The life of a  music celebrity is filled with many projects and each star spends much time in front of a camera.  Sometimes the invasive Paparazzi have their lens aimed at the celebrity and sometimes its fans who take pictures at concerts, bus-lines, stage-doors and anywhere else they might see their musical hero.

But one of the most time-consuming projects for the celebrity is the professional photo-shoot with photographers whose job is to present an image to the public that will catch their eye and hopefully, make them want to buy their albums and listen to their music.

Clay Aiken has had many photo shoots in the last 6 years and many of the photographers are the best in their field.

Towards the beginning of his career, Clay worked with Eric Ogden.  Eric took a set of publicity pictures of Clay that were used in some entertainment magazines.

Eric lives in Brooklyn, N.Y.  His photos have appeared in the New York Times, Vanity Fair, Esquire, Vogue, Rolling Stone, Newsweek, and many other publications.  Eric has many clients in the entertainment industry and lists ABC, Sony Music, Warner Bros., RCA Records and Atlantic Records as his clients.  In 2006, Eric won “The Best Photographer on the Web” in American Photo Publication.

In 2008, Clay worked with Eric one more time when he had a photo shoot for his new album, On My Way Here.   Both the earlier picture and the newer picture showed Clay posed in black.

The name Matthew Rolston is probably familiar to many people.  He was the artist who photographed Clay for Rolling Stone.  The photos stirred up a great deal of talk as each person seemed to have their own idea of their merit.

Rolston attended the College of Design in Pasadena and has pictures in many publications.  He has some photographs at the Smithsonian Institute.  Besides his still photography, Rolston has done music videos for Madonna, Lenny Kravitz, Faith Hill, Beyonce and many others including Clay Aiken.

In October, 2003, Clay was featured in Time Magazine.  Kwaku Alston was the photographer assigned to the photo shoot.  According to Alston’s web page he has a passion for social documentary photography and is inspired to capture truth and honor.  He worked for many years in New York for many of the Music Labels and The New York Times Magazine.  When he moved to Los Angeles, he opened his own studio.  He has taken portraits of Barack Obama, Clay Aiken, Halle Berry, Tiger Woods and many more.  He says that the highlight of his career was photographing Nelson Mandela and Oprah Winfrey’s “Legends.”

Kevin Scott Hees took photographs of Clay that were very popular.  Mr. Hees is a man of few words as his biography at his web site includes two facts;  he was born in Texas and he lives in New York.  However, his picture portfolio is filled with gorgeous pictures.

When Clay was preparing for the release of his album, A Thousand Different Ways, he worked with Miranda Penn Turin. At that time, Clay commented that working with Miranda was one of the easiest shoots he had been involved with.  Miranda graduate from The University of Pennsylvania and has been a professional photographer for 20 years.  She recently directed a music video for Warner Bros.

Perhaps the most interesting photographer that has worked with Clay is Richard Drew.  Drew has been an Associated Press photographer for 37 years.  He was one of four photographers present at the assassination of Bobby Kennedy.  This photo-journalist is perhaps most notable for his photo, The Falling Man which depicts one of the people who jumped out of the World Trade Center towers following the September 11, 2001 attacks.  In the last few years, Drew has done more celebrity shoots as he tries to recover from his memories of that difficult day.  He certainly did a remarkable job showing Clay in New York.

There are so many other wonderful photographers who have worked with Clay.  Each one has added their own touch to the image of Clay Aiken that we have seen in magazines and concert programs.   The big question now is when will there be another photo shoot for Clay.

Don’t forget that if you want to see these pictures in a bigger form, just click on the picture and it will change to a larger size.