I first met Roarie Yum three or four years ago at a shoot I was doing with a different model. The two of them had been on the road together, taking modeling gigs one city at a time, and while I was shooting with the other model Roarie hung out on my studio couch and caught up on her email. I wasn’t aware of her work at the time and when I later saw her incredible portfolio I kicked myself for not working with her when I had the chance.
Read More
One Man's Trash...
This marks my third shoot with Melissa this year. Though she now lives in NYC, she was in town for the holidays and asked if I’d be interested in doing a plastic-themed shoot. In preparing for the shoot sent me a few images from a recent Vogue Portugal fashion story that implemented single-use plastics into their shoot. I really enjoyed how they repurposed trash into the creation of something new and beautiful. I knew that I would want to take a different approach to the idea by capturing the texture of the materials and experimenting with creating more abstract portraits, and so I asked Melissa to “rescue” a range of plastic from her life over the next week and bring a range of options with her to the shoot…
Read More
His and Hers
This was a fun one. Chyna and I have fallen into a nice rhythm with our shoots, as we have been collaborating every 2-3 months. It goes like this: she shows up with several outfits that she cobbled together from her closet or the thrift store; I look over what she brought and quickly brainstorm how to best light/shoot the looks; we play…
Read More
Character
I decided to keep this session really minimal. One light and a v-flat (which I used as a tabletop). Sarah brought a range of clothing options but I decided just to use the black and white options. I had her pull her hair back to keep all of the lines really clean and simple. It’s never not surprising to me just how much the mood of an image can change through a subtle gesture or tilt of the head.
Read More
Red (and yellow and blue) Redemption
I’ve been shooting with Melissa for around six years now and some of my favorite shots that I’ve taken have been from our past collaborations. So when she texted me a couple weeks ago to tell me that she and her boyfriend are relocating to New York, we made sure to get in one last hurrah. For the occasion I brought in my friend and wonderful makeup artist, Andi Summer. When she asked what I was going for I said bold. She responded, bold as in colorful eye makeup or bold as in body paint? Yes.
Read More
Shelby, July '19
Black and Gold
I’ve been collaborating with model Chyna Tene for several years now and I always go into the shoots excited to see what we come up with. It’s always a true collaboration, with her in charge or wardrobe, hair, and makeup, and me in charge of the rest.
Read MoreShelby
Shelby is one of my favorite people to photograph. She always brings so much emotion to shoots. Going in to a session, I never know what we are going to make. She brought a few black and white garments with her, as well as the idea of making a tear shape on her face. I experimented with projecting a few different images of water drops on her face, but didn’t like the result. I decided to change it up, making simple shapes like circles and lines, which I projected on to her face.
The image of the dot pattern was a bit of a happy accident. During the shoot my laptop was tethered to a projector, with my image files open in Photoshop. For that setup I decided to black out a portion of the file, leaving her nose and mouth unlit by the projector. The fact that her pupil lined up with the dot pattern was serendipitous. When we looked at the back of the camera at the end of the shoot, we both gasped.
When it came to post-processing, I wanted to give the feel of Ming Dynasty porcelain (white and blue patterns). Ultimately I decided to push the whites to more of a peach color.
