There are a lot of talented photographers in Vancouver, but there isn't that much work. So Martin Prihoda decided to split town in 2008 and try his luck elsewhere.
The 37-year-old was born and raised in Burnaby, and got into photography when he was about 19. He worked in the Vancouver film business for several years ("I was in film production, directing television commercials and little short films, infomercials, corporate videos") before switching to still photography.
Most people in his shoes go to Toronto, New York or Los Angeles. But Prihoda looked further afield: Mumbai, India.
"I thought the whole Bolly-wood glitzy-glammy thing might work for me," says Prihoda. "I thought they might appreciate my work over there. So we just picked up on a whim; We didn't know anybody, we just went."
It seemed like a long shot. Pri-hoda's heritage is Czech, not Indian. He didn't speak Hindi. He'd only been to India once, as a backpacker, and had scant knowledge of the Bollywood film scene he wanted to break into.
He pounded the pavement for three months before a designer hired him to shoot Bollywood star Priyanka Chopra, a former Miss World who was setting up a website.
The photos turned out great, and provided the entr_e he needed.
"The key to breaking into Bollywood is getting your first couple of celebrities," explains Prihoda.
"The whole system over there, the entire scene, revolves around A-list, B-list celebrities. Once you get those people in your portfolio, doors open up for you because you've shot that level."
Soon he found himself shooting celebrities for the Indian editions of magazines such as Vogue, GQ, Elle, Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, OK! and Harper's Bazaar.
"It's a huge market, there's a billion people, and everything revolves around the celebrity, and celebrity endorsements," he says.
"It's not like here. Let's take an actor like Brad Pitt. Brad Pitt will do movies, but you won't see him pitching for [something like] Sport Mart. He'll do that stuff in Japan, but not here.
"Over in India, a star will do a movie, and they'll [also] do Sport Mart. These guys are all brand ambassadors for some-thing, so you wind up shooting all these brands with these celebrity stars. The editorial stuff gets you into advertising, where the money is."
It's an interesting system. "I might only make a couple of hundred bucks a day shooting for Vogue, whereas advertising stuff, if I'm producing the job, you'll make thousands, 10 times what you make in editorial," he relates.
"The thing is, all the advertising agencies read these magazines, and see your name. That's why it's important to shoot that stuff; A lot of people shoot it for free. It's just great shooting with [the magazines], because you're shooting the top stars for the top magazines. It's kind of a photographer's dream."
Of course, he didn't really know who many of his celebrity subjects were when he first got to India.
"Four months in, I [got] a cover shoot for GQ," he says. "I said 'Who is it?' They said 'Hrithik Roshan.' I said 'Great, super, Hrithik Roshan.' So I told a friend I'm shooting this guy Hrithik Roshan and they're like 'Are you serious? He's the top Bollywood star!' I had to google him."
The fact that he's unfamiliar with many of his subjects can work to his advantage.
"[Bollywood stars] love working with foreign photographers, because foreign photographers don't really know who they are. So you can talk to them, you don't get all star-struck. Whereas if you were shooting DeNiro it might be 'Wow, I'm shooting DeNiro.'" A good example would be a recent shoot with cricket star Virat Kohli for Christian Dior and OK! magazine.
"They had him in a $10,000 suit, and we shot it at a hotel. I was like 'OK, get in the pool.' The stylist was like, 'With the clothes on?!?' 'Yeah, get in the pool.'
"It's a great shot, we got him in the pool and he's soaking wet in this $10,000 suit. That was amazing, I love doing stuff like that, off the wall."
Prihoda has an easygoing manner that helps him talk celebs out of the box. He also fits right in with the movie star set - a couple of women at The Sun think he looks like Patrick Swayze.
"I liked the idea of just capturing one image, telling a story in one picture as opposed to the whole production of making a film," he says.
He applied some of the lighting skills he'd gleaned from film to his photo shoots. He photo-graphs beautiful people, but his lighting makes them really beautiful, captured in a special light moviemakers call "magic hour." "I made a decision early in my career that this particular lighting style was the way I wanted to go, it was the most market-able and commercial," he says.
"It set me apart. You have to think that way as a photographer, how are you going to set yourself apart, because there are so many of us."
He doesn't just shoot celebrities: he does charity work for Child Reach, which works in slums, and also does artier shots of subjects ranging from yoga teachers (including his wife Tonia) to swamis and Gypsies.
"I'll take advertising fashion lighting and go up into the Himalayas, these desolate villages, and I'll light [a 100-year-old swami] like I would a fashion star," he explains.
"I'll basically get a dark, dramatic sky and then I'll light them with a large soft box. So we're hiking around the Himalayas, or in the middle of the Rajasthani desert with Gypsies, with full-on lights.
"It's quite an elaborate way of shooting, but it's what gives it that unique style."
Living in Mumbai is hectic. "There are 18 million people, the infrastructure is terrible, the people are great. The nightlife [is non-stop], it's party central. You work hard, you party hard. I have been on calls with ad agencies at 10 o'clock on a Sun-day night, discussing shoots. There's no 'This is your time off.' You're in that city to make money, you're not in that city to relax. I mean, it's almost impossible to relax.
"You're there to work, to make money, you're there to party and to network. It's like New York a bit that way, it never sleeps, it's boom boom boom."
The intensity of Mumbai makes him appreciate what Vancouver has to offer, particularly the access to nature. He thinks he'll probably come back to Canada when it's time for his two-year-old son Jai to go to school.
If and when he returns he'll have quite a resume. And he won't be returning with his tail between his legs, which was his fear when he first moved to Mumbai and couldn't find work. "We had a big going-away party, which is a big mistake," he says.
"Once you have a going-away party, you can't come back after three months with your tail between your legs going 'I've failed.' So I was like 'We had this damn going-away party, I have to make this work. I can't come back!'"
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