Let me start by saying I struggle when it comes to speaking about myself. When I was a kid I would come home from an amazing day at school, and when my mother asked me how my day was I would reply with a simple “fine”. Oddly enough I am far from a soft spoken man, I have many things to say about almost everything, yet I grasp desperately for words when it comes to even summarizing my days, passions, ambitions… but here goes. My name is Ishmil Waterman. I am a artist. Most days I wear all black, not just because its totally the coolest color to rock, but because I like being invisible when I zoom into my subjects eye. I have been a photographer for somewhere close to 10 years now, or maybe closer to 8, those numbers start to feel less and less relevant as the years go by. Once upon a time my style could have been summarized with simple adjectives such as “clean, colorful, commercial” Words that a lot of clients throw around and feel comfortable with. It wasn’t until I met my fiancé Zanana Piñas that my work began to illicit words I felt comfortable with. “Trippy, Hyper Realistic, Artistic, Creative, Refreshing” These words may not be the words every photographer wants to hear, but they damn sure put a smile on my face.

Initially when I wrote the first sentence of this article and then with a great deal of anxiety closed my word doc for a few weeks after; my intention was to have you follow me for a day. It seemed simple enough in theory, but anyone who knows this kind of work knows that the days bleed together from project to project. You’ll wake up at 8 in the morning, shoot for hours and then edit until 3am and repeat. A beautiful neuroticism almost possesses you to keep working and eventually your fueled by coffee and ambition to complete more beautiful things. For me it is all about the beautiful things! And since all beautiful things dont just happen in a day I would like to share with you pieces of a beautiful project.

This day was especially Beautiful. Zanana (Zee) and I woke up around 7am this day to plot our battle plan for the shoot. This is frequently a challenging exercise for us because we have very different working style which happen to mesh well. I love controlling a shot until my imagination is satisfied with reality, she on the other hand enjoys just letting things occur. Some how between 2 sketch books and a few dozen lighting references we come to agreeance on the lighting aesthetic and what we need to do in pre production to meet our goals in post. The client had actually booked Zee as the model for the shoot, so the challenge was a combined direction while working on opposite ends of the camera.

The set was intended to give the perception of sunlight shining through a window. So we set up multiple strips of foam core to flag a bare strobe. the results can be seen below. By standing her in the shadow and then feathering a 7ft silver umbrella on her I got a beautiful mix of hard shadows on the background and soft light on the model. After some dodging and burning the results will be perfect.

As the day progresses, new ideas build and with every ounce of exhaustion comes another ounce of excitement, this process is honestly by drug of choice, please don’t let my locks fool you 🙂
After the shoot is wrapped I pack away my equipment in my advanced gear bag pack. I personally really like this bag as I have never been the guy to enjoy hauling 40 lbs of equipment around on my back, nor do I care for oversized carrying gear. This is nice and compact and fits my what I use on an average perfectly.

I can’t show to much of this project as of yet, but I will update this post with links to the final files once we finish all the mixed media elements.
Here is a small look at a file right out of the camera.