A first generation American, raised by refugees, Joseph is a third generation photographer, filmmaker and musician. Joe’s father died when Joe was just 4 years old, leaving behind a collection of cameras, optics, musical instruments, audio equipment and tools. At a very young age, less interested in children's toys, he taught himself how to use these unattended devices as a way to connect to his father and, through the process, he developed a playful, experimental, and expressive approach, to storytelling, cinematography, photography, music, DIY projects and sciences. In his work he tends to find techniques that pull from all these mediums. For Joe, this isn’t technical, if anything, it’s probably spiritual.
As a high school student in the early 90’s, he got his first taste of a public audience while directing live multi-camera and pre-recorded single camera analogue video content for local public access television. Schwing! Earning a seat at the National High School Institute for Radio-TV-Film at Northwestern University, Joe turned his focus towards cinematography and then went on to study photochemical still and motion picture film at Fitchburg State University (B.S. 2000). His first professional jobs were for editorial home fashion magazines and in the Boston indie film scene.
Wanting to shake things up, he spent seven years in Santa Fe, New Mexico. There, Joe dove into experimental arts, co-founding High Mayhem Emerging Arts. Through that venture, he created works of improvised visual music, still photography, documentary film, analog video art, film projection installation, film and lighting design for immersive stage performance and hosted a curated 3-day festival, annually.
Joe relocated to San Francisco in 2009, just as the digital cinema revolution was emerging, and joined Autofuss as Director of Photography. Autofuss soon expanded and created Bot & Dolly, which developed the first industrial-robot motion-control system, disrupting and advancing the live-action VFX industry. Within both companies, he shot countless commercials, short films, and VFX demo films including “BOX,” which went viral, ultimately garnering several awards including “Best of Show” at SIGGRAPH 2014.
When Bot&Dolly and Autofuss were acquired by Google in 2013, Picard became part of the world's most advanced robotics conglomerate to date. While with Google, he developed a seemingly impossible lighting technique that he named “Laser-Banding” and revealed it on Saturday Night Live during the premiere of Childish Gambino’s “This is America”. Using laser scanners and digital cinema cameras, he suspends dancing fragments of volumetric light in midair. His first project after leaving Google was to photographically create a Windows 10 identity image which for a number of years became the Microsoft-Logo. As a logo and a default desktop background, it is one of the most seen photographs in history.
Today, Joe is a Los Angeles-based cinematographer, whose approach can pull from modern technique and timeless stylistic aesthetics. Keeping each project unique to him, part of his creative approach involves developing a photographic character set, which accounts for spontaneity and formal planning. Stylistically, Joe upholds a standard of excellence by creating simple frames, staying true to formal elegance of composition, lighting and motion. He has worked with talent like Beck, Childish Gambino, David Arquettte, Depak Chopra, Emmanuel Lubezki, Eric Prydz, Glen Keane, J-Lo, John Mayer, Lil Nas X, Sam Levinson and the cast of Euphoria, Selena Gomez, Stephen Curry, Tune-Yards, and Tycho. And he’s shot for brands such as Apple, AT&T, Audi, CNN, Ebay, Facebook, Fox Entertainment, Google, HBO, Lexus, Maserati, Mazda, Mercedes-Benz, Microsoft, MTV, Nike, Old Navy, Porsche, Samsung, Starbucks, SNL, Toyota, Uber, Under Armor, Vimeo and YouTube. Joseph continues to dissolve the boundaries of our craft, and frequently travels to advance his practice.
