After graduating from high school, he went to Paris to study photography at Icart photo school and began working for the photography agency Wostok.
In 2004, at the age of 20, Ochlik went to Haiti to photograph the riots and conflict surrounding the fall of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. The resulting work was awarded the Francois Chalais Award for Young Reporters and was projected at Visa pour l’Image International Photojournalism Festival.
In 2005, he founded his own photography agency called IP3 Press, with the goal of covering news in Paris and conflicts around the world.
He covered the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2008 and returned to Haiti to cover the cholera epidemic and presidential elections in 2010. In 2011, Ochlik photographed the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions and the uprising and war in Libya. His work has been published in Le Monde Magazine, VSD, Paris Match, Time magazine, and The Wall Street Journal.
He was killed when a shell hit the building where he and other journalists were working in Homs, Syria, on 22 February 2012.
