All right everybody, let's get technical.
Is there a trick to lighting Black skin?
No!
That's the end of this TED talk.
You can just tell when the light hits right.
There's a huge difference.
You would think in an industry
obsessed with lighting skin,
they would get the skill of lighting Black skin right.
You'd be wrong.
Black skin has always been beautiful.
But with us,
and the right knowledge and skill behind the lens,
it glows.
So the question is,
in today's world,
why do we still see our beauty being left in the shadows?
I really hate the idea that a lot of people have that it's harder
to light black skin, which it's not.
I feel like that mindset is very colonialized,
it's rooted in white supremacy,
and it's so invalid and wrong.
Black skin is not harder to light than white skin.
It's just that people haven't taken the time and effort to learn
what actually looks good on Black people, especially
because Black people are constantly whitewashed in post-production.
You have a generation of people saying, "Oh, Black skin is hard."
And then you see magazine covers, which are supposed to be so big,
and then it's crap because somebody failed to do their work.
The lighting in the tropics is completely different from the lighting
in, you know, South America
or North America or even Europe.
We were in London a couple of weeks ago,
and the images I got outside of London
they were just so beautiful,
because the light--
it's just the way the light comes,
and it just rolls off the skin.
Whereas,
in the tropics, the light
you know, in Nigeria is harsh.
Then the light in
Cote d'Ivoire was harsher,
and then we got to Accra,
and it was just a balance.
And that's why I said it's very important
to be a student of the game, because
nobody tells you this
and they don't teach you this in photography school.
And it's kind of like something that you discover.
But I always say that
if your foundation is concrete enough, you'll be ready for anything.
We have to know our craft and understanding how the technical
part of image making. It's simple as that.
So there is no excuse
for bad imagery out there,
for skin tones being too dark or too light, whatever.
If that's a style, great.
But it really comes down to knowing your craft.
If it's intentional-- love it.
Fine art-- cool. But, knowing your craft.
So, Netflix called me and said, "Can you do this group shot?"
And I've been known to do large group shots.
They wanted to get all their African-American talent together,
and we were going to shoot an image from the "Great Day in Harlem" by Art Kane,
but give it a modern look, a modern lens,
under modern optics.
And this one was a pretty big one.
I think there was maybe 48 or something people in there.
It's really beautiful
when all these people come together
and they look around,
and they see people they might have
grown up watching on television.
Or they go,
"Oh, I know you! I love your work!"
And the fellowship that happens
when a group of people come together
and the energy that is created.
It's a marker in time.
I love group shots because they're a marker in time.
And I'm very honored
to have those type of images in my
in my portfolio.
You know,
honestly, I'm a natural light shooter by default,
because like I mentioned, I love street photography, I love photojournalism.
I was always very adamant on understanding the technical aspects of photography.
Seeing how controversial and how wrong
a lot of publications and companies can get it is, again,
why I'm so grateful that there are people
who have decided to really take it upon themselves to make sure
they're calling out Photoshop errors.
Like, "This person doesn't look like this."
Or, "Why would you lighten this person's skin?"
I think the way that people of color are
profiled is a huge reason
that being a person of color
who has a lens, who has the opportunity to capture that truth,
capture that integrity, is really, really empowering.
For me personally, lighting Black skin means
a specific intentionality behind color and texture.
So different kinds of diffusion,
different kinds of glass can tell a very different story.
And so that's why I think it's really important to
do the necessary research behind the scenes to make sure
that every technical decision has intention behind it, because ultimately
it comes down to perception and how we're viewing Black subjects.
Starting off as a street photographer,
I had to become a light guru.
I had to learn how to bend natural light.
I had to know what time to be outside.
I need to know what time the Sun is setting.
I need to know
you know, all right,
the Sun is going to have a nice blue tint on it today.
Or it's warm outside.
Or it's a cloudy day.
I had to learn these things and
you know, kind of
pre-prep for when I was going outside.
Learn how to bend light around people,
because I'm constantly chasing fleeting moments.
So when people say, "It's hard to light skin,"
sometimes, you don't even have no light, so what are you going to do then?
You know?
Like you said, it's definitely a cop out,
because as a person that just relies on whatever nature gives me,
you know,
I have to be equipped with the knowledge and knowing how the light is moving
on that day.
When it comes to lighting Black skin,
just hire us.
Hire us, and when you hire us,
also hire Black people behind the scenes as well
when it comes to production, because
to be honest, it's not that hard.
It's not that hard.
Something that I take pride in is making sure my people look good,
and making sure they're true to skin tone, because
it's just, again, it's not that hard.
When I'm on set,
or when I'm walking on the streets,
it's almost like you're
waiting for the universe
to collaborate with you.
I've worked on so many great projects recently.
"The Harder They Fall,"
a movie that just came out on Netflix.
You're photographing Regina King,
You're photographing Zazie Beetz.
Some of the most
beautiful people on Earth.
You can't take a bad shot, practically.
You know?
Director Jeymes Samuel's energy
just gave everybody a spark.
All the actors were so excited.
The sets were great.
The costumes are insane.
The landscape--
it served the story so well.
The end product is just so amazing,
and I really do give the most credit
to Jeymes
in that he just inspired me
in a way that usually,
maybe only Spike does.
There are a lot of Black filmmakers,
including Jeymes Samuel,
who come up to me
and say how influential Spike's movies
have been on them getting into film
and realizing
you know,
that we can tell our own stories.
As a member of the team
that hires unit photographers
to shoot on the sets of Netflix projects,
it is extremely important that the people
behind our lens
are as diverse as the stories happening
in front of it.
There are nuances that come with a
cultural shared experience,
and having Black unit photographers
on the set of Black stories
has proven to be valuable
to the creation experience.
The narrative and the perception of Black people in America
and even globally, historically, has been dictated by white people.
So for Black photographers to finally get an opportunity to
not only tell our stories, which our parents and our grandparents
and our great grandparents did
at home,
but now, Black photographers are being recognized
through the documentation of Black life
and Black people and Black art.
And I think that that is where the narrative has shifted.
These institutions that really didn't want to have anything to do with us,
they're being forced, now, to recognize us
and recognize the validity of our work.
As a queer person in this country,
and as a queer Black person in this country,
I didn't see me
represented virtually anywhere.
I mean, we had-- there were pockets of it.
And when you saw those pockets, you would hold on to it,
even though that wasn't who you fully were.
Even in that, you would kind of
bask in the comfort
of knowing that, "Oh! There are...
there are Black queer people out there.
There are people who share my thoughts.
There are people who speak my language.
There are people who understand the wink and the nod that I give."
And so as much as I possibly can,
I try to give representation to that voice--
to all the voices that I did not have growing up.
So much photography in the past
revolving around Black people is so violent in its imagery
because it doesn't ask the subject
how it feels. It doesn't ask the subject,
who doesn't even want to be there,
what they're going through or how they want to be perceived.
So today,
when we tell you,
listen to us.
People were caring more about the visibility of Black photographers.
All of these brands and companies calling all of us,
and wanting to put us in
roundtables
and galleries.
And I was like, "First of all, this is amazing!
But where have you been?
And are these calls going to stop?"
I get it-- you have a job to do,
but people are literally dying,
and people are literally fighting for something
bigger than
you making a deadline.
I couldn't--
there was no way I could celebrate
this.
I felt like I
won a Grammy at a funeral.