Arny Freytag

Arny Freytag (born: April 12, 1950) is an American photographer who specializes in glamour photography. He has worked for Playboy magazine since 1974 and is one of two photographers who currently produce the legendary Playboy centerfold photographs.

Freytag grew up in Chicago Illinois, attending Sutherland grammar school and Luther South High School. He graduated from the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts in 1970, and from Brooks Institute of Photography (Santa Barbara, California) in 1974. After an initial period as an apprentice at Playboy, he joined Mario Caselli, Richard Fegley, and Ken Marcus as the principle photographers at Playboy’s California studio.

During his studies at Brooks, Freytag became proficient with the 4”x5” view camera, a skill that served him well shooting the monthly multi-page (gatefold) Playboy centerfold. Attempting to produce the very highest quality possible for the centerfold image, Playboy used the very large 8"x10” view camera, a camera then employed by only a handful of landscape photographers. Due to the inordinate amount of strobe (electronic flash) light needed to expose that large a sheet of film, Freytag, at first of necessity and later by choice, specialized in the use of elaborate lighting setups, often using dozens of flash heads.

Later, after Playboy abandoned film and moved to digital cameras, Freytag continued to create images using up to fifty flash heads, each light meticulously placed and targeted to illuminate a small area of the photo. Freytag likens his technique to that of a painter, using each light as his brush strokes, selectively illuminating each area as he incrementally builds the final image.

Freytag currently works at Playboy Studio West in Santa Monica, California and lives in Woodland Hills, California.

External links

• Arny Freytag - A Playboy Centerfold Master
• The Centerfold
• Arny Freytag Studios
• Arny Freytag at the Internet Movie Database
• Esquire magazine interview

This article about an American photographer is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v d e