From Austin to the Fenway, a Photographer Finds His Light

When Cason Latimer ’11 left Austin for Boston, he didn’t picture himself behind a camera. Yet the city—and the creative energy he found at Emmanuel College—soon brought everything into focus.

Today, Latimer is a still-life photographer based in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, producing meticulously lit imagery for global luxury brands like Clinique, Estée Lauder, Shiseido, and a growing portfolio of jewelry and spirits clients. His work is defined by restraint and technical mastery: compositions where light becomes architecture, reflections become language, and small objects—lipstick, glass bottles, gemstones—take on a sculptural presence.

The path to that world of exacting precision and visual problem-solving began in an unexpected place: the liberal arts.

The Urban Edge and the Pivot

When Latimer arrived in Boston as a first-year student, he was seeking a city that felt approachable—a place he could get to know block by block. He found that in the Fenway, on a campus with a green quad tucked into an urban grid, an environment where exploration and experimentation were not just allowed but expected. Emmanuel offered a small liberal arts community, set within the city with professors who were practicing artists as well as educators.

“I liked the idea of going to college in a Northeast city,” Latimer said. “Boston feels like a city—you’ve got the subway and all—but it’s not overwhelming. I loved riding my bike around when I was a student there.”

He began with a scientific inclination, taking biology and exploring broadly, but soon drifted toward the Art Department, drawn by faculty who were, as he put it, “actively making things.”

Latimer didn’t arrive at Emmanuel imagining a creative career. What drew him in was the freedom to experiment, follow intuition, and discover new forms of thinking.

“Being at a liberal arts school meant I could try a bunch of different things,” he recalled. “I didn’t know I wanted to do art or design originally. The Art faculty—Erich Doubeck, Steven Jacobs, Cynthia Fowler, Megumi Naitoh, Brian Littlefield—were passionate about their own work. Seeing that was inspiring.”

He still remembers a foundational design course where students hand-mixed paints and cut precise wedges to form a color wheel. “At the time, you think, ‘Why am I doing this?’ But so much of still-life photography is about precision and craft, managing reflections. Those exercises teach you the standard for finishing something at a high level. Sometimes it’s that last two or three percent of effort that elevates a project.”

From Tokyo to the Technician’s Seat

One of the defining experiences of Latimer’s Emmanuel years took place far from Boston. With encouragement from the Art Department, he spent a semester interning at a small graphic design firm in Tokyo—a placement he created largely on his own.

He was in Japan during the 2011 earthquake. “It was scary,” he said. “But the whole experience was formative.” His senior thesis, influenced by Japanese aesthetics, followed soon after.

After graduation, Latimer moved to New York and joined the retouching studio Bespoke Digital. It was there that he discovered the life he truly wanted. “That’s when I realized where I wanted to be,” he said. “Not behind a computer all day, but where the action is.”

cason latimer with camera — Photo courtesy of Cason Latimer

He began assisting on photo shoots and working as a digital technician, traveling with photographers to Miami and Paris. “I liked assisting a lot of different people,” he said. “You see ten ways to solve the same problem—you keep the parts that work.” By 2016, he began building his own portfolio—a persistent "hustle" of weekend shoots and studio tests that, he acknowledged, has never really stopped.

The Intimate Demands of Still Life

Latimer’s studio is now a demanding laboratory. “Jewelry is small, hyper-reflective, and demanding,” he explained. “You manage every reflection so silver looks like silver and stones read clean.”

Not all projects are so inanimate. A recent campaign for Cat Person—a line of high-end cat products developed in collaboration with fashion designer Jason Wu—required couture lighting, a full soundstage, and trained cats who proved, predictably, untrainable. “Trained cats are… still cats,” Latimer chuckled. “We got the shots, but they didn’t do what we wanted.” Another favorite took him to the agave fields outside Guadalajara, Mexico, where he photographed tequila bottles in situ, capturing harvesters at work. “You’re learning the craft behind the product as you photograph it,” he said. “That was a really cool one.”

Regarding client negotiations, he sees his role on a spectrum. “Sometimes the brief is detailed and my job is to execute. Other times it’s loose and they want my input.” The real skill, he said, is reading the room: “Figuring out how much they actually want you to push.”

The Digital Frontier: An Argument for Authenticity

Latimer is candid about the shifting landscape of his industry, especially as AI-generated imagery becomes more prevalent. He sees the technology less as a threat than as another turning point, following the emergence of digital photography and CGI.

“People have been asking whether photography is ‘over’ for decades,” he said. “But there will always be a demand for taste, for style, for a point of view.” He suggested that as brands lean heavily into inexpensive AI content, there will be an equal and opposite pull toward work that feels real: images shot on film, objects with texture, and light that falls imperfectly across a surface. “Authenticity becomes a differentiator,” he explained. “That’s where human vision still matters.”

He also makes time for self-directed work—projects he conceives and funds himself—like a recent series inspired by a Japanese whiskey brand, which allowed him to play with lighting and movement fully on his own terms. “It keeps your portfolio fresh,” he said. “You have to keep putting new ideas out there.”

Latimer credits Emmanuel with shaping his foundation as a creative and a collaborator. “Learning to work with people from all backgrounds and different working styles—that carries through to what I do now,” he said.

His advice to current Emmanuel students is simple and generous:

“Stay curious. Ask questions. Your education doesn’t end when you graduate. Be a lifelong learner—watch tutorials, read magazines, look at what other people are making. Assist a lot of different photographers so you can see ten ways to solve the same problem. Take what works, discard what doesn’t. And don’t be afraid to make things on your own.”

For Latimer, success has less to do with external prestige than with internal freedom. “Being able to say no sometimes—that’s a luxury,” he noted. “Having time for projects that are purely creative, that’s the goal. The older I get, the more I realize that time to experiment is what success really means.”

From a Boston quad to a Brooklyn light table, Latimer’s journey reflects the enduring essence of an Emmanuel education: open-minded exploration refined into mastery, community that nurtures independence, and craft elevated through curiosity.

The photos below are examples of Cason's work.