Capture One has built its reputation as the professional standard for commercial and beauty photographers thanks to its precise color management and tethering tools. But the company is also in the midst of an expansion, adding tools for new types of photographers, from photojournalists to those working with film.

We sat down with CEO Rafael Orta to talk about what that growth looks like, how the company approaches AI, and how it differentiates itself from other editing platforms.

Who it’s for

Capture One

While some editing platforms aim to serve everyone, Capture One is intentionally more narrow in its scope. Orta is clear about who the company builds for: photographers who have made photography their career choice, whether as a primary income source or a serious secondary one.

The professional lens shapes everything from feature priorities to how the company talks about its product. Capture One is often considered the commercial standard for beauty and product photography, but Orta says it has deliberately expanded into professional portrait, wedding and family photography in recent years as well. It’s also seen lots of growth in its enterprise segment, with the Associated Press coming on as its first photojournalism client last year.

The key is that all of these are genres where client relationships and deadlines can define the work. “We have a really good understanding of how photographers work with clients, work under deadlines and how clients are the ultimate judge of your work,” Orta says. “It’s a tool that has been built with professional standards in mind.”

AI on its terms

There’s no getting around the fact that AI is everywhere these days, and it’s reshaping many aspects of the photography software market. But Orta is careful about how Capture One positions itself within that shift, and it comes down to trust in the company’s identity. “We are not confused about who we are,” he says. “We are a photography company first, not a software company that happens to serve photographers.”

That identity, according to Orta, is what allows the company to incorporate AI responsibly. He tells me that Capture One owns more cameras than it has employees and that many of the photos on its website and in its marketing are taken by Capture One team members, who are photographers. “We are incredibly protective of usage rights; even in internal presentations, you need to credit the photographer,” he explains. The company also runs a monthly internal photography competition with winning images adorning the walls of their offices.

Orta explains all of this to make it clear that AI tools in Capture One are built by people who take photography seriously; they aren’t added simply to keep pace with competitors. “It’s why we’ve been able to bring AI into Capture One without the backlash others have faced,” he says. “We built it as a participant in the industry, not an operator standing outside it looking in,” he says.

A pulse on the community

Earlier this year, Capture One released a negative film conversion feature. While this could seem like an odd move for an editing platform dedicated to commercial work, Orta sees it as the perfect example of how in-tune with the industry the company is.

“It’s the perfect example of our connectivity in the industry,” Orta says. “We saw early on that there was a resurgence of film photography, and it quickly began to enter the commercial space.” He explains that they want to offer a better way for commercial photographers to integrate all their work into a single platform. Doing so enables photographers to maintain a more consistent workflow and create a more coherent look across both film and digital.

Orta is also clear about how intentional the company is with new features and the work involved in creating those. “We are soaking in the industry, and we listen and respond to the requests,” he says. “But because we’re precious about quality, some of these things may take a bit of time. We spent the best part of two years on negative conversion to make sure the results would be good.”

As an example of how dedicated the team is to its new features, Orta tells me that a few weeks ago, the company held its annual gathering and handed out disposable film cameras to everyone there. Now, the employees are using the negative conversion tool to scan in their own negatives. It’s another example of the team getting real-world experience with the features they develop.

Pricing adjustments

Capture One

Capture One has never been the cheapest option for photographers, and recent pricing increases have made that especially true. The editing platform has raised its prices twice in recent years, and another 6% increase took effect this month. The new price is more than double the cost of Adobe’s Lightroom, a gap that is certainly hard to ignore.

Orta doesn’t shy away from the pricing question, though. “What we have committed to is yearly pricing increases, and we will do them in a modest way,” he says. As for the why, Orta simply cites inflation and foreign exchange as factors in the decision.

Naturally, he points to what subscribers get in return. Orta says that Capture One has been pushing more than one update per month to at least one of its platforms, bringing a constant stream of improvements. He explains that these include server-side updates to things like its collaboration tools (Live, Live for Studio) and admin platform, not just desktop and mobile app updates. Some of these updates are visible to a user, while others aren’t. He adds that the company has simplified its product lineup in recent years to make pricing tiers clearer. Overall, Orta frames the increases less as a burden and more as a reflection of ongoing investment in the product.

A clear vision for the future

For Orta, all of Capture One’s recent changes, including the newly added Hasselblad support, point in the same direction: a company that’s clear on who it is and who it’s building for. “We try to serve specific genres and build products and services that are perfectly adapted to the needs of each one,” he says. For a company with its roots in commercial studios, that’s a wider net than it used to be, but it doesn’t mean that the focus is any less intentional.

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Stuart Palley

When Stuart Palley began photographing California wildfires in 2013, the data already pointed toward more serious wildfire problems ahead. Over the next 13 years and nearly 200 fires, he watched that prediction come true. Fire seasons grew longer, fires burned faster and more aggressively, and January 2025 brought an inferno to the hills of Los Angeles at a time of year that usually felt like a safe time.

Through all of it, Palley has been there with a camera, building a visual record of the American West’s fire crisis. I had the opportunity to chat with him about his journey capturing wildfires, the toll it takes and Terra Flamma, his current ongoing series dedicated to a fresh perspective.

Fire as light

Stuart Palley

While Palley is still very focused on the journalistic side of his photography, his Terra Flamma series blends the boundaries between documentary and fine art. The project involves using long exposures to photograph fires at night, and Palley was drawn to making these images in part because of the colors they allow.

Palley explained that he frequently thinks about a quote from Vincent van Gogh, who said, “I often think that the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day.” Van Gogh’s paintings, like “The Starry Night ,” were direct inspiration for Palley’s fire-lit nightscapes. “That use of color and night scenes just always stuck with me from growing up, and I just loved access to the color palette that wasn’t otherwise available,” he said.

Stuart Palley

The images grasp onto that idea, showcasing landscapes in a manner we don’t often see. “Fire is its own light source, and it bathes everything in this warm light,” Palley explained. “When you add in smoke and other geographic features, it can either be an enormous warm softbox, or it can paint everything in orange and red, and then contrast it against a more blue or purple night sky. So it creates this incredible color palette that is only available when the fires are happening.”

Terra Flamma isn’t just about color, though. The long exposures give you a different look at the fire’s behavior, too. “You see what it’s doing, you see where the smoke’s going, and it sort of illuminates the scene,” said Palley. The long exposures also showcase the landscape, providing a bigger view of the situation. “Ultimately, the goal of Terra Flamma is to take these landscape photos of fire and put them in the context of where they are,” he said. “Is this happening in the mountains in the middle of nowhere? Is it happening near downtown LA?”

Stuart Palley

Palley has also expanded the series to include stories beyond the fire itself, including firefighters, crews, communities, air quality, forestry management and more. “The fire has become part of a broader ecosystem when it comes to storytelling about climate and natural disasters here in the American West,” he told me.

While Terra Flamma occupies the fine art end of his work, it represents only part of what Palley does at a fire. During the day, he’s working as a photojournalist documenting firefighters, crews and affected communities with the same immediacy as any news photographer. The long-exposure landscapes come when the sun dips down.

Putting gear in the line of fire

Stuart Palley

Of course, long exposures create logistical challenges that daytime images don’t. Fires are dynamic and can change rapidly, and setting up for a long exposure requires time. Thankfully, most of his long exposures give him the benefit of distance as a safety buffer. “A lot of times when I’m doing these longer landscape exposures, it’s from further back, looking at the fire in context across a canyon or down a hill,” he said. “So, I typically have some space built in that gives me both geographic safety and the time to make these images.”

That’s not always the case, though. Palley remembered one image in particular where he was much closer to the fire, with a 30-second exposure capturing embers swirling around him. “I had to stand there holding my camera in the wind, getting pelted by embers,” Palley said. “I’ve got like a hood, a helmet, goggles and all this stuff. So, I was fine. But I decided at that point that it was worth making that picture because it showed the ember cast in such a wild way that it was worth sitting there for the 30-second exposure.”

Stuart Palley

Thankfully, fires haven’t been the direct cause of damage to Palley’s gear. “I’ve certainly damaged and destroyed multiple cameras at these fires, but it’s not necessarily from negligence,” he said. He recalled one time in 2015 when he dropped his camera after getting attacked by a displaced beehive because they were attracted to his yellow Nomex suit. Another time, he melted a lens hood because it fell into burning grass.

The most common issue, he says, is smoke. “The cameras smell like ashtrays,” he said. “You get smoke and ashes on it, but you get alcohol wipes, and you wipe the cameras down every day to reduce smoke exposure and things like that.” He also sends them off yearly for a cleaning to maintain his gear. “But ultimately, it’s a tool and tools used in challenging conditions just often need more maintenance,” he explained.

Training is key

Stuart Palley

While Palley, of course, wants to create incredible photographs, he draws a clear line. “The key thing here is no photo is worth me getting hurt or getting in the way of firefighters,” he said. He’s always putting his safety and the job of firefighters first.

That focus on safety has only increased over the years, too, as fires have become more intense. “I’ve always been safety oriented, but I’m very, very conservative now on how I approach these fires because the fire behavior is so extreme,” he said. “From having been at almost 200 wildfires at this point, the fire behavior continues to surprise me with how aggressive and rapid it is.”

Stuart Palley

Palley’s safety record is no accident. Since early on in his career, he has devoted a lot of time to making sure he is well-trained, knowledgeable about fires and has the right gear. “When I first started photographing fires, I had basic Nomex PPE, but the boots didn’t quite fit right. I didn’t have the right fire shelter,” he told me. “So within the first year, I went to a private wildland fire school for a week to get my general wildland firefighter training.”

He’s also careful to continually update his gear so that it meets current standards. For example, he recently purchased a $3000 radio because many agencies have updated their radios, and he needs an easy way to listen to what’s going on to stay safe and out of firefighters’ way. “When I’m at fires, I want to be there to tell the story, not become part of it,” he said.

Stuart Palley

Palley has also started sharing his knowledge with others. He recently led a two-day wildfire media safety course for 20 Reuters staffers and freelancers. “It’s a blend of some very general wildland fire behavior and training that’s standardized for firefighters, but it’s sort of customized in a curriculum I just developed to teach journalists,” he explained. That information can then help other journalists stay safe, while producing informative coverage of these events.

That directness extends to how he talks about irresponsible coverage more broadly. Palley is a genuine believer in the democratization of media and is all for more people covering these events. But he has little patience for journalists or creators who treat dangerous situations carelessly. “When I’ve seen so many extreme fires, fatality fires, homes burn down, I don’t have time to sugarcoat these explanations,” he said. “Sometimes you have to just be direct and tell people to get their shit together. This is serious stuff happening. It needs to be taken seriously.”

Building trust and the ethics of wildfire photojournalism

Stuart Palley

Trust is also a factor when photographing these fires. Palley is often working in the vicinity of firefighters, and they need to know that he’s not a liability and that they can trust him to be responsible and safe. “If you’re a journalist there, to a wildland firefighter, you’re the X-factor,” he said. “Trust is one of the biggest things, and that’s the reason why I’m big on having the right gear and the training and knowing how to use it.”

Trust extends beyond wildland firefighters and safety crews, too. Palley often photographs communities when people return to their homes after fires, a traumatic and emotional experience. “When you’re photographing people on the worst day of their lives or the most stressful day of their lives, sometimes they don’t want that to be photographed,” he described.

“I want to respect the dignity that people deserve in these situations and build that trust,” Palley said. Because of that, he gives people space when requested, moving on to other areas and photographs. “To me, that’s more important than making that picture,” he told me.

The cost of the work

Stuart Palley

Palley considered conflict photography early in his career before deciding against it, in part because of the mental health toll he knew it could take. The irony is that wildfire photography has its own cost.

“Journalists deal with vicarious trauma, and if it’s not treated, it essentially develops into PTSD,” he said. He’s clear about what the work actually demands. “When these fires happen, you’re working 16, 18-hour days on assignment. It’s just very intense,” he said. “The human body and mind are not designed for that level of stimulation for that amount of time.”

There’s been a growing movement in both journalism and the firefighting world to acknowledge this, and Palley learned it firsthand. In 2023, he was feeling the burnout and stepped back from photographing fires for about a year.

Chiara Dollak

Recovery, for him, has meant therapy, stepping away from social media during intense fire periods and making space to decompress. “When it’s been a really intense fire reporting period, just kind of be present, literally touch grass, rest, get away from the digital screen,” he said.

The cost of this work is real, but so is Palley’s commitment to it. He returned to the fire line when the LA fires broke out in January 2025 and hasn’t stepped back since. For those looking to stay informed, he recommends Watch Duty, a free nonprofit app he volunteers for that sends real-time alerts about fires and evacuations across the United States.

His parting advice, after 13 years and nearly 200 fires, is straightforward: “If you’re worried about a fire and you haven’t gotten an evacuation order, you don’t have to wait for an evacuation order to leave. You can always leave.”

You can follow along with Palley’s work on his Instagram , YouTube channel and website .