Working with Sekushi

Sekushi does the hard work to make shooting easy for you! With over a decade of experience, my guidance is always available to support you from start to finish. I will be there to help you in any way I can, from giving you plenty of posing direction, to helping with outfit and location choices. I will even be there to help with those hiccups that pop up on the day, like a bathtub leaking in the hotel room above, or ironing an overly creased silk dress, as I did in the above video! Get to know more about the process of working with Sekushi below.

Before the shoot

The first step in the creative process is planning. I love doing this together with clients, and aim to make the entire shooting and creative process should collaborative, rather than being owned just by me. It usually involves us discussing your ideas and your goals. For some clients they don’t need to spend much more than a couple of minutes discussing this and we’re good to go. For others, who are quite particular, or just enjoy the process, they might spend months creating mood boards and Pinterest plans. We would usually do this over email, so I have time to process and understand your ideas, although we can chat over the phone if you like too. Either way, it it's totally up to you how much time we spend planning.

Once we’re on the same page, I can then help you with styling your shoot, planning your outfit choices, hair and make up recommendations and picking locations that will compliment your ideas and goals. To make things easy for you, I have a library of locations at various prices available to choose from (including my own home studio), plus a network of third party location providers around Australia, and I’m always happy to review locations you’ve sourced.

One more important part of planning the style of your shoot, is planning which lighting styles we’ll use. You’ll see them below and we’ll pick any one or combination of these lighting styles available to best compliment your concept.

 Lighting styles

During the shoot

I like to keep things easy for my clients, because getting your kit off in front of the camera is already daunting enough as it is. Before the shooting begins, I’ll help you with your bags, I’ll have some tunes playing for you and a glass of bubbly or some tea or coffee ready. We’ll have a quick chat about the outfits you brought and what modelling experience you have, so I can understand how much direction you might need. We’ll quickly plan out which outfit we’ll be shooting first and then you can get changed. If you need anything ironed I’m happy to do that for you and help with any wardrobe issues including doing up difficult garter hooks.

Once we’re ready to shoot, expect to hear lots of clear, verbal directions and feedback from me, including where to stand, where to place your hands, where to bend and where to stretch out. I’ll even pose for you to help you visualise what you need to do. Over half of my clients have no modelling experience, and yet you’d never be able to tell from the photos.

You will probably get sore, but trust me when I say, its not a good shoot unless you’re sore the next day. But no matter how sore you are the next day, you will have fun! If we have time and if I remember I usually like to snap a few polaroids for you to take home, I never keep any. As you can see below my clients always have fun!

After the shoot

Since your hair and make up will most likely be professionally done for the shoot, you may as well plan in some post-photo shoot fun with some friends or partner(s) immediately after the shoot.

Your enhanced raw images and raw video will be delivered via a secure Dropbox link in approximately 3 days. If you’re interested in purchasing professionally retouched versions of some of your images, you can pick some and send them through to me. This is both a daunting and difficult task for many, as there will be thousands of great images to choose from. It’s a good idea to run some past friends, partner(s) or even good regulars. I’m also happy to help you narrow down your selections if you are finding it difficult.

My usual standard turnaround time is 3 weeks for 10 retouched images, so your wait time will depend on how many you choose. I always try to send through a couple of sneak peeks to keep my clients happier while they wait. You can also choose to add half or full or light or heavy face blurs to protect your identity (see below example). Most importantly, I’m only happy with the finished images once you’re happy, so any requests for revisions if there is anything you’re not 100% happy about are unlimited and free of charge.

Lastly, I always recommend that you keep multiple safe copies of your images in case you ever lose them. I do try to keep both original and working copies for my clients, however this is not a guarantee.