Originally Published: April 1st, 2021
Based based photographer Bred Hampton has been creating content for almost half a decade. The 30-year-old always is a native of Dorchester and possesses an eye for dope photos and videos that made him interested in the craft, resulting in him buying a camera in 2017 and not turning back. He has become one of Boston’s top photographers, shooting for artists like Lil Baby, Quavo, A$AP Ferg & more. In addition, he’s now the personal videographer/photographer for Boston Celtics star forward Jayson Tatum.
Since getting that opportunity, Bred landed himself an office inside the Celtics organization due to his dedication and consistent hard work.
He grinded to get the opportunities, a lot of effort and time was put down for a few years. Bred started out doing street photography. He then began taking his camera to concerts across Boston, giving him the chance to take photos for the artists coming through for a gig. This helped him make his name and land some of his coolest work to date, with photos ranging of artists across the levels of the rap game.
Being a black man in America, Bred has faced racism in the workforce and been restrained because of his skin color.
“In Boston the racism is very underlying,” He said. “You deal with it in different ways versus somebody calling you the n-word, it’s just more hidden. Sometimes you get more of a hard time when you’re in certain venues and you get the extra looks, and it’s like, ‘oh okay you can’t be back here,’ or ‘you need a pass’ so, coming to a game, you kind of maneuver around it but I need to be as professional as possible and fit in where I fit in.”
I continued to ask how he handles this disrespect on the job and manages to keep going back to it.
“It’s the nature of being black in America,” He said. “It is what it is, I just have to push through and find my footing and stay on my 1s & 2s. I’m always going to be myself no matter where I am, I’ll never tolerate any disrespect or any slight or anything like that. I just do what I gotta do. It hasn’t been perfect, but, for the most part, I handle my business.”
During Black History Month in 2022, the Boston Celtics did a employee spotlight on him and how much he has contributed to the content team, see the post below.
Bred saw the vision to create somewhat of a character surrounding his work so when new fans found his catalog, there was substance to the cool photos. ‘Hampton’ originates from the Chicago Black Panther Party leader name, Fred Hampton, who Bred has credits as an influential figure in his life.
“When I first heard about Fred Hampton’s story, I was just in awe because he died so young and did so much at a young age and when I read he was assassinated it pissed me off,” He said. “I always wanted to have an artist name that has meaning so when people googled it, the person or the ideal theory would pop up on Google too so they would learn about him while looking at my work.
“Instead of me obviously just taking Fred, I just put Bred, because of my love of sneakers,” He said. “Everybody knows the Bred acronym is black & red for Jordans so as a sneakerhead, I just put Bred Hampton together and it stuck.”
These are Bred Hampton’s Top 3 Favorite Air Jordan Models:
- Air Jordan 1’s
- Air Jordan 3’s
- Air Jordan 4’s
Bred started making his name by shooting for artists at their concerts in the greater Boston area. He was doing this steadily for two & a half years until Covid-19 put a halt to live shows. Bred talked about the experiences of shooting for artists at various functions.
“So the first experience is that I shot a show for Cameron,” he said. “I had gotten backstage access because I had gotten a photo pass and I couldn’t believe it like I’m backstage in his artist room, just shooting the shit with him and he’s laughing and giggling. So I Was like damn I can get all this access with a camera, most people are trying to rap to get his attention or sing so I’m just going to take pictures. So once I got that bug, I was like this is it.”
“I ended up meeting with Dj E-Double from Jam’n 94.5 iHeartRadio down here in Boston and was like ‘Yo I do pictures, I do videos I’m ready to work if you’re shooting with artists.’ A little time went by and one day he hit me and said, ‘Yo I got an interview with G-Eazy, you got a microphone?’ I’m like Yeah and he told me to pull up to the arena and after that we really locked in and I started shooting content for him.”
He still continued to say how he was able to ‘work the room’ and attend as many shows he possibly could.
“It helped me build my resume and catalog up with just work,” He said. “It helped me get familiar with notable figures and how to work the room and how to act. That was big for me the exposure I had after that was amazing but, I was still going to concerts on my own and was driving hours just to get to a Gunna show, just to get the content, I was doing every artist like Big K.R.I.T or BJ the Chicago Kid, anybody that I had an ear for that I like I’ll shoot.”
Recently, Bred was making moves during the Holiday by dropping merch. He put out various colorways of hoodies and it went really well, selling over 100 units total.
“I did a first drop of just black & white colorway,” He said. “I’m not trying to be a clothing line or anything just some merch for supporters so I think I waited like six months and I finally dropped a few colorways recently and then those went crazy. It’s amazing that people are willing to invest in the brand not so much from support, but when they put their money behind it, I was just shocked so I’m going to keep dropping a few new colors once in a while.”
As of late, Bred just got back from Atlanta following Jayson Tatum & Jaylen Brown around the NBA All Star Game. He has been working directly with Tatum and Brown for the past year and has shot some viral photos for them including Tatum debuting the Air Jordan 1 “Dior” on feet, the first person to do so at Chicago’s NBA All-Star Game in Feb. 2020. See the photo below.
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Director Operations / Head Writer Culture Captures
I enjoy music.