If Greg Garthe’s life had a logline, it might read something like this: A filmmaker trades movie sets for festival booths, discovering a new form of storytelling—and himself—in the stillness of a single frame.
It’s a fitting arc for a creative who spent the first act of his career behind the camera, directing and producing films, working on sets across the globe, and building a decades-deep portfolio of photographs. His work, shaped by cinematic instinct and global experience, now lives on at the Sawdust Art Festival, where his lens has shifted to moments captured in time.
“I’ve been a committed photographer for 25 years,” Greg says, “but I had not shared much of my work publicly until Sawdust 2024.” The turning point came on an India safari in 2022. “On our honeymoon, we encountered Bengal tigers in the wild,” he recalls. “Those photos were the last pieces I felt I needed to apply to the festival.”
It wasn’t just fate that got him there—it was his wife, who saw what he couldn’t yet. “I give my wife, Bianca, a lot of credit for convincing me to give the Sawdust a shot… after we met those tigers in India, of course.”
The debut paid off. Presenting two and a half decades of travel photography to the public wasn’t just a first, it was something deeper. “Seeing people’s faces, their reactions—it was this unexpected feeling of arrival,” reveals Greg. “I’ve had some memorable moments in filmmaking, but this was different. This was personal.”
“Peace,”
he says, when asked what he hopes they take home.
“A sense of stillness. Same as in movies & TV, photography is for
the audience. It’s not about me.
It’s about the moment, and what
it makes you feel.”
Though relatively new to exhibiting, Greg’s relationship with Laguna Beach spans decades. He was raised in the Bay Area, but his family established ties to the town in the mid-90s, and he attended his first Sawdust in the early 2000s. “I’d been a semi-local for 25 years before we moved here full-time,” he says. “The Sawdust always felt magical. Now, being a part of it, just being around so many talented artists, and accepted into this community – it has been an incredible honor.”
Before his photos filled a booth, Greg’s work lit up film sets. He collaborated on major Hollywood productions—including the hit comedy Wedding Crashers—and directed his own indie films. “My whole life, since the age of 6, I have been a writer, producer, and director,” he says. “Filmmaking and photography are intertwined in many ways.” Despite the refocus to photography and videography, Greg’s lifelong TV project, “Growing Up Movies” will be released on Amazon Prime this fall. “The mission of Growing Up Movies is to encourage adults to tap back into our innocent youthful desire to be creative, and then make time in our adult lives to exercise that freedom. As a proof of concept, I utilized footage from a silly narrative home movie we made as kids and built a new story around the old one 31 years later, bringing back some of the original “cast” members, and adding professional comedians and actors. It’s a super fun and original concept that I look forward to sharing with the world.” For more, please visit www.growingupmovies.com.
Greg’s photography work—shot everywhere from the beaches of Laguna and Maui to the jungles of India—are steeped in stillness but charged with narrative. Some hold secrets even he didn’t expect. “I have this one image from Vietnam that I call ‘Mystery Photo’,” he says. “There’s this seemingly translucent, floating figure in it—something I didn’t see until after the film developed. I’m a believer in lingering spirit energy. I can’t explain it, but it’s there.”
Despite his film pedigree and international lens, Greg doesn’t carry the ego you might expect from someone with IMDb credits and a catalog of global adventures. “The best advice I’ve received from longtime Sawdust artists is to pace yourself because it’s a marathon, not a sprint.” That groundedness runs through his presence at the festival. “I’m a collaborator, not a competitor. I want everyone to thrive.”
When someone purchases a print, it’s not just a transaction, but rather a transfer of feeling. “Peace,” he says, when asked what he hopes they take home. “A sense of stillness. Same as in movies & TV, photography is for the audience. It’s not about me. It’s about the moment, and what it makes you feel.”
As for the advice he’d offer his younger self—the one who set his sights on directing at age six? “Believe in the vision. Manifest it. Make your own luck.” A phrase that became the tagline of a comedy film he directed, and now threads its way through the next chapter of his artistry.
So if you find yourself strolling through Sawdust this season, make your way to Booth 416, right by Studio 1. The tiger photos are worth a stop. But ask about the ghost in Vietnam. That’s where the story really begins.
* Greg also loves to work with good people and is available for still photography and videography work on weddings, business events, parties, live music, portraits, and more.
