Brent Perniac: Shooting stars
Hamilton photographer has captured images of hundreds of actors, singers, politicians, sports figures, and other famous folk over a 20-year career he says all happened by accident.
Brent Perniac has taken photos of just about every celebrity you can think of over his more than 20 years behind the camera.
He was inspired by his mom’s love of photography, took advantage of his father’s corporate connections, and took his first celebrity photo as a kid in his own living room.
He’s not formally trained and instead wanted to be a screenwriter, but his knack for photography soon saw him with a camera around his neck while studying at McMaster University. That accidentally led to a career.
Perniac grew up near Gage Park, the son of Sam and Alice Perniac. He has a younger brother Wade and went to Delta Secondary School. He played sports as a kid, including tennis and hockey.
It was a young Perniac’s involvement with the Rosedale Tennis Club that led to a photo that was published around the world decades later.
Friends actor Matthew Perry was billeted by the Perniacs in their Rothsay Avenue home when Perry was in a tennis tournament in the city in the 1980s as a teen. Perniac, just a kid at the time, snapped a photo of Perry, who was clutching a tennis racket, alongside two other teens.
When Perry died in October 2023 at the age of 54, that photo showed up in publications around the world.
"It's surreal to see my family living room in all these magazines,” Perniac told HCM at the time.
Though he never planned a career in photography, he was always interested in it.
“I used to photograph my friends and family. I'd have them pose. I’d get different magazines and try to re-enact Ralph Lauren advertisements with my friends. When I got to Delta high school, I started working as a photographer and writer for the yearbook. I really wanted to be a writer, a screenwriter.”
After high school, Perniac went to McMaster to study sociology and English (taking all the film and drama courses he could) and started writing for the student newspaper, The Silhouette. He always took his camera along, though he didn’t exactly think of himself as a photographer back then.
“I was just learning on the fly. My first big (assignment) was Guns N Roses (at Copps Coliseum in 1993). And it was one of those concerts where too much chaos happened, and Axl left the stage when somebody threw something at him.”
Perniac’s dad worked in sales at the tobacco company Rothmans, Benson & Hedges, which back in a time before a crackdown on cigarette advertising, was sponsoring many sporting, arts and cultural events.
“We could get tickets to every concert, every box at games at Maple Leaf Gardens. We just went everywhere and I always brought my camera. I brought 12 friends to a U2 concert. And then we went to a Pink Floyd concert. I was pretty popular because of my dad,” Perniac chuckles.
Sometimes he’d shoot photos from the box and sometimes he’d sneak down to the stage, as he did for The Who and the Rolling Stones.
The tobacco company sponsored golf tournaments, leading to Perniac meeting big names such as Jack Nicklaus in the clubhouse.
Perniac’s photos were published in View magazine, The Hamilton Spectator and the now-defunct Hamilton Magazine.
Then came the Toronto International Film Festival of which Rothmans, Benson & Hedges sponsored some galas. Perniac photographed superstar Brad Pitt at his first event.
“It was way easier then to be on the red carpet but there was just this rush of adrenaline and it was life-changing. I was just hooked.”
He didn’t know what he was doing but he contacted magazines and several said to send them pictures and an invoice.
“When they sent me a cheque, I just thought, this is the best. So I just continued with it.”
Perniac continued to pester his dad for TIFF tickets and he also successfully applied for accreditation with a photo agency in the United States that started sending him to concerts and events like the Canadian Walk of Fame, the JUNO Awards and the Genies.
“Once I started getting invites, I didn’t have to sneak anywhere. I was accredited as a real photographer, I've been doing that now for over 20 years.”
The adrenaline rush of the red carpet is still there, says Perniac.
“There’s a lot of noise and people are going crazy. And at first I was star struck when Brad Pitt came out. And then the next year we had Tom Cruise. People are to the point of almost fainting. You know something's happening as soon as the limo comes down the street and you hear, it's like thunder slowly coming at you. And you know it’s somebody big.”
The task of a celebrity photographer to get the attention of their subject, so that they are making eye contact with the lens. That’s the money shot. The celebrity and fashion magazines want both headshots and full length shots.
“For the fashion magazine, you have to get what they're wearing so you're shooting right down to people's shoes.”
Perniac says most celebrities are pretty normal and down to earth (he doesn’t want me to name the ones who aren’t) but often their handlers are difficult.
“You just have to deal with them and assure them you’re getting good shots and working for a good magazine.”
When it’s a one-on-one situation on a press junket, Perniac says he’ll often have just a few minutes to capture photos.
“Everything has to be ready and they come into the hotel room and you have to shoot fast. But if I had longer, I wouldn’t know what to do with all that time anyway.”
When celebrities die or get caught up in a scandal or divorce, Perniac sees his name and photos turn up all over. The magazines, newspapers or TV channels using his photos are billed by Perniac’s agency, which then pays him.
While he does some corporate and commercial photography, and has done some paid writing gigs over the years, Perniac’s main source of income is celebrity work.
Over the years, Carmen’s Group has hosted a number of big-name celebrities at its east Mountain banquet venue, including Al Pacino, Bill Clinton, Tony Bennett, Michael Douglas, and Sylvester Stallone. Perniac was always there.
“I owe a lot to PJ and Peter (Mercanti). They were always supportive and gave me great access to the celebrities they brought to Carmen’s.”
He’s photographed multiple prime ministers and presidents, NBA stars LeBron James and Hamilton’s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, rapper Drake, superstar pop singer Taylor Swift, and even Queen Elizabeth II when she came to Hamilton.
More on that story later.
Perniac has only really been starstruck once and that was with supermodel Christy Turlington, who was on a press tour at last year’s TIFF. Her husband, actor and director Edward Burns was there to premiere the film Millers in Marriage.
“When she showed up, I didn’t even photograph her husband. I told the other photographers that Christy was on my bucket list. She was great. I pulled her aside, while everybody's taking photos of Burns. It was fantastic. She certainly made an impression on me in the ’80s and ’90s.”
Perniac lives in Ancaster with his wife Tara Froats, a teacher, and son Ben, a third-year Guelph University student studying business.
Neither his wife or his son are interested in meeting the celebrities that Perniac gets up close to.
“I’ve brought my son backstage to different concerts, and only a couple times, like when I photographed Drake, was he impressed … My wife would rather go to coffee with friends when I’m doing TIFF stuff. Even when it was Elton John. She’s hard to impress.”
And though he’s immersed in a world of people very much living their lives in public, Perniac is not on any social media himself. There’s too much negativity, he says, and that’s just not for him.
Perniac mainly shoots in Toronto. Though he’d likely be able to get a spot at something like the Academy Awards, he says those assignments seem glamorous but they aren’t.
“You’re given a little square that you can’t leave it. And you have to rent a tux.”
He says, despite the depictions of the dog-eat-dog world of celebrity picture-taking, the photography pool, including international photographers who travel to Toronto, is a good group of people who work well together. There is a rhythm to celebrity photography, says Perniac. The stars know to make eye contact with each shooter’s lens and the photographers know to wait their turn for that moment.
Nonetheless, TIFF is a frantic, exhausting time of red carpet premieres, parties and after-parties over close to two weeks. Perniac used to pull repeated all-nighters, driving back to Hamilton to get his photos selected, edited and uploaded, and to – eventually – sleep for a few hours before heading back to Toronto. But as he gets older, that is less feasible, he says.
Perniac says he’s constantly studying and learning about photography, including from his predecessors behind the lens, such as now-retired rock photographer Igor Vidyashev. The technology is always changing, most recently in the widespread conversion to mirrorless cameras, but Perniac doesn’t chase the latest and greatest. He’s happy with his Nikon D850, an older-style DSLR.
So back to the Queen.
Perniac got on the wrong side of her security detail when they felt he got just a little too close to the monarch in an effort to get a good shot as she was getting in a limousine.
“I was grabbed by security and my camera was taken away. I was taken to the ground. I just wasn't following the rules. I was just thinking about my photo. I thought they wouldn't give me my camera back and I was worried I'd be arrested.”
He got his gear back, along with a good photo and a story to tell, but was – and still is – embarrassed by the kerfuffle.
Though his images of the most famous people alive have appeared around the world, Perniac says it means the most when his photos appear locally. He’s a proud Hamiltonian and he’s always happy to attend concerts, galas, festivals, fundraisers and other civic events with his fellow city residents.
He freelanced for the now-defunct Hamilton Magazine and has been a contributor to this magazine in every issue since the first in September 2022.
“I like working with HAMILTON CITY Magazine. It's local. I love all the events that are happening and with the new TD Coliseum, I'm very excited about the shows that will be coming.”
