Cortado Creative is a photography, direction & film studio built for the endurance and outdoor world, made on gravel roads, mountain passes, and start lines before sunrise.
We're a small studio led by Justin Britton, making photography, film and campaigns for brands and the people behind them. A lot of that work lives in endurance and outdoor sport, and Justin came to the camera as an athlete first, so that world gets an insider's eye. The same eye travels: product in a studio, a portrait, a place, a story that has nothing to do with a finish line.
We build the crew around the shoot rather than the other way round. Some jobs are one photographer and two bags, some need a full production team. Either way they're people we've worked with before, chosen for the job, and they're named on every project here. The attention to detail is the same at either scale.
We shoot it and we finish it. Photography, film, drone and post under one roof, so what leaves us is what runs.
Most of the work happens somewhere else: Kenya, the Alps, a start line before sunrise. We travel light and stay long enough that the camera stops being the point. It tends to be quick, too: a day on a peak above Chamonix produced the assets that opened a global campaign, and a day across San Francisco covered a partnership launch end to end.
Creative Direction · Brand Campaigns · Event & Race Documentary · Product & Lifestyle Photography · Motion & Film · Retouching & Post-Production
On course with the Life Time Grand Prix: gravel, mountain bike, and everything the weather does to a long day of racing.
A long spring day across the Kansas gravel, and a lot of the time thick mud, with riders who came a long way to suffer beautifully. Sun, rain, thunderstorms and tornadoes nearby, across the 20th edition of Unbound.
We had a driver named Wendi and an epic Jeep Wrangler called Sharkbait, which is an amazing thing to have on a course like this one. The harsher the weather, the better the photographs. People finished looking wrecked, and feeling it even more.
The Leadville 100 is a hundred-mile mountain bike race that gains around 10,000 feet over the course of the day, topping out above 11,000 feet. It's beautifully hard, in the mountains of Colorado, and unforgettable.
The Sea Otter Classic was the first stop of the year for the Life Time Grand Prix, and it shares its ground with the world's largest cycling trade show, a smart use of both. The race itself was quick: the trails were bone dry.
The first of four races covered under a 2026 retainer with Life Time.
Saucony pro Julia Paternain, the day after winning bronze in the marathon at the 2025 World Athletics Championships in Tokyo, only her second marathon ever. A reactive shoot for the brand to celebrate it, made inside the Saucony store and the streets around it, with one hour to work with.
A shoot to announce the partnership between nutrition brand Spring Energy and professional runner Vanessa Fraser, shot across three locations in San Francisco in a single day.
Commercial stills for New Balance Running: race-day product on the streets it was built for, and athlete stories shot for the moments the brand shows up around.
A shoot paired with quotes from pro runner Brenda Martinez, promoting positive mental health around Global Running Day and getting people outside and running. Shot in Allston, MA.
Stills for a spec shoot with Team New Balance Boston, a professional running team based in Boston and sponsored by New Balance. Studio portraits and headshots of the athletes, with a few of the moments in between.
Stills for New Balance Running of their NYC Marathon FuelCell race shoe, shot for online, social, and in-store. Product on the street it was built for, on the feet of runners moving through the city.
Video and stills shot in Chamonix with the Brooks Running trail team: high alpine singletrack under Mont Blanc, and the athletes who spend their seasons on it.
Everything here came out of a single day on a peak above the valley, with Mont Blanc holding the background. Video, drone and stills run together so one day of shooting could carry a campaign's worth of assets.
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The Hell of the North, shot for Bike.Write.Repeat. across both race days: the cobbles, the crowds, the velodrome, and the showers after.
Mathieu van der Poel dominated the 2024 men's race with a 60-kilometre solo attack to take his second consecutive win, in the fastest edition of Paris-Roubaix ever run. The route covered 259.7 km, with 55.7 km of it on cobbles, the most in thirty years. They are truly terrible to ride on. Or to drive on.
The showers are at the end. They always are.
In the fourth edition of Paris-Roubaix Femmes, Lotte Kopecky came out on top, making her move just over halfway in. She was eventually caught, and a series of counter-attacks whittled it down to a small group heading into the velodrome, where Kopecky had the best sprint of the day.
First time driving solo at Roubaix, and it got a little stressful working out which road closures to reach by when. That's the rush that comes with shooting a bike race.
Mathieu van der Poel won the 2023 race, setting a then-record for the fastest average speed, with his teammate Jasper Philipsen second on a tough day of racing.
Learning on the fly how to chase a road race meant missing the finish, so there's no finish-line shot or reaction this year. Made it in time for the historic velodrome showers, though.
The first proper European road race we shot as credentialed media. Alison Jackson led the breakaway and held on for the win in Roubaix; at one point the gap was down to eight seconds, and somehow they kept everyone off.
Shot alongside another photographer, Twila Muzzi, who was as welcoming as she was helpful. She does great work. Look her up.
Shot on assignment at the 2024 Paris Olympics for the St. Albans Messenger. Tennis first; more of the Games to come.
Shot on assignment at the 2024 Paris Olympics for the St. Albans Messenger. Matches included Rafa Nadal and Carlos Alcaraz in doubles against Andrés Molteni and Máximo González, Nadal against Novak Djokovic in singles, Coco Gauff against María Lourdes Carlé, and Iga Świątek against Diane Parry.
The world record holder in the pole vault, training in Louisiana. Shot for World Athletics alongside a recorded interview the client transcribed for the accompanying article.
We worked with OOFOS for four years, across campaigns that moved between studio, lifestyle and film. We also produced storytelling pieces about the Oocrew, the people who wear them.
OOFOS had us bring more than ten lines of sandals and shoes to Europe for two weeks and shoot them in real use: into the Alps around Chamonix, then down to the Mediterranean and a small village in Italy called Zoagli. Hiking, walking, swimming, and recovering from running and riding.
Studio work for OOFOS across several seasons: the product on its own, and the product on people.
Recovery footwear where it actually gets worn: on the stairs after a run, on a cabin floor in Vermont, on a bench in spring, and on the steps of a village above Chamonix.
We've worked with Tread Labs for over a year, partnering with the brand on commercial photo and video shoots around new product launches and line updates. Shoots have been produced in the U.S. and in Europe.
Shot in Boston on a late-summer morning to show the versatility and impact of the new line of insoles Tread Labs built for their run category: laced up, on the road, and out on the trail.
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A full day in Los Angeles for several new lines of insoles. The production brief was a location that could change its look from one spot to the next, which the Santa Monica Mountains gave us, plus an Airbnb booked specifically as a set for the at-home frames.
Film work for Under Armour: long-form athlete stories, from a marathon debut in Kenya to the road to Paris, and the social cutdowns that carry them.
A multi-month series following Under Armour athletes on the road to the Paris Games, shot wherever the road went: Los Angeles, Flagstaff, Melbourne, London, Baltimore, Portland and Eugene. Three long-form films for YouTube and four reels for social, with the stills made alongside them.
A long-form video series following Under Armour athlete Sharon Lokedi training in Kenya ahead of the NYC Marathon, her debut at the distance.
We flew from the U.S. to Eldoret with a few bags of gear and Under Armour product to donate to young runners there. Six days on the ground covering training and home life, built around a scripted interview session with Sharon and her coach, Stephen Haas. Video, drone, and stills, then back to shoot New York.
