"No, you’re not crazy: photographing darker skin tones, like mine, is harder than photographing lighter ones. Before anyone goes and reports me for reverse racism, which isn’t a thing, lets talk about this in purely technical terms."
Toward the beginning of my Adobe Creative Residency I pitched a piece to Adobe Create about the history of racism and photography with suggestions as to how to shoot and edit darker skin tones. The goal was to increase visibility by giving tangible tips. The article did remarkably well. So I ended up doing a studio shoot with BTS video and photography to explain my points more clearly.
I chose subjects, location, captured, edited and art directed the piece.
The content was originally created for the Lightroom channels as well as mine. It exploded. Personally it was my most shared twitter post, and my most popular instagram story series.
Professionally, I have taught these concepts at a Today at Apple and a 99u session.
Part of the success was blending my editorial style with an underrepresented community and brands that needed to touch those communities better. The in person events had a remarkable number of participants.
For me this was an ideal example of testing digitally and translating to in person. If the content is planned and executed properly against a great hypothesis the community will respond well. Building loyalty from folks is more than online, rather it's using online as a proving ground.
Client: Adobe Lightroom, Apple
Duties: Photography, Art Direction, Copy, Education
Deliverables: Copy for social posts and presentations, how to videos, in-person events, photos, video and articles.