Bob Primes, ASC
Biography

Bob Primes, ASC was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. His early interests included mathematics, still photography, music and poetry. Primes majored in math and studied philosophy at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, where he also learned to play the piano. He dropped out after two and a half years, and traveled around Europe, taking thousands of still pictures. After about three months, Primes returned home and enrolled at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Primes “flunked out” after about a year and a half, and got a job in a San Francisco camera store. He took extension classes in filmmaking, and soon focused on cinematography. From 1964-‘75, Primes pursued a career as a freelance filmmaker and cinematographer in San Francisco, mainly working on industrial films, documentaries and commercials. He moved to Los Angeles in 1975, where he was initially employed as a TV commercial director-cinematographer. His eclectic body of work includes music videos, commercials, documentaries, feature films (e.g. Bird on a Wire, A Murder of Crows, etc.) telefilms (Reasonable Doubts, My Antonia and Harrison: Cry of the City, etc.) and episodic series (e.g., thirtysomething, Quantum Leap, Felicity, etc.).

Primes earned Emmy Awards for Felicity and My Antonio, and a third nomination for Harrison: Cry of the City. He has just received the ASC award for the series MDs, the first digital show so honored and has had ASC nominations for Felicity and the Reasonable Doubts pilot. He has served on the board of directors of the International Cinematographers Guild and as vice president and treasurer of the American Society of Cinematographers. Primes is on the Advisory Board of the National Film Preservation Board. He has championed the authoring rights of cinematographers at conferences in Tokyo and Madrid and at government hearings in Washington, D.C. Primes has lectured and conducted seminars at various schools, and at the Rockport, Maine international film workshop