Q+A with Commercial Photographer Angry God

Multiple Applied Arts Photography Awards winner Angry God have been on the scene since 2021 and have been going strong ever since. This Canadian West Coast creative team won multiple Photography Awards—2021, 2024 and now 2025—for their eye-catching work. Are you as curious to know more about them as we were?

What is your creative process from idea to finished product?

Angry God is unique because we’re not an operation built around a single photographer. We are a creative team that came into this world through the marketing door, with various backgrounds including copy, design, directing and cinematography.

Our creative process borrows heavily from the world of ad agencies and production houses, in that we’re often first in and last out. Concept is king for us, down to the smallest detail. We can fully develop a concept and test it out in our studio the next day. We can budget, cast, hire crew, build sets, scout locations, get permitting, manage set dec and costume, handle retouching and post – whatever the project requires. We work seamlessly with clients, agencies, and producers because we all speak the same language and understand where the goal posts are. 

What inspires you?

So much of our inspiration is drawn from childhood and the changing world around us, both good and bad. We’re lucky to have grown up in an age where things went from analog to digital, instead of one or the other. We got to be kids with BMX bikes and big imaginations, but we also grew up with computers and modems and this thing we now call “the Internet.”  

A lifetime spent consuming ridiculous amounts of art and popular culture has turned each of us into a walking lexicon of iconic photographs, films, television, music, marketing, art history – you name it. Over the years, we’ve developed a shorthand for referencing this stuff that’s borderline telepathic and inspired by many things from many different time periods, often all at once.   

Angry God, Don't Settle for Less, 2024 Applied Arts Photography Awards winner in the Advertising Photography category.

How would you describe your artistic style?

It’s hard for us to quantify what Angry God is and does, as this tends to change with each project and what we bring to it. In the past, we’ve described our style as “comedic melancholy.” There’s often a layer of funny to it, or something fantastic about it that we want to tie back to a genuine feeling, an opinion, or some other kind of shared experience with the viewer.

Concept plays a huge role, followed by production design and lighting. There’s usually some element of oddity to our work, but this tends to be in the service of winking at some fundamental human truth inside of a larger commercial wrapper. We want our audience to feel like they’re in on it and by extension, that our clients are in on it, too. Whatever “it” is. 

What are you working on professionally? Anything outside of the usual?  

We’re best known for our work in the financial space, but there’s a lot more going on in the background. Last year, we helped launch a national health and human rights platform to combat misinformation with evidence-based knowledge and lived experience. It was a big project funded by Health Canada, where we ultimately produced over 200 videos and photographs.

This year, we’re broadening our work in the health and non-profit space to encourage better outcomes and support grassroots involvement. We’re focusing more on innovation, including the use of new technologies to create high-resolution models of artifacts for digital preservation and global accessibility. The industrial side of our portfolio has us thinking about new ways to document projects in extreme working conditions or conversely, to recreate these environments in our studio. In a broader sense, we’re moving into more industries and looking at how we bring Angry God to a larger international audience, both in-person and remotely.

Angry God, The Revolutionaries, 2025 Applied Arts Photography Awards winner in the Advertising Photography category.

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Looking forward to catching up with you later in 2025. Great work Angry God!