Who am I?
I've been a photographer since 2012, but I've been told that I've had a camera in my hand since I was a little kid. I'm 18 now and my work has been featured/used in galleries, magazine covers, album covers, websites, and more. My work ranges from high budget empowerment events, to weekend long festivals, to professional shoots with a full crew, to 1 on 1 photoshoots with wonderful people in everyday places.
In all my creative work, I focus on one core philosophy: in impermanence, there is resilience; in destruction, there is reinvention; in pain, there is depth; and in all art, love is the only thing consistent.
The word that describes me best is a perfectionist; I constantly push my work to be the best it can be. Trust me with your vision and know that it will be executed to the fullest of my abilities.
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What do I look for in a photo?
A Feeling
I went out with close friends and had decided to stage an impromptu photoshoot. I was very particular with each nuance to this photo during setup and during post production. The background is moderately chaotic but only to the right of the subject, where I had pushed/flipped shopping carts for added effect, without them the picture would seem almost too bare and far too intentional; when I shot this photo I had intended for his pain to be very visible and the best way to sometimes show that is with implicative prop usage. The tree directly behind him was used as a framing marker to draw attention to the focal point. The lighting for this shot was tricky but turned out exactly as I had hoped. In front of the subject was his car and the headlights provided a very jagged and visceral painted effect across his face that I styled and tweaked to perfectly accentuate his features.
An Intention
This photo is from a shoot that I styled, organized, and shot. I hired a makeup artist/hairstylist, went location scouting days prior and had gone to the models house and selected clothing/jewelry to fit the locations. This photoshoot was intended to be my portfolio building shoot, so I invested a lot into it turning out. I was the most stressed and strapped for time I had ever been for a shoot. I mark this shoot as the first real photoshoot I have done.
In this particular still, I had found a house that been charred to the bare foundation. I styled her to represent a sort of ember and chose red because of the complimenting earthtones/blacks around her. I framed only to the bottom of the coat because the photo wasn’t about her black leggings or anything else. The narrative the picture was intended to tell was best told through expression, colors and posture. Her hands are clasped in front of her to show formality and to imply the perfection of them, not a speck of dirt or ash. Her golden jewelry accentuates the buttons on her jacket and give her a sense of militaristic elitism.
A Nuance
This photo was posed and inspired by a pink hair clip he had worn, the femininity with the bash masculine chain and tattered shirt had a playful and photogenic aesthetic. I used a blending/contrast tool on both the shoes and the sand to bring out the deep grunge-like aspects. For lighting I propped up a pop flash to shine from his feet up, to give a really accentuated and dramatic lighting effect. The dark lighting gradient in the background while the subject is fully illuminated is one of my favorite aspects of shooting with flash. It has a very precise nature to it that can easily be misused but if used correctly it can provide a very dramatic and eye catching look. His styling was done in part by myself and him. In post, I had chose black and white because of the wonderfully dramatic and punchy nature of black and white. I tend to lean towards black and white photos purely because of my affinity for the angst and grunge it brings out.
A Moment
This photo was posed, framed and lightly styled. One of my favorite things to do in photography is to allow the models to be as comfortable as possible. Each model is a very dear friend that I brought with me to explore the post-fire damage in Rose Valley. They styled themselves and were only told to dress comfortably but semi formally. Due to me knowing their styles before they even arrived at the shoot, I had mentally prepared for their aesthetics (Dakota’s affinity for black pallets and Max’s unordinary/punklike style). The best thing that comes out of this informal style of shooting is that the models are almost never far from their element, which leads to better postures, expressions and refined styles that fit their personalities, which inevitably make a better picture.
In this photograph, I remembered a particular lesson I learned in a photography course I took in Seattle. I used different objects to provide the image with significant depth. The hills in the background had a lot of texture and were naturally sprawling in differing depths of field. The photo itself was still ordinary, though, so I used a charred bush to give even more depth and give the image even more of a narrative/personality. The composition lines of this photo were also very intentional. The branches were grouped in a way that I was able to draw attention and point the viewer towards the subjects. The subject on the right (my friend Max) has this radical mohawk that is very funny to frame with, along the hillside is a red line from helicopter flame-retardant airdrops, so I used that line to sort of play off of his mohawk and give the composition a little more character.
A photographers greatest ability, over most other art forms, is the ability to capture a moment in time that will never pass again, to capture the infinite in a finite frame. This photo has a lot of emotional impact because of the devastation it represents. The Thomas Fire impacted everyone very deeply and this is what that pain created for me.
An Idea
This is one of my favorite photos that I’ve ever taken. It came from a weekend in LA for the music festival Flog Gnaw Carnival. I was very particular for the styles in the shoot and since we were in LA for one of the best dressed music festivals of the year, everyone was dressed to impress. For the framing of this photo I utilized a lot of lead lines that drew significant attention to the subject. I used the shadows in the photo to build contrast and personality against the otherwise white wall. I made sure the subject was completely out of the shadows but still directly in front of them due to the lightness/reflectiveness of his white leather jacket. I placed him in front of the corner of the building to make sure all walls/lines/focus is drawn to him. The composition of this shot is utilizing the 1/3rds rule, which is the subject should be taking up a third of the framing of the photo. The subject was instructed to look so serious to the point of almost looking mean. His body positioning was directed to look comfortable and informal, despite the otherwise threatening presence of nails/glass/assorted debris. When someone shows signs of adamant comfort in absolute chaos, it generally makes a 3rd party slightly uncomfortable, as well as, intrigued by the subject’s careless demeanor; I think of it as a sort of villain complex and this photo demonstrates. I adore this photo because it is incredibly clean both in composition/palette but still has my favorite style of grunge-tastic urban decay.