1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
This year, I really wanted to expand the work I’ve been doing. I enjoy getting to work with different folks for their weddings, graduations, or whatever they’re looking for, but I also wanted a chance to branch out into other projects that would allow me to see what else I can offer as a photographer. As cliche and snooty as this sounds, I tend to fall in the artist’s mindset of wanting to constantly shake things up and to do something different. In other words, I have to grow, I have to be.
I knew I wanted to do a lot more commercial, print-ad type work. One of my goals is to someday get published for a magazine or to even see my work for clothing companies at a mall or something. I’d like to go into an H&M and nudge my friends, asking them if they liked my work because part of me wants that sort of validation.
To start, I wanted to emulate those types of pictorials for my portfolio. I had experience working in a studio with my friend earlier this year, so I booked that space out, since I wanted to go for a simple session where we, the audience focuses on the clothes, rather than the scene of the image. I began looking on Instagram for folks that would want to collaborate, and I had the fortune of getting in touch with Nancy (@msnancytong) who agreed to meet up for the shoot.
I was, frankly nervous, just cause my past shoots have usually been with a friend, and the advantage of that is that many of them knew exactly the look I was going for, in my vision, and we would improvise around that. With not knowing Nancy, prior to this, I was afraid of my ability to direct and to pull off the shoot. I like to believe I have this huge, crippling social anxiety when meeting new people, but upon meeting Nancy, all of that went away. As the shoot progressed, we both broke the ice by talking through the shoot and just getting to know more about each other.
Nancy is very goal oriented and she knows herself and has a quiet presence in her modeling style. I decided to play to that narrative with the lighting to cast moody shadows to one side of her face, and to emphasize the texture of the clothing. I feel like the biggest components for fashion shoots is, well, the fashion. As a consumer, you’re focusing on the product first and, then you project yourself in an imagined scenario of what you would look like in that outfit, had you decided to purchase it. While this is true, I still wanted to give a dramatic storytelling element in the way Nancy is posed. She’s often framed thinking of something, sometimes fondly, or with a bit of sadness. That sort of nuance gives a bit more personality, which is what I look for with a lot of the people I work with. It’s one thing to smile and look nice in a photograph, but if I can’t emotionally connect with the subject in the image, then it’s hard to really appreciate the work.
I hope to work with Nancy on future projects, and to keep exploring this new space in my portrait photography. That is, until my creative tendencies decides to move on some random endeavor, like baking bread in the shape of famous cartoon characters.
Actually, I’m going to write that down just in case.