thevisualCollective: Photography

19 years old? You read that right. Rachael has been shooting for about 4 years - since her sophomore year in high school. Her brother gave her the bug by introducing her to the darkroom. Something about the chemicals, film, and working in a wetlab got her hooked. All her darkroom skills are school-taught. In contrast, her underwater and digital techniques are all self-taught, though she currently attends ASU for photography.

Underwater? Yes. Rachael has access to her very own saltwater pool in her backyard in Phoenix. She shoots a Fujifilm underwater camera (from Costco) and the Canon 5dMKII.

How does one shoot underwater? Well, wrap 25lb dumbells in plastic (to prevent rust) and hold onto them to stay stable while shooting. Using a saltwater pool also makes everything easier on the models, apparently it’s much easier to hold your eyes open underwater with a salt pool.

Her average underwater photoshoot is 15 to 30 seconds, repeated for two hours. Using a point and shoot, she is limited to just a couple frames for each foray underwater, and of course she is limited by how long she and her models can hold their breath and hold a pose underwater.

Speaking of models, Rachael doesn’t shoot professional models much. Most of her subjects are her friends, many of whom are dancers.

One of the things that drew our eye to Rachael’s work is her surreal self portrait series. She’s managed to teach herself a working mastery of photoshop that lets her flawlessly blend images to create very surreal images that tend to bend the mind and kickstart the imagination.

Her view on originality: Perhaps “it” has been done before, but that doesn’t mean that we as artists can’t tweak it and twist it and take our own experiences and meld them with inspiration from the work of others around us.