Fashion and portraits photography
For my digital work, I currently use Canon 5D Mark IV with Canon EF 24- 70mm f/2.8L II USM for most fashion, and 85mm f/1.8 USM for beauty/close ups. Before 2018 I used Canon 5D Mark II with Canon 50mm f/1.4 lens and Canon 85mm f/1.8 USM, all still are my back ups. And my oldest pictures were taken on a Canon 400D with 50mm f/1.8 II which was my first proper camera when I was a teenager.
My film pictures are taken on variety of cameras, but I primarily use Canon EOS 3 (newest film pictures from last year), Pentax MZ-50, Fujifilm Instax 210 and Fujifilm mini. For my point and shoot diary posts, I use Yashica T3 and before that Canon AF 35m. I also have Mamiya RZ67 for medium format, but haven’t done many shoots with it yet.
I started taking pictures when I was 15 and signed up on deviantArt and Flickr – there were so many talented young people that it inspired me to try and create something too. I started with portraits, more conceptual images and stories and became interested in fashion photography around 2011. But it took me awhile after that to pursue fashion properly and to work with a team.
I shoot everything in RAW, so first of all I add the main tones in Lightroom and then open it in Photoshop retouch it further. There I mostly retouch the skin and anything else that needs to be taken care of and might adjust tones further (using curves, color balance, selective colors), it’s at this stage that I sometimes add grain or more of a film feel to digital images – depending on a shoot I might want to keep a “clean” image as well.
Most of how I shoot and how to use the camera etc I have learned myself. Through experimenting, testing, various online tutorials and just trial and error. I did attend university from 2011 though and learned some things I haven’t done before, mainly shooting in the studio (though honestly we should have spent much more time there than we did), how to develop your own film and print in the dark room. A bit more about retouching, though I still think online tutorials were more helpful for me to learn that. I also think university really should have shown us more of the business side – how to actually run your own business or get into fashion industry. It wasn’t much oriented around it, and it’s by far what we needed to learn the most..
I wouldn’t go to university again to be honest, and I think no one has to these days for photography – you can learn so much in other ways that won’t leave you with a big loan.
So many things really, ideas can come from absolutely everywhere! But mainly music, movies, books, photography, locations I encounter, interesting faces that spark stories.
Music is definitely one of the most important things in my life and a huge inspiration (a lot of the photoshoot titles/blog post names come from songs) and you can see what I listen to in my last.fm.
My favorite inspiring writers are: Sylvia Plath, Haruki Murakami, Camus, Edgar Allan Poe, Dostoyevski. My favorite books are: The Stranger, One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, The Great Gatsby, 1984, Silk, Steppenwolf, Trap for Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, The Virgin Suicides, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, A Song of Ice and Fire, The Hunger Games, The White Shroud by Lithuanian writer Antanas Škėma.
Most inspiring/beautiful movies to me are: The Virgin Suicides, Pan’s Labyrinth, Amelie, The Secret Garden, Pretty Baby, Carrie, Black Swan, Daisies, Valerie and her Week of Wonders, Science of Sleep, Don’t Deliver Us From Evil, Donkeyskin, The Stoker, Picnic at the Hanging Rock, Cracks, Rosemary’s Baby, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter.
If it’s not to be sold or used in a commercial way, then yes, please, do, and definitely show me as it’s exciting to see my images in another way!