I Can Be Your Diplomat
I was sitting at my desk at work, listening to a band called Lupin—for Hippo Campus fans, it’s the solo project of the lead singer Jake—and then BAM. One line in May hit me, and I just thought, “This is so visual. I have to do a shoot portraying this.” A diplomat. How posh. The song goes on and talks about pretending, and I knew I had to put this really ritzy person in a setting that didn’t fit. He’s pretending to be put together, to be better than he is, and he’s not doing it perfectly.
*Also I may or may not have channeled a little bit of Chris Evans’ character in Knives Out. Hence the dang scarf.
The shoot itself turned out to be a little bit serendipitous—the grey blazer had been sitting in the back of my closet from a previous shoot that I didn’t end up needing it for, unused for two years, and it fit Luke pretty much perfectly. The pre-rainstorm clouds that morning were more epic than I ever could have wished, and we just happened to sneak the shoot in a day before the first heavy snowfall of winter. My one regret is that it was a little bit too windy to set up a second light and get the colored neon accents I was hoping for to match the groove of the song. All in all though, it was HECKIN POSH. SO DAPPER.
On a final note: this photoshoot has reminded me of the kind of work I want to make. I’m unabashedly proud of the third image below—when I saw it on the back of my camera, I was struck by how much it looked like a film still. (If you put it in black and white, it definitely has a film noir feel.) It’s like we’ve paused a scene of a drama, and there is so much emotion and story to pull out of it.
Some photographers are exceptionally good at portraiture, especially candid moments and events. I’ve realized that I myself prefer to conjure up stories and characters while giving things a fashion editorial feel. I love shooing on location. I love when the weather or the space gives you challenges to work with. I LOVE REMBRANDT LIGHTING. I want every image I make to feel as cinematic as a movie. Thanks for coming to my Ted talk.
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I lied. One additional note: It’s now about a week after this shoot and this morning, I was listening to one of my favorite albums by The Japanese House. They have a song called Wild that I’ve listened to probably a million times, and all of a sudden I actually heard the lyrics. They basically paralleled the Lupin one, in kind of a spooky way:
didn't mean to mean it, I'm an acrobat
a peace machine, such a diplomat
they all believe me, I'm such an act
You guys, I don’t fully know what this means, but apparently the universe is trying to tell me something about diplomacy and authenticity. Anyways. Here are the pics!
