Ready, set, shoot Winnipeg photographer captures striking stills that market major motion pictures By: AV Kitching Posted: 6:16 PM CDT Tuesday, Apr. 28, 2026

Eric Zachanowich is the most famous photographer you’ve probably never heard of.

He’s worked with Tinseltown heavyweights such as the late Robert Redford, Ralph Fiennes, Laura Linney, Woody Harrelson and Anya Taylor-Joy, and even appeared in Dwayne (The Rock) Johnson’s wrestling biopic The Smashing Machine, disguised as, you guessed it, a photographer.

“It was for one of the opening scenes so I could shoot Dwayne Johnson walking to the ring. I made the final cut of the movie — although it’s hard to place me — and also got a spectacular photo that was used heavily during marketing,” says Zachanowich, 32.

More often than not, he operates as a silent observer on the sets of cinema blockbusters and prestige television dramas alike, his lens capturing the world’s biggest A-listers at their most vulnerable and intense moments.

The work he produces become marketing materials that will eventually be plastered across various platforms, from towering billboards and the sides of buses to the pages of glossy magazines such as Vogue and on social media streams.

“I’m an on-set stills photographer and I work primarily on feature films, often shooting while the cameras are rolling,” he explains, noting every major production employs exactly one still photographer for the duration of the shoot.

“My responsibility, on top of helping promote the film with photographs, is also photographing any photos that appear in a film. I’m on the daily call sheet, I know the overall schedule for the day. I read the script so I know the scenes and the context.”

Zachanowich is there to deliver what is needed without getting in the way.

In the high-stakes world of Hollywood filmmaking, where budgets soar into the hundreds of millions, time is money.

Every minute of a sometimes 15-hour day is a precise co-ordination of hundreds of technicians, actors and artisans working towards one goal.

In the middle of this organized chaos, Zachanowich documents everything that goes on around him while trying to remain unobtrusive. Not easy for someone who’s six-foot-three.

“Oh yeah, I’ve had actors tell me off or I’ve been in shot before. These things happen, although it’s very rare. I’m not a short person and I weigh a little over 200 pounds, so it’s not easy for me to be completely invisible,” he says, laughing.

“But being invisible is never my goal — my goal is to not be invasive. It’s like a dance. I’m either next to camera or hidden somewhere that’s not intrusive to the actors or anybody else on set.”

While the technical job description doesn’t require him to edit or “colour” his images, he prefers to work closely with the director of photography and the film’s digital imaging technicians to ensure his stills match the esthetic world of the movie.

However, even the most perfect shot can be “killed” in Hollywood; actors in the higher echelons of the film industry have the power to veto 50 per cent of the pictures he’s taken if they don’t like the images.

Zachanowich has to sign NDAs (non-disclosure agreements) on every project he works on, and he doesn’t own a single photo he takes — everything belongs to the production company.

He may have rubbed shoulders with legends such as Redford — an experience he describes as an “honour” — and modern movie titans but it’s not all glitz and glam.

The lifestyle is erratic and schedules can be very last-minute with only a few weeks’ notice before he’s off on a month-long stint in Italy or the United States.

While he thrives in the “on the go” nature of the work, the arrival of his child — now 21/2 — has added a layer of complexity to the spontaneity.

Last year he worked nine of 12 months, balancing projects such as Netflix’s reimagined Little House on the Prairie, which was shot locally, with feature films requiring time spent abroad.

The polar opposite of the Hollywood ego, it’s easy to see why Zachanowich, with his down-to-earth, self-effacing demeanour, coupled with his keen photographer’s eye, continues to be sought after.

Not that he’s one to blow his own horn.

Zachanowich maintains the reason he keeps getting hired is because he’s one of only three photographers in Winnipeg who specialize in shooting movie stills.

The former Kelvin High School student’s entry into the niche career was far from traditional.

“I have people ask me all the time ‘How do I get into this field?’ I tell them if I had to start over, I wouldn’t even know where to start,” says the Winnipeg native, who originally wanted to be a marine biologist. “Because I got very lucky, I got an opportunity and I was able to form it into what it is now. There’s no school you can go to to get training for this.”

At 21, Zachanowich headed to New Zealand on a working visa with one goal: to hike the Te Araroa, a 3,000-kilometre trail stretching from the top of the country to the bottom, with his camera in tow.

But life had other plans for him. The hike was put on hold after he secured a mentorship with a local photographer, which led to a six-month stint as the photographer’s assistant on the 2016 Disney movie Pete’s Dragon.

“Because it’s a singular person shooting on set, it’s very rare to have somebody mentor you. I was very lucky having somebody teach me, especially on a big-budget film, so I was able to be taught at the highest standard of what a studio expects and how to work with actors and crew, how to understand the flow of it all,” he says.

While on the project he forged a professional bond with the film’s director, David Lowery, with whom he has now worked on five movies.

His most recent work for Lowery, A24’s Mother Mary (in theatres now), featuring unsettling imagery of Anne Hathaway and Michaela Coel, was shot three years ago in Cologne, Germany,

Splashed on international billboards and magazines, poster images were specially commissioned by the production company instead of taken from film stills.

It’s a different pace from working on set, slower but more complicated, as it requires planning in order for Zachanowich to capture the best image to pique the interest of movie-goers and draw them to the cinema.

“I shot those as a gallery studio shoot specifically for the posters,” he says. “The production company wanted to do something separate, on top of the stills. So I brought in a team working on lighting, backdrop, the whole works, and we lit and shot it specifically for the poster.”

Sometimes the magic happens in the smallest windows of time, when you least expect it.

While shooting Netflix’s The Menu, starring Ralph Fiennes, Zachanowich captured a striking image of the actor staring directly into the lens. It wasn’t a staged gallery shot, but a moment snatched during a rehearsal when there was brief pause in filming.

It is this constant state of being switched on that defines the job.

“The film industry saying ‘hurry up and wait’ rings true,” he says, laughing. “There’s a lot of waiting around on a film set. What hurry up and wait means is you’re waiting, but you’re on. It’s about going with the flow, being ready and reacting to things as they change.”

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