my photos would end up in People Magazine. Thank you Chris and Angie for trusting me to capture these images and help you share your story:

Angie Harrington is putting family first.

In a conversation with PEOPLE confirming that she will be leaving The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, the mom of three, 41, reveals for the first time that son Hart with husband Chris Harrington has been diagnosed with autism.

The road to receiving a diagnosis wasn't easy for the blended family of seven, which also includes the reality star's older sons, Cole, 15, and Rome, 18, as well as her husband's older two children.

"I think we noticed that something wasn't typical with Hart, probably around age one," Angie tells PEOPLE. "He was extremely advanced physically. He was walking by 9 months. He was climbing on things, but he wasn't saying those little words that you expected your 1-year-old to start saying."

Read On…

Portrait work for Utah Business Magazine

I’ve had the great pleasure of shooting for Utah Business Magazine for the past 2 years or so, and I believe that this experience has led me to become a better portrait photographer. Most of the people who end up in front of my camera for these shoots are not exactly ecstatic to be photographed. This is simply the case with most people who are not professional models, or influencers, whatever that word means… I realized pretty early on that my people skills had to improve if I wanted to get something special out of my subjects. The great Annie Leibovitz once stated: “There’s this idea that it’s the portrait photographer’s job to set the subject at ease. I don’t believe in setting people at ease.” This is only works some of the time in my experience, but I believe that most people do need to be guided towards a place where they can slightly lower their guard. Most people have a rehearsed “photo face,” but that’s the last thing I want. I’m always on a mission to get a look, a moment that seems candid, genuine, and authentic.

Brian G. Lloyd

Nikki Walker

Christopher Sanchez

Steven Larsen

Tina Larson

Joseph Carbone

Amber Leavitt

Amir A.H. Jackson

Sam Hobson

Brooks Kirchheimer

Yasmen Simonian

Chris Crittenden

Canvas Rebel Feature

Read my recent interview with Canvas Rebel here: https://canvasrebel.com/meet-phillip-istomin/

Lisman Studio Work

Last year we gained a wonderful client - Lisman Studio, a commercial and residential interior design firm. We have collaborated with a number of talented designers on the team in photographing some of the residential projects featured in this post. Interior design photography has become a major point of emphasis in our work over the past five years. Our goal is to keep improving, evolving, and working towards creating a feeling of being in the space while viewing the images.