FashionPhotographyBlog.com was able to catch up with another of our past Photo of The Week winners, the fashion photographer, stylist and fashion editor, the triple threat talent that is Tina Wong. I was so glad to have her drop in to catch up and see what she has been up to since taking the winning photo from her “J’adore” series in her round of Photo of The Week.
It seemed that Tina had been making great strides with her career, as she revealed that, “There have been so many great experiences. The past few seasons I’ve been able to shoot at New York Fashion week, working on the 100-women print publication was a great experience as the photos were printed in a coffee table type magazine, I’ve been able to shoot for amazing clients in Miami and photos were used for large print advertisements.”
With all her successful achievements to date, where is Tina now at as a photographer? She shared that she has been “Shooting Fashion for 7 years now and I still have a way to go! I feel like with the saturated market for fashion photography, not only do you have to have talent and work very hard to master your craft but you need to know how to market yourself and get exposure with the various publications and clients. I work with a lot of smaller commercial clients and magazine editorials but feel like it’s time to take the next step but it will take proactive actions from my part to get there.”
So what has the difference been between shooting her winning photo and how she shoots now? Tina explained that “I feel like my style has matured through the years and my unique voice is emerging. It’s gone from bright lifestyle-like commercial photography to a quieter more romantic one. I call it quiet beautiful, when you look at someone and you try to admire them like a flower in a vase in an empty room, and then you see an unshielded unfiltered beauty. I know my equipment more and I know how to control my lighting more as well which is something that comes with time.”
Speaking of lighting, I asked if there has been any change to how the photographer set up her lights since taking her winning photo, Tina nodded and explained that “I think I’ve become a minimalist. I used to try more than 1 Profoto head to light the model and create different effects but I’m starting to like just 1 head or natural light with a reflector.”
While discussing her lighting preferences nowadays, Tina also shared with me one of her recent works from a series entitled “Madame Butterfly”. A truly beautifully crafted photograph, I was intrigued to uncover the story behind it. The photographer explained that the “Inspiration behind the butterfly photo was to try to capture how a rose looks like when a butterfly is on it… still and beautiful. I wanted a darker edgier undertone, not just pretty butterflies. Some of the photos on the series almost had her smoking a butterfly like a cigarette, also, I used the butterflies as her brows and whited out her entire face to create a more ghastly and eerie feel to it.” To shoot this photo the photographer used 1 Profoto head (Profoto Prohead Plus), a 5ft Octobox, 2 foam cores.
You can find out more about this shoot and contact Tina Wong’s via her website (www.tnastudios.com) or email at photography@tnastudios.com
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