Justin Smulski is a New England-based freelance photographer, storyteller, and creative director. His photographic portfolio is based largely around outdoor adventure, tourism, guiding services/wilderness lodges, editorial/documentary assignments, brand storytelling, aquaculture, and interiors. At the heart of his storytelling is a commitment to intimate details and listening deeply to the unfolding narrative in every quiet moment, helping viewers imagine themselves inside a photo—like a long-lost memory, finally rediscovered. Outside of his commercial and editorial work, Justin’s fine art photography has been featured in galleries in Portland and Midcoast Maine; his most recent gallery exhibition was “Intertidal: Stories from the Coast” in July of 2024 at the Waterman’s Center on the island of North Haven, Maine.

Justin grew up in New Hampshire before graduating with a B.A. from George Washington University in Washington, DC. He then went to culinary school in Cambridge, Massachusetts and cut his teeth at restaurants in Boston and Portland. Justin has been a freelance creative since 2020 when he left the culinary industry, though that orientation towards hospitality is a steady constant in his life and work. 

In addition to photography, Justin takes on a wide range of creative projects at the intersection of food, hospitality, tourism, and outdoor adventure. Recent projects include freelance marketing work for guiding services, co-leading backcountry trips as an expedition chef, social media consulting, and chef-on-set/food stylist for agency productions.

Justin is also a published poet with work most recently featured in Stonecoast Review. In fall of 2023, he spent three weeks as a resident artist on the shores of Lake Hebron in central Maine at Monson Arts. He writes about memory, the natural world, adventure, and how we struggle to understand the parts of ourselves that are settled and unsettled—themes that often arise in his photography, as well.

In his spare time he enjoys cooking, writing, board games at dive bars, hiking, road trips, gas station crab rolls, beach fires with his friends, making risotto over a Jetboil in the backcountry, and cramming an unreasonable amount of food and wine into a canoe.