Photographer Annie Lai went from shooting friends in her bedroom to high-profile fashion clients before returning to her roots. Here, she shares her photography journey and why tethered capture is critical for any fashion shoot.
Starting out as a side project for Berlin-based beauty photographer Zoë Noble to shine a light on women who choose not to have children, “We Are Childfree” has become a community of women across the world that support each other, share advice for how to live childfree, and work to destigmatize the act of choosing not to have children. “I didn’t have any role models growing up, and the ones that I saw were negative; it was always the mad, career-obsessed, hating-children, woman. And I knew that wasn’t me,” says beauty and still photographer Zoë Noble about the portrayal of childfree women. Realizing early on that she did not want to have children made her acutely aware of how radical that decision is within most societies. She felt that her choice was met with judgment and at times a lack of respect, having doctors tell her that she would change her mind or rejecting her request to have procedures that would affect her ability to have children. “When I had fibroids and I wasn’t allowed …
It was with a camera gifted from her grandfather documenting her college years that Brooklyn-based portrait photographer Poochie Collins first discovered her love of photography. As an introvert attempting to avoid having to talk to people, she started shooting street photography, preferring to keep her distance and observe from afar. Today, she uses her skill and perception to catch the little, intimate details about her subjects which she draws out with her sympathetic style of portraiture and captures spontaneous moments in time. We spoke to Poochie about her creative process, her intentions and inspiration when shooting her subjects, and how she gives her audience the chance to experience the Black community from a different vantage point. For a deep dive into Poochie Collins’ perspectives on a selection of her photographic portraits, watch the webinar. You describe your work as writing love letters with light and creating visual time capsules. What do you consider when planning your shoots? Funnily enough, I very rarely actually plan out a shoot. Most of the time, even with doing portrait …
There is a reason we don’t see the world in black and white. Colors are an integral part of how we experience life and how we communicate. For a photographer, colors are another tool to set a mood and help tell a story, and getting them right can make or break an image. In celebration of Black History Month and the role color plays in our lives, we spoke to three photographers, who are all part of the Black Woman Photographers collective, about their work and how they explore their subject matters with color. Daniella Almona For a photographer, understanding color is just as important as understanding composition and angles. At least to Lagos-born, Atlanta-based photographer Daniella Almona. With her portraits, she works to highlight blackness in all forms and plays with highly saturated colors in backdrops, props, clothes, and make-up to bring out her subjects’ features. With lush reds, warm oranges, and velvety blues drawing the viewer into the frame, she elicits emotion in both her subjects and audience. “The way colors interact with …