Pushing the BOUNDARIES of Creativity

The studio offers unlimited options and creativity.

JOSÉ JEULAND

I construct simple to cinematic-style setups, where I experiment with lighting - with flashes, continuous lights, natural lights, or, more often than not, a mix of these forms of lighting.

Frequent readers of Lens Magazine may know me as a documentary and travel photographer. In addition to that, my career has also given me many opportunities to do commercial photography and videography.

It has been two years since I have launched COCO Creative Studio. The studio is based in Singapore, Joo Chiat, an area known for its colorful Peranakan shophouses.

My studio holds great significance to me - it is not just a place for work, where I do product, portrait, and lifestyle photography. It is a space for me to unleash my creativity as I explore new ideas and test various equipment. It's where all my gears are stored, and where I edit on BenQ calibrated monitors. Soon, I'll also be getting a printer to produce my own fine art prints.

I mostly use the studio for my portrait photography tasks - something which I enjoy the most. I take a lot of pride in the quality of my portraits, using hand-painted canvasses from Gravity Backdrops as my main props. These backdrops greatly enhance the ambiance, look, and feel of the final images.

For this feature, I initially intended to feature a combination of some images I have produced in the studio. After some consideration, I decided to do something a little different - to conduct two fuss-free portrait shoots with two non-professional models, with no assistant, make-up artist, or art director. It would just be me, my trusty camera, and the model.

My vision was for the process to be an organic exploration of the models' energy and personality.