Friday #ArtCrush is a weekly blog series highlighting students in their final year at OCAD University.
This Friday’s #ArtCrush is Tam + Kyt, a fourth year student photography duo
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In this issue Morgan and Tam + Kyt talk about collaborating with artists, best practices and how to make shoots reflect their clients.
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What is your favourite lighting set up and camera/lens combination?
We enjoy using an over head soft box combined with a fill light or bounce. We tend to change it up throughout a shoot but that is usually our starting point. Our most used camera is Nikon D610 with an 85mm prime lens, however we love to get our hands on the Hassleblad when we can and we always shoot tethered in studio!
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Can you walk us through how you set up the studio during one of your shoots?
We start with setting up a camera tethered to an iMac, we do our initial lighting set up and slave it all. We mess around with light positioning a lot until we are happy. We alternate between using the boom with soft boxes or using the beauty dish – we just started experimenting with the beauty dish and we are really liking it! We usually try to get to the studio with ample time before our model or client(s) show up so we are more than prepared.
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What subject matter do you tend to spend the most time working on?
Our collaborative project (TAM + KYT) started with the idea that we would build a fashion photography portfolio as a duo. However, this winter semester we have sort of fallen in love with editorial photography, as we love to get to know the people we are shooting and tell stories about them! We have collaborated with other artists from visual artists to musicians and DJs to create photographic series that say something about them in a creative way.
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Tam + Kyt, 2017
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You work as a photography duo, can you tell us why you were both interested in making that decision?
It’s so hard to do it alone! Having a partner to talk to, bounce ideas off of, pick up your slack when you’re having a bad day just makes you stronger. Each of us have different strengths when it comes to working in photography, so when we can each focus on what we are great at we can make the best quality images possible. Photography always comes off as a competitive field, but honestly it helps so much to work with your peers. You get to learn things other people know and vice versa.
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How has this experience in collaboration been rewarding or challenging, and how has it changed your relationship to each other?
There have been one or two creative differences…but we get through them knowing that we both push each other to do even better. Looking at what we have been able to learn from each other is the most rewarding!!! Along with being able to network and meet so many cool people in the art community that are liking and interested in what we are doing.
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Frances Frances, Tam + Kyt, 2017
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Each of your series has a specific mood or atmosphere to it, what inspires these shoots and what do you look at for inspirations?
Each of our shoots are inspired by who we are shooting! Each series definitely reflects the ideas behind the person’s or group’s personality and style and how they we think they want to be shown to the world. We like to discuss what our models/clients want first, and we work with them to make images in our own style that still represent them and who they are. We do research about them online (whether it’s social media or if they are more well known there are sometimes articles about them online), we look in to their genre of music if they are a band or a DJ, and just try to absorb as much information as possible. Pinterest is also really helpful to make mood boards!
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Where do you see your career path going and who would you most like to work with?
For now we simply hope to keep working with the wonderful creative people that we end up shooting to build a strong portfolio! We hope to become a registered business where clients come to us who need interesting photos of them. If there’s an agency who would like to sign us for quirky commercial work that would be interesting (and a great way to make a steady income). Being able to get by doing something we love is the ultimate goal.
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Lum, Tam + Kyt, 2017
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Are their any specific OCAD U Faculty who have influenced your work? A specific discipline or course?
Honestly simply being in an art school and being surrounded by so many creative people has influenced us immensely. Some of the best advice style wise is probably just to look at everything! Go to art shows, browse pinterest and instagram, find beautiful things from real life. Trying different things and seeing what you’re good at and what you like also really helps. I think a lot of profs here encourage that way of working and thinking. It is really up to you to just go for it!
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What is one piece of advice you would give to someone looking to collaborate with other artists?
It is really helpful to have a contract between all parties involved. Make sure all terms are covered and clear so no one feels like they’ve been cheated at any point. Also talk out all of the details of the project so everyone knows their part and make sure their voices and ideas are heard. You choose your collaborators for a reason, so trust them and their talent to do a good job on their part!
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See Tam + Kyt’s work at the
102nd Graduate Exhibition at OCAD University, May 3rd-7th.
Friday #ArtCrush is a weekly blog series highlighting students in their final year at OCAD University.
Interview by Morgan Sears-Williams
About the writer: Morgan is a fourth year photography student and runs the Friday #ArtCrush series on the OCAD U Photography Blog. She loves speaking to other artists about social justice, how to break barriers within artist communities and nurturing the arts in alternative spaces. She is the Art Director for The RUDE Collective, a student representative on the Photography Curriculum Committee and has done workshops on intersectionality and allyship relating to LGBTQ folks. To see more, you can visit her website or her instagram.
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