“Creativity is born when two minds come together.”
Walking through narrow white corridors with the faint smell of fresh paint lingering, I was about to learn exactly just how big JCclick was. Up the stairs to their office, a whole team welcomed me – from photographic and video editors to the production assistant and shop manager. Janco and Carlien, the owners, joined me for a cup of coffee to talk about their beautifully styled maternity shoot.
When the time came for Janco and Carlien to plan a maternity shoot for their first born, Carlien insisted that they do something completely different from the pastel-hued maternity shoots she’s photographed so many times. Turns out, a pretty dress inspired the tropical look they went with – once she has an idea in mind, Janco has to make it happen. (He jokingly says that whenever Carlien says, “kan ‘n mens nie…?” that “mens” becomes him.)
Because they took the photos themselves it was more tricky, but they say that the Canon 5D Mark IV camera’s Wi-Fi feature made it easy to adjust settings and to trigger the camera. They used a 70cm Elinchrom Beauty Dish and the Elinchrom BRX 500/500 Lighting Kit to create soft, even light. The camera was set up on a Benro A3573FS6 video tripod kit and they switched between Canon’s EF 70-200mm f/2.8 and Sigma’s 50mm f/1.4 Art series lenses.
Creating these images was a time-consuming exercise but one they’ll happily do again because of the results they got. They used their deep grey living room wall as a backdrop and built the setup around it using multiple stands and leaves from their garden. It took a total of 10 large bags of river sand to help set the mood.
The whole shoot consists of very few photographs – Janco says that “we want to leave them wanting more”. They did a second shoot of a few soft portraits in the baby’s nursery. She goes on to explain that clients tend to want quantity over quality and therefore people look for conventional or “safer” shoots, but they’d LOVE to do more maternity shoots that incorporate bold ideas and different themes.
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