Brian Smith (photographer)

Brian Smith (photographer)

Brian Smith is an American photographer best known for his celebrity portrait photography. Born in Ames, Iowa, he got his start in photography while a high school swimmer photographing swimming and other sports as a stringer for the Ames Daily Tribune. As a 20-year-old journalism student at the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri his first magazine photograph was published in LIFE Magazine showing New York Yankees' manager Billy Martin crying at Thurman Munson’s funeral. The photography staff of the Orange County Register, which included Smith, won a Pulitzer Prize for their coverage of the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.