Architectural Study: Institute of Contemporary Art at VCU

A trip to the Institute of Contemporary Art at VCU in Richmond, VA

Shot on Sony A7iii
Sony GM 24-70 f/2.8

If you’d like to work together on something cool, let me know! Let’s make it happen.
Shoot me an email at winstonqzhou@gmail.com or via my contact page.

 

Year-end Review: 2021

 

Hi! Hej! Hello! Are you well? What’s your flavor today?

This year was honestly a whirlwind in almost every possible aspect. I got a job! I was able to commission my friend Charissa to create a logo for me! I launched a print shop! People bought prints! (Thank you 10Q Thank you so much!) I moved 3 times! I turned 25! Truly the most. By the time December was rolling around, my motivation was so fickle, it felt like a coin flip on whether or not I even wanted to complete this review. But after a few days of mulling, I was reminded that the entire purpose of this annual review is so that I have something to act as an anchoring point of reset and reflection. It's nice to be able to share this with you guys, but the primary purpose is in the name. A year end review. What’s the point to make this review, and rush it out if it doesn’t fulfill that base purpose, y’know?

This year was quite different from previous years in that it was also my very first year of stepping away from full time freelance work! For the longest time I thought that if stopped trying to make a living as a full time photographer (/videographer/designer/email monkey) that it'd be the same as giving up on my ambitions. But this year I realized that it’s really…not that simple? And so I’m leaning into the mess, and pivoting! Also I want health insurance. (Maybe I’ll talk on quitting when I have more life under my belt.)

It feels quite ironic, really. To have the year I step away from full time freelance work be the most creatively fulfilling year to date. But I guess that's the way the pajeon flips sometimes ! I really enjoyed the format I used last year, so I'm going to return to that one more time. I love being able to tell stories, and I love being able to give context to what might otherwise be assumed to be a simple recipe. But this time I'll start by sharing some of my personal work and then move into professional work afterwards. As a fun twist from previous years, some of these photos will also be available for purchase as prints via my shop!

ALSO! Click on the actual pictures to tab through so you can see them in their entirety.

As always, if you'd like to work with me on a project, feel free to reach out to me via my contact page.

Let's ride.

This first set of photos is fun! (well, I think all of them are fun)
So something I had the leeway to explore this year was what it'd be like to really put the idea of "gear doesn't matter" to the test by becoming an inverse gear-head. Instead of vying for the newest gear, I'd just use what was available and convenient. (Obviously only for my personal work). And what a ride that's been!

I bought some cheap point and shoot cameras just so that I could have something with me wherever I am. Slowing down, making time to take walks, trying to see the beauty in all the spaces I’m in. Scenes taken on walks, scenes taken around the neighborhood, scenes taken at home. There’s something picturesque wherever you are. A few of these are actually available for purchase as prints! You can find em at my shop over at winston.darkroom.tech.

The photos in this set were taken on a few different cameras.
- Nikon Coolpix S230
- Canon Powershot 180
- Fuji X-M1

It’s incredible what these old cameras can do. It’s not that they’re professionally viable, but it’s inspiring to shoot on these cameras and realize how powerful the cameras on our phones are in comparison. It’s been fun to see the different limits of these cameras and figuring out what quirks on these cameras help me create when I’m not shooting on professional grade gear. Let’s keep going.

ALRIGHT this one is cool. The first two are just scenes from Adorn Vintage Furniture in Baltimore! I love watching how light trickles in to different spaces and how it interacts.
That next one is an image I shot on a Nintendo 3DS! Did you know that those old things have cameras too? Surprisingly they do, and they’re not bad (Also read as: they’re bad cameras, but the novelty of using one for photography just seemed too cool to pass up).
The next 2 abstracts are scenes that I found while sharpening knives. The material left behind on the whetstone looks like sand. Sharpening knives can be such a meditative process, seeing the different patterns go through cycles like waves is really something to behold.
And the last 2 are just spec product images of the new beater camera I bought this year. Getting into photography doesn’t always require having expensive gear, and this camera was a fun manifestation of that. The body and lens were $300 in total. I brought it with me on all the work trips I had to make. It is absolutely not an understatement to say that purchasing this camera helped me reignite my love for taking photos for fun.

Now THESE photos. The first set was when my friend and I took a jaunt down to see JP Brammer talk about his new book, Hola Papi: How to Come Out in a Walmart Parking Lot and Other Life Lessons at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library in DC. Here he’s being interviewed by Jack Harrison-Quintana from Grindr 4 Equality. A lovely night, with some lovely people.

The next set is unironically some of my favorite photos from the entire year. Taken at the Institute of Contemporary Art at VCU. I’ve always had a love for architectural photography, but especially when I’m able to create abstractions from the preexisting forms. When I went there, I realized that the museum staff were just side eyeing this strange man hobbling around, looking at everything except for the actual art on display. (I DID look at the actual work being shown…but I truly wasn’t as entranced with the work as I was the form of the building)

Finally we have some beach! Anyone that knows me well knows that I don’t really enjoy the holidays. I loathe them, in fact. So this year for Thanksgiving I went out to a beach alone, with a little whiskey, some char siu bao, and camera in hand. I spent the day just roaming and walking on the shore. The perfect holiday.

Now then….let’s see some professional work!

 

We’re starting the set off with a bang. The first few images are from a little project I was commissioned to do for a new facility by Kaiser Permanente. Initially I’d thought about just sitting on this until the building was finally opened and official but this feels like as good a time as any. I’ve never shot purely on commission like this before, so it was a fresh experience!

In between is my favorite image from some straggler real estate contracts from last year. Love the work. Could do without the lowball budgets. The other photos in the set are BTS photos from when my friend John of Lofton Films was participating in the 100 Hour Film Racing competition. The competition is exactly as it sounds. Teams are given prompts and have 100 hours to script, cast, plan, film, and edit an entire film. I’d never shot BTS on a film set before, so this was a completely fresh experience for me.

Both of these were super fun experiences, with plenty of room for growth. I’m grateful for these opportunities.
Next up we have some love and stuff.

Ironically, there isn’t much for me to say about these. It’s been really cool to connect with these people after an incredibly lonely previous year. Weddings and stuff are still fun, but I’d also be lying if I said I wasn’t a little more cautious to accept them with Miss Covid running rampant. I took on a lot less work than I would in previous years due to Covid + work schedule and I’m really glad I did. If I hadn’t, I don’t think that I’d have had the emotional bandwidth to work on these. That’s growth, baby!

Onto the next.

Whew, I love these portraits. And I love these people. The first set is of NIM / Liam for some general promotional material. I was lucky enough to cross paths with him when we were in college, and it’s been incredible seeing him grow as a person and a musician. Also we totally got yelled at by some Karen while taking these photos, so that adds to the spice too.

The next set of portraits are grad photos for Charissa! She was actually who I commissioned to create this branding I’ve been using! The way that we’ve been cheerleadering for each other from the across the fence for years and then finally had the chance to work together! I drove down to Richmond, VA to shoot these portraits for her because not only is she working full time, she also graduated from GRAD SCHOOL! Insane.

Aaaaand this set is sort of cheating but also there are no rules so who cares. These portraits of Nathan from Crawl Across the Sky were for an upcoming album he was releasing. We actually shot these late 2020 but I didn’t have a chance to edit them until 2021 so :) Like most of my clients, he just said “do whatever you want”, and I did! It’s always so great when clients let me run loose like a rabid fox.

Finally, Rayma. Who needs no introduction at all! We’d been planning this shoot around the concept of “RED” for almost 2 years now. This thing was so funny, I’ll ALWAYS laugh about it because we planned, made inspo boards, booked Sonne Studios in Baltimore, and got the stuff together…but when we actually walked into the studio and took some test photos we IMMEDIATELY scrapped everything.
Honestly, saying “test photos” isn’t even accurate because we took 1 test, realized that it was Not going to work with the stuff we had there, and pivoted away faster than the hairline of a middle aged man rocking the worlds most pallid comb-over.

Anyways, let this be a reminder that no matter how intricate your plans are….sometimes the plans make you. Following these photos is what I’m really trying to do more of: FOOD

A direction I’m trying to move in for 2022 is doing more food work! I don’t know if it’s taboo to admit but these are all actually part of extended studies, so keep those eyeballs peeled to see the completed sets later on. My friends are always giving me shade about saying “I have fun things coming. Can’t wait to share!” and then FORGETTING to share and leaving the work to rot like the last instant ramen noodle you’re too lazy to fish out before throwing the pot in the sink…..and they’re 100% right. Oops! So this year I’ll try to be better about that.
This year I’ve been trying to pay attention to the different textures in foods that we’re eating. Part of that has been investigating what specific aspect of those foods encapsulate their personality the most. I’m not quite sure myself what that means, but it’s been really interesting to explore the way to accent the visual elements of a specific flavor.



This year has been simultaneously one of the most challenging, fulfilling, and refreshing years of work to date. I’m infinitely grateful to the people I’ve been able to meet, and even more grateful for the friends that anchored me through it all.
As always, thank you for continuing to read all the insane things I spew from these fingers of mine. Thank you for supporting my work. Thank you for the encouraging words, loud and quiet. And thank you for continuing to break bread with me. (And thank you for buying my prints!) The days continue to twist and furl, but there isn’t a day that goes by where I’m not grateful for this tailwind.

Thanks for sticking around.

Cheers,
-WZ


 

Making Art During COVID-19

 

We have a bit of a situation on our hands! At no surprise to anyone, events throughout the month of March, April, May and probably beyond are being postponed (or worse, cancelled)….which sucks.

Something I had previously talked about was staying up to form and shaking off your rust, and how important it is to keep your brain in tip top shape as a photographer. With events cancelled, weddings postponed due to the coronavirus, the only thing left for me to do is take photos where I can! Pushing my creativity forward by restricting myself to 1 lens, and exclusively using in-camera effects, and only using Lightroom for color grading. Sony cameras don’t have the option to create in-camera double exposures so I had to bust out the old Nikon for this. It’s a slight departure from my usual content, but i think it’s kinda fun. Some double exposures, some shutter drag and some quadruple exposures too. Lots of fun stuff.

Gear used:
Nikon D810
50mm f/1.8

This first set was taken late in the day, around dusk. All 4 were taken at one scene, only needing to take a few steps here and there. The first image is actually two different double exposures stacked onto each other! The other few are normal double/triple exposures.

 

This next set was taken around noon on a cloudy day in the middle of some trees on a trail. Not quite as restricted on space but I tried to color grade it differently while still sticking to only in-camera effects.

These days my primary color grading style prioritizes natural colors (with a smidge of red/yellow/green adjustment) but I tried going back and remastering an older preset I had made! Rich earthy tones with green undertones. Should I sell presets? Maybe I’ll do that, eh

 

This final set was taken the day before the Shelter at Home order was issued in the state of MD. One final day of the sweet outdoors, I guess.

Instead of being taken during the day, I wanted to take advantage of the wonderful fog that was left over from a day of rain. In true esports fashion, light was scarce, and shooting conditions were far from ideal. But we made it work!

Now the kicker is, these were all created basically on the same street, and all the effects you see are also created IN-CAMERA! The only things I did before posting these was adjusting the color grade of the images + crop but no additional Photoshop was used!
It’s a fairly long stretch of road but all of this can be created just by going out at different times of day! I’ll throw up photos of the spots I shot things from in a little carousel below.

The very first set was entirely shot from that first image, within a few steps! The second set was shot from the second image, also with only a few steps here and there. And the last set had a bit more travel, with me going up and down an empty road that branches off from the main road.

All this to say: you don’t need a beautiful vineyard to make cool art. You just gotta flex those creativity muscles a bit, y’know?

What kind of stuff are you making? Let me know over on instagram at @wzhouphoto!

Hungry for more delicious art? Check out my recent collaboration with illustrator/designer extraordinaire Kathi Ha over in my first COLLABORATIONS blog post!