Corey Hendrickson

My first memory connected to photography is standing in our kitchen as a kid, watching my mom’s slides come to life on a light table. The little 35mm transparencies glowing there, the faint smell of developer on the film. Putting my eye to the loupe, the kitchen faded away and I was mesmerized by a whole new world. Something clicked.

I was lucky enough to have an amazing photography and film program in high school, with enthusiastic, inspired teachers. I loved making photographs with friends and printing them in the darkroom. It felt like magic. And I can still hear the hum and rattle of the projector in film history class the first time Rosemary’s Baby terrified me and On the Waterfront stopped me cold. I was completely hooked on the idea that images, arranged in a certain way, could make you feel something true.

I studied forestry in college, which sent me to the mountains of Colorado and Alaska for field seasons with the US Forest Service. I shot slides all summer and shipped the film home. At the end of each season I’d go through all of it at once, a ritual that made those remote environs feel real again. After college I pivoted from research to wildland firefighting on the Pike Hotshot Crew. I carried a point and shoot whenever I could. One season we were assigned to a fire complex in Grand Teton National Park. I rented a cabin sight unseen because I knew I needed more time in the Tetons. What I thought would be one winter turned into five years. The landscape wouldn’t let me go.

I started documenting ski mountaineering trips and adventure sports, had some early luck selling images to outdoor brands, and realized this was the work I actually wanted to do. Eventually though, Vermont pulled me back. My family was here. The Green Mountains were here. And so was a quality of life I hadn’t found anywhere else. New England has always offered something rare: urban luxuries within reach, but also the possibility of living close to the land. The rugged resourcefulness of this place and its people inspires me.

When I returned East I focused on environmental portraiture. I realized then that my Forest Biology degree had not given me the foundational knowledge of art history that I craved. I wanted to transition from reacting to the scene to creating with intention, to begin understanding the references and deepening my visual language. That led me to an MFA in photography, and with it a new fluency within the frame, a deeper understanding of light, composition, and the artists who came before. I stopped reacting and started composing. And then technology changed everything. The Canon 5D Mark II arrived with a video switch, and suddenly my subjects could move and speak. I became obsessed with storytelling through video. The gear was a door, and behind it were so many different people and their lives, their choices, their reasons. What people do. What makes them tick. Finding out their why. That curiosity has never left me.

In 2017 I made Gathering Time, a short observational documentary about Vermont’s maple sugaring culture. That project was a turning point. The patience that photography had trained into me, the ability to wait and watch and trust the moment, translated directly into a way of working with moving images that felt honest and alive. That instinct is at the center of everything I make now.

That passion for observation is what kept drawing me deeper into my work with Weekends With Yankee on PBS. I came on as an additional cinematographer in Season Three and just kept showing up, learning everything I could. Over time I moved into DP’ing short unhosted segments, including a trip out to Eastern Egg Rock to film puffins with Dr. Steve Kress, the ornithologist who has spent his life restoring them to the Maine coast. Eventually I grew into the DP role, took on the direction of hosts and guests, and became the show’s offline editor. For someone who had always filmed with the edit in mind, it was a natural fit. The lean, efficient world of television production sharpened something important: understand the story first, then get exactly the footage you need to tell it. That discipline shows up in everything I do, whether it’s a broadcast piece, a brand film, or a project for a client halfway across the country.

That same curiosity about people and place is at the heart of everything I make. The best brands aren’t just well-presented. They have a point of view, a reason for being. My job is to find that story and tell it honestly, in a way that feels true to the place and the people behind it.

If you’ve found your way to this page, you probably believe your story is worth telling well. So do I. I’d love to hear what you’re working on.