Editor’s Note: Aundre is one of the instructors for the upcoming iPhone Photography Conference, so I wanted to share his guest post from 2019 where he shares his insights for lighting and editing photos of diverse people. In addition to this, I also wanted to highlight two films he created on the iPhone since this post to show what’s possible! Below are Flower and Float. Watch these, then make sure you check out his session during the conference!

Whenever the topic of access comes up, we as digital artists love to snipe and gripe. “Man if I shot that (event, celebrity, etc.), I would have done ____, ____ or _____. But whatever, they always give the great jobs to this mope.” Flip the conversation to privilege, however, and see how everyone starts to get uncomfortable.

I mean think about it. What’s the last photo related event you were at? What did you see? Cameras, booths, whatever. But what was the crowd like? Let me fill you in: it was a group that skews older, male, and white. 

Now pause. 

That in itself isn’t bad, it’s just a reflection of mean income and wealth.  Before the emergence of the smartphone, photography was too expensive for the layman to just pick up casually. Cost was and still is our biggest deterrent.  

The question I wanted to ask with this piece: what happens when that lack of access/abundance of privilege effects our ability to story tell and leaves large portions of stories untold or shot voyeuristically?

The skinny: subjects see images that don’t fully resemble themselves. Communities see stories that don’t tell the whole tale. Everyone feels the images aren’t honest to their story. The heavy: It continues to leave stories untold or half-assed ones that are lazily told whilst shutting out photographers who may be able to do a better job.

Let’s start with the skinny. You may be in the demographic I described earlier: older, white and male. You are a talented photographer and you want to do more story telling about people of color. What can you do to ensure that your subjects look at your work and get excited?

It All Starts With The Hair

Do you use a hair light? Like a dedicated light for your models in your three light system? If your subject has dark hair, it will absorb a lot of light. Adding a hair light adds separation and helps bring out detail and texture in the hair that could otherwise be lost if only working with a single light. A few of you will chuckle and say of course. Well then great! You’re done, you can stop reading. Nah, I’m playing. Keep your butt here.