Travelling back home to visit family with my newly bought camera, I decided I wanted to have a photoshoot to test out my skills. Unfortunately for my god sister who I call “cousin”, became my muse and subject for my project.

Inspiration 

At the time of this shoot I was visiting my god mother’s house and didn’t have any ideas on where and how I will direct this random shoot. I just knew that I wanted to go in the direction of an editorial photoshoot because I have a great interest in editorial and high end fashion and photography. After looking around the property and going through my “cousin’s” wardrobe, I finally came up with a creative direction.

Location

As mentioned above the location of the shoot was on my god mother’s property, I made use of her back yard, living room, and even the front yard fencing. The advantages of living on a Caribbean island is that there is an unlimited supply of palm trees and a few just happened to be in the backyard. I made my god sister stand close to the tree and I posed her for different shots as modelling is not her forte. We used the living room as another location but it was not ideal. It was too dark and I wasn’t skilled enough to properly adjust lighting. I then moved on to the front yard which at the time had white fencing. I used this to create texture in the background and to help portray the editorial look I was going for.

Looks

I aimed to create something colourful and editorial, so I decided to freestyle an eyeshadow look using whatever makeup was available at the house mixing pink with orange to give a pop of colour. Then we paired the makeup with a scarf which I thought pulled everything together. We also used any random jewelry that matched the look which happened to be hoops.

Final Thoughts On The Editorial Photoshoot

I thought the whole process was fun and a great bonding activity with my family. There were a lot of lessons learned from this experience. To this day it remains one of my favourite photoshoots I’ve ever done since taking an interest in photography. My dream is to continue to be creative and have the freedom to create more pieces like the ones from this editorial photoshoot, with the same passion and love like I did in this shoot. This is my gem of the Caribbean piece in collaboration with my God sister.