We recently connected with Cory Popp and have shared our conversation below.

Cory , looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. One deeply underappreciated facet of being an entrepreneur or creative is the kind of crazy stuff that happens from time to time. It could be anything from a disgruntled client attacking an employee or waking up to find out a celebrity gave you a shoutout on TikTok – the sudden, unexpected hits (both positive and negative) make the profession both exhilarating and exhausting. Can you share one of your craziest stories?

My first brush with death while filming came in October 2019 on a hillside overlooking the Syrian town of Tall Tamr. We had been sitting a ways off from the frontlines most of the morning, gunfire and explosions ringing out somewhere off in the distance. There was a group of us there which consisted of a couple journalists, some members from the military serving the autonomous region and some volunteers who weren’t keen on sharing their names with me, but I could tell they were American. A family of three rode by on a motorbike, seemingly unfazed by what was happening just over the hillside. I snapped a photo of it (a photo which hangs in my office now as a reminder of why I developed such a passion for this work).

A colleague and I had been working on a documentary, and some print pieces, in the region for a couple months at that point and had come back to cover the aftermath of the October 6th USA troop withdrawal. The Turkish army had launched a full scale offensive into the Syrian countryside displacing hundreds of thousands and we intended to document it as best we could. We watched as a small military convoy took an Iranian journalist up the hill to overlook the town. We were told as soon as she came back we’d be allowed to go up to see the fighting for ourselves.

Someone in a pick up truck pulled up and told us to hop in. We drove a kilometer down a dirt road to a house some of the military was staging at. We pulled in and someone came out and told us we could drive a bit further down to what was left of a structure that had been previously bombed out. They said the frontlines were further down past it in the town itself and we’d still be safe up there. The driver backed out and took us further up the hill to what was left of a house. We jumped out and ran through a pile of cardboard tubes that had previously held shoulder fired rockets, which had been fired from the location sometime recently, which made me wonder how far from the front we really were. Down below the hill was a town, smoking from artillery fire and the fighting inside of it.

I zoomed in on my camera to see some of the destruction. The gunfire and artillery were much louder over here. Very close. I had barely been standing there for a minute when I heard it. The distinct whistle of artillery. It was somewhere directly in front of us, but I could hear it getting louder. I quickly looked to my colleague, who had spent years in the region before I had ever stepped foot in it, for some kind of direction on what to do, but all she could offer was a shrug of her shoulders. If it was going to hit us, it was going to hit us. As it got louder and louder I looked up in the air trying to make it out. Then I heard it. An explosion. It had went directly over our heads and hit the house we’d just been at minutes before. Our driver started yelling in Kurdish, I couldn’t make out what he was saying, but I knew it was time to go.

We ran back to the truck, jumped in and started driving back down the road. As we passed the house we could see some of the military personnel running away from it away from the front, smoking billowing out of the building. If we were behind the frontlines at one point, we were now definitely beyond them. We drove back to our original staging point. Everyone was buzzing. Everything had happened so fast I hadn’t even had a moment to think of the implications of what was going on. Things were quickly deteriorating and we weren’t sure where it would end. Someone asked us if we wanted to stay or go to the hospital they were bringing the wounded and dead. We chose the hospital, which ended up being our second fortuitous decision of the day, because minutes after we left the Turkish backed forces had pushed all the way to right where we had been sitting.

Back at the hospital we saw the aftermath in form of the triage being performed there. Ambulances that left for the front came back with the windows blown out, the paramedics bleeding from shrapnel.

I couldn’t sleep that night. I kept thinking about the family riding along the motorbike on the frontlines. All those wounded and worse at the hospital. I was going to get to go home after all of this, but they were stuck in the midst of that chaos. I knew right then and there that I wanted to keep telling these stories for those who voices aren’t heard.

Since then I’ve gone back to cover more stories in Syria and have branched out to cover the conflicts in Ukraine and Armenia. It’s been a central part of what keeps me going. I do a wide variety of work, but these are the stories and the work that gives me a sense of purpose in my life.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My name is Cory Popp, I’m a photographer, cinematographer, documentarian and director residing in Los Angeles, CA. I have worked in 44 different countries covering everything from the aftermath of the Syrian Civil War, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, coffee farmers in Guatemala, the Westminster dog show and so much more. My wide breadth and depth of work is, I think, one of my greatest strengths, and an accomplishment I’m very proud of.

I’ve worked for countless brands on ad campaigns on the commercial side of things, while my doc work has been featured on HBO, Netflix, PBS, Discovery Channel, Travel Channel and many more. Two of the documentary programs that I’ve been the series Director of Photographer for have received primetime Emmy nominations. You can see some of this work with Explained on Netflix, Retro Tech on Youtube Originals and Level Playing Field on HBO.

My mom had at one point aspired to be a journalist / photojournalist and gave me my first camera (a Canon AE-1), when I was just 13. That sparked a creative urge in me to create images telling stories that lead me down a lifelong path of doing so.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

My first year out of college I made $7,000, which I never would’ve gotten by on had I not had some leftover funds from selling a house I restored in Louisville, Kentucky before leaving to go to college. It was a struggle starting out and it was only through some college connections that I started to get work on various TV shows as a camera operator. It could’ve easily been discouraging thinking I was going to exhaust all of my savings and end up destitute, but I pushed forward knowing that things would snowball if I just got going.

I took every project I was offered and never turned down an opportunity. I kept pulling focus and assisting camera on projects long after I started shooting myself, knowing that it would provide chances to meet people and create new opportunities. A producer on a TV show I AC’d on saw some of my DP work and asked me to shoot a travel show they were doing, which launched the first of many of my international projects. Another friend I’d met while pulling focus asked me to come to Kuwait with him to make a doc for Kuwaiti TV in the oil fields there.

Eventually those projects lead to others and it did indeed snowball into a decade plus long career spanning a huge range of work.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

I have so many friends who have taken a hyper specific approach to the work they do. Choosing to be focused on one type of work and one type of client. I have tried throughout my career to expand opportunities and the type of work I do to all kinds of genres, mediums and methods. From still photography to cinematography to directing and producing to documentary work. I think it has greatly expanded my horizons when it comes to interpreting each medium and each genre I work in. I can bring the real world documentary aspect to commercial work or the polished beauty from commercial work to documentary. I feel like this multi pronged approach makes my creative process unique.

Contact Info:

• Website: corypopp.com and poppgoes.com
• Instagram: @corypopp
• Twitter: @corypopp

Image Credits
All photos by me