I'm excited to announce that I've been chosen as a winner in the Advertising category of Communication Arts 64th Annual Photography Competition 2023 for my work on Purina ProPlan. I'm honored to be among the talented artists who submitted their work and thank you to the judges who participated in the review.

It is awesome to collaborate on other prolific projects with some of the best & brightest creative minds in the world, to work with some of the most talented crew in the industry and traveling to 60+ countries and counting. What a long strange and exhilarating trip it’s been!

I have a famous tiny picture; a US Postal Service First Class Forever stamp featuring one of my images. I'm super proud of that stamp! It's also an image of a living person, the blues musician Jimmy "Duck" Holmes. The USPS typically only feature dead people. Congrats, Duck, first of all you're alive, and on a USPS first class stamp!

In July 2020 The CBS Sunday Morning Show highlighted my “Portraits of Mandated Isolation” project during the first 4 months of the pandemic. That was really cool, except, in normal times I bet that I would've been able to get a lot of work out of that, the response was massive! However, in normal times, I wouldn't have been featured in the first place. And that is what we call a catch-22 folks.

I have two books to my name, Hidden History of Mississippi Blues and Mississippi Juke Joint Confidential: House Parties, Hustlers and Blues Life, both penned by the great music aficionado & author, Roger Stolle. I risked life & limb...and liver for those images. I became a legit moonshine connoisseur on those projects!

I once shot on three continents in a single day. We were shooting for a Wall Street firm. It was a day or two before Thanksgiving and my client wanted to get home and we made it happen! It was a great production, we didn't cut corners and had time to spare! We started out in Istanbul, across the Bosphorus on the Asian side, then photographed a partner of the firm in Milan at the The Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II and finally another partner in NYC at 85 Broad. All commercial flights!

Also had some great write-ups and features in the The Huffington Post, a profile on an NBC affiliate, CNN, CBS, MSNBC, Slate, Photo District News, Workbook, Wonderful Machine, DP Review to name just a few. Always appreciative of the shoutouts!

Dried mango & espresso are two of my favorites, out of a really long list of favorites.

I am one of only a handful of people to have climbed to the very tip top of the Empire State Building. Think needle & light bulb. I made the climb a couple of times with Tom Silliman. He's a legend. He travels the world maintaining bulbs, antennas and transmission line systems etc. on top of some of the tallest buildings & towers on earth. Everyone who has made the ESB climb signs their name on the metal wall just below the ice shield. I wrote my name close to Keith Haring's name & a small iconic drawing that he drew. It was him:)

Oh and Iwo Jima! I've never met anyone who's been there. It's a closed Japanese military island and lies south of the Bonin Islands. The Battle of Iwo Jima (19 February – 26 March 1945) was a major battle in which the United States Marine Corps and Navy landed on and eventually captured. I climbed Mount Suribachi where the amazing & iconic Joe Rosenthal photo was made. I was shooting for CBS and traveling with Dan Rather & General Schwartzkopf making stills for their WWI documentary....or were they traveling with me;) #namedropper

Lou Bopp's photos have been exhibited at...haha bio's in the third person are so weird because you know who's writing them, they are! Anyway, I digress, let's keep going with the first person narrative here and keep it real; my work has been exhibited at the following fine institutions and many private collections.

National Arts Club | New York City | solo show

Lishui International Photographic Culture Festival | Lishui, China | group show

Missouri History Museum | permanent collection

The National Blues Museum | permanent collection

August House Gallery | Chicago | solo show

Sheldon Art Gallery St. Louis | group show

Highway 61 Blues Museum | Leland, MS | permanent collection

Museum of the City of New York | group show

Cat Head Gallery | Clarksdale, MS | solo show

If you've made it this far, thanks for your interest, you must really care, I would love to hear from you!