Freelance photography can be a lonely occupation, so it’s good to make friends with other creatives and collaborate with them. Alex Rinaldi is the artist and designer who painted my studio wall a couple of weeks ago and coincidentally, the first paying customer to appear in front of it.
Alex, or more properly, Alessandra is producing a flyer to market her considerable talents. So the pictures had to do a number of jobs: To get and sustain attention, to give prospective customers a sense of her professionalism and personality and – just as importantly, make Alex feel good, and confident about the face she presents her clients.
Being creatives, we both enjoyed the process of deciding what and how the pictures were to do all that. We considered a range of ideas, but quickly settled on the ones that got us both excited: A quirky and eye-catching portrait for the cover, an insight into her process for the inside, and a warm, engaging portrait in something like a work situation for the rear cover.
Alex came with her cover idea ready to shoot: A big close up of half her face, behind a fan of colour charts – selected to complement the strong blue of her eyes. The only hard part was figuring which half of her face to show. We knew it when we saw it.
No 
Nice, but no 
Ummm…
Next, something that said ‘busy and talented designer’. Alex wanted to show the art on her desktop – appropriately her painting of Michaelangelo’s David. Some pens and a sketch pad were a no-brainer, and I thought a little shutter-drag shot of her moving with a colour chart would add some energy. After many experiments, we got just the right frame to tell that story.
Finally the last portrait. We knew the setting, pose and angle we wanted, but went through a range of expressions until we hit one that was just right.
Too posey 
Too cute 
Too Woman’s Weekly
Too casual 
Too much coffee 
Too funny
We liked them all, but we’re both pretty choosy. Finally, we got one that we both loved.
After my last post about imagining a proud Dad somewhere in Italy, Alex’s dad did get in touch to say Hi. In a ps, he apologised for his English, something he didn’t have to do at all, because he’s way ahead of me in the language stakes. Being a typical Kiwi, I’m pretty monolingual, although I’m working hard to incorporate a bit of Te Reo. But today, it’s appropriate that I close in Italian.
Ciao Bella, Alessandra!