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Rising Star: Josh Utley of San Diego - SDVoyage, September 21, 2026

Hi Josh, so excited to have you on the platform. Before we get into questions about your work-life, can you bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?

I didn’t see photography as anything more than a way to preserve a moment until my mother gave me a camera. The first one came with a film cartridge that didn’t need loading or advancing. I photographed the GI Joes on the front lawn. In junior high, I photographed my friends skateboarding. Sometimes I would fall, but the camera kept working.

I still hadn’t decided on a profession; instead, I focused on my friends.

In school, I learned what the darkroom could do —for example, burning and dodging. In my graphic design class, I placed PMT film over photo paper so the print would already have a design on it. In 1991, a friend introduced me to Adobe Photoshop. The same tools I used in the darkroom were suddenly available on screen. That overlapping technique never went away.

After high school, I attended Platt College San Diego, earned a diploma in Multimedia Design, and spent more time working with Photoshop and other software tools. Then Touche 21 hired me, where I led their surf team by approving riders’ photos, taking photographs myself when needed, putting together campaigns and catalogs, and designing the T-shirts. Since I developed my eye with skate and surf magazines as a teenager, I could tell which frames showed a difficult trick and which ones had the sort of style we wanted.

A rider submitted a photograph showing a hard snap off the lip ending in a floater, and the picture was excellent. I built a campaign around it, using the slogan ‘It’s In Our Blood’ in magazines, on postcards, and in a business journal. As a result, I was promoted to Creative Director, and Australian Horizons saw our work, bought the company, and I remained with Global Horizons in San Diego.

At that point, photography had stopped being just a side activity and had become the way a brand campaign actually worked.

Then I moved to a government contractor that designed Interactive Multimedia Instruction for the military and also did commercial work for Honda and LPL Financial. I stayed for five and a half years, serving as a production artist, lead artist, media production supervisor, and Creative Director. I didn’t always operate the camera; I prepared shot lists for writers who traveled to the bases and told them to move the tank so the sun would light it just right.

In 2005, I designed the key interactive piece of a presentation that helped ManTech win a five-year, $90 million contract. Then they laid me off. They said the new contract would take about six months; I could come back then. I had already been running my own company on the side since 1996, while at Touche 21 and ManTech. I took the employee stock, the severance, the unemployment checks, and I went full-time. I was not going to wait.

At first, the work was still mainly design and developing custom websites. Then the deep-sea fishing lodge in David, Panama, for which I had built a website the previous year, asked for better pictures and also wanted some video. In 2008, I bought my first DSLR, a Nikon D90 kit from Best Buy, since Nikon could shoot video but Canon couldn’t at the time. I photographed the roosterfish, the cubera snapper, the dorado, the crew, the action, the islands, and the lodge, and they used the photos for the website, in print, and in advertisements.

If I didn’t have a client photography project, I took landscape photos while traveling and photographed skaters for my skateboard company.

At the same time, the Main Street Association in my town employed me to design their website. Since they needed photos, I offered to provide them—beach, event, and local business images. They used these pictures in local newspapers and print media, in their promotional campaigns, and on the website. I then began photographing their merchandise. In 2011, I introduced video and upgraded my equipment again.

I never stopped photographing skateboarders. My gear improved. The skateboarding did too.

In 2021, the San Diego Automotive Museum hired me to design a new website after I repaired the previous one; that work also included photos and videos for the website, print, social media, and the sweepstakes. I upgraded to the Nikon Z8. In 2025, I photographed the Acura Grand Prix in Long Beach as a credited photographer with trackside access, and I photographed the winner, Kyle Kirkwood, with the Ferris wheel in the background. That weekend remains a highlight for me.

In 2026, the work is no different from what it has always been. Photography and videography account for about 35 percent of the company’s revenue; the rest is still the same—design, campaigns, making the picture serve the story. I began with toys on the lawn and friends on boards, and I still photograph the boards. The only difference now is that somebody requests the files.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back, would you say it’s been easy or smooth?

It’s taken me 30 years to justify spending $5,000 on a flagship camera body and hundreds of dollars on new lenses. Once I started shooting multi-million-dollar cars, I purchased photography insurance and upgraded my gear. I couldn’t get the shots I produce without it. Previously, I prioritized other equipment and made do with the body and lenses I had acquired earlier.

After I was laid off in 2005, I had enough experience and good fortune to land enough work I needed to hire people. That let me take on bigger projects and win new clients. I had to master a particular photography niche before I felt justified charging what I was worth. At first, I shot on auto or used presets. I had good composition and an excellent eye, but it wasn’t until I started shooting cars that I really committed to learning and memorizing my camera’s manual controls.

Several times throughout my career, I interviewed at another company. Sometimes I’d answer a job posting; other times, a colleague would offer an opportunity. Through all the frustrations and hardships of owning your own business, nothing will ever feel better than doing what I love and working with the people I enjoy working with.

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar, what can you tell them about what you do?

I run a company at the intersection of design and image-making: websites, campaigns, catalogs, and the photographs and videos that carry them. Photography and videography now make up about a third of the business, but I don’t treat them as a separate trade. The picture has to work in the layout, in the ad, on the site, in print. That’s the job.

People who hire me tend to notice the detail first. I specialize in bringing a creative solution to whatever the brief actually is, whether that’s skateboarding, cars, a museum, a street, or a race. I’m less interested in a single narrow lane than in making the frame do the work the project needs.

The milestones that still matter to me are the ones we’ve already talked about: the campaign that changed my title, the contract I helped win and the decision that followed, the lodge that used every file, the museum, the Grand Prix. Those aren’t separate from the daily work. They prove the same approach scales.

What I think actually separates me isn’t a style or a camera. It’s the years I worked fourteen-hour days, reinvested in my tools and my own skill, and built a portfolio and trust when the invoice wasn’t there yet. Many people can take a good picture. Fewer will stay in the chair that long without a paycheck attached to every hour.

We all have a different way of looking at and defining success. How do you define success?

Doing the work I love with the people I enjoy working with.

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Source: https://sdvoyager.com/interview/rising-stars-meet-josh-utley-of-san-diego/

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