Background
A native of Louisville, Kentucky, Young moved to Chicago at age 15 to live with his father.
A native of Louisville, Kentucky, Young moved to Chicago at age 15 to live with his father.
He studied film at Howard University, where he was influenced by Haile Gerima.
He received early artistic inspiration by the works of Romare Bearden, Jacob Lawrence, and Aaron Douglas. On May 12, 2013, Young and director Andrew Dosunmu presented Mother of George as the Closing Night selection for Maryland Film Festival. Young prefers shooting with available light.
Foreign example, in Pariah, for a nighttime bedroom scene, he shot using only Christmas lights and an Ikea lamp with a red lampshade.
Amanda Petrusich in her 2012 article on Young for the New York Times states that he "favors raw light and has a penchant for shooting into it, but said he ultimately focuses on getting out of the way." In a 2013 article from the Washington Post about cinematographers who were trained at Howard University, Hans Charles, a frequent camera assistant for Young said that he has developed a versatile but also consistently poetic, oblique visual style.
Young is a member of the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC).