Max Loewenstein.

I photograph cars, places, and the road that connects them.

I picked up photography on my iPhone in 2016. I just wanted to remember what places felt like, and I was pretty hooked before I ever bought a real camera. That happened in 2017. Almost ten years later I am still chasing the same thing I was chasing on the phone: good light, and the feeling of actually being somewhere. Golden hour that hangs around longer than it should. Fog on a coast road early in the morning. A spot before anyone else has shown up to it.

It starts in the field. I would rather get the light and the moment right in person than try to build them later, so I work with the conditions instead of forcing it and I will wait around a long time for the right one. Then I grade it the way I see it, warm and a little cinematic. That look is something I have spent years dialing in. Cars and travel are what I keep coming back to, probably because both are really about being somewhere and moving through it.

I am based in the Bay Area but on the road most of the year, and my golden retriever Atlas comes with me whenever he can. Honestly some of my favorite shots are from days that were not planned at all, somewhere off the route, when the light just showed up and we were already standing there.

Adorama Landscape Photographer of the Year, 2019. Microsoft Original by Design, 2021.