Hello and welcome to Out of
Darkroom on AdoramaTV. I'm release
management and today I'm chatting with
Aaron Hurley, who's going to give us some
more insight into his exciting career as
a fashion photographer.
So you have a studio here in Dublin city,
what's the name of it again? DayLight
44. Is it a daylight studio? Yeah,
huge windows,
really high ceiling. Oh wow is sounds
perfect. A dream for me.
Do you use mainly dayight
then in your shoots? Yeah I have, a
lot of my shoots would be daylight expect for
beauty. I do beauty a lot under strobes and
stuff like that. Would you?
Yeah. Then when you're working in the
studio environment whether it be beauty
or daylight, what's your kind of
go to gear?
Ok go to gear would be a stunning lens. So
I've got the 85mm f/1.2
and that's kind of my go-to lens and
then I will always just kind of set up
poly board’s. Really? Yeah,
like I'm not mad about reflectors
because I don't like the look it gives.
When I'd have assistance on set they
go straight for the uplighting ,
I’m like I'm want to get sick.
So I much prefer
like a nice white poly board.
So that's it, just
poly boards and a bit of daylight. It’s so
simple. Very easygoing. That's fantastic, ok
cool and then what about, I think i've
seen some behind-the-scenes shots and
stuff with you, where you'd use
like a lot of diffusers and stuff for
our glaring Irish sun.
Oh stop yeah, like when I'm on
location sometimes I'll have a huge
scrim above me but that can sometimes
be to like reflect light as well. So like
it's not just to kind of diffuse
everything.
Is there anything, any campaigns or
anything that you're looking forward to
shooting and the next year or so? Oh
next year, what have I got? Well I'm
booked up now for November as well so
I've got a lot of like Christmas
advertorials and editorials coming out
then. The most a frustrating thing
for me is when you should something back
in July and it still hasn't come out. So
I'm like sitting here now on of loads work
that's supposed to come out now just before
Christmas, so I'm really excited for that
to come out. So you can't really talk about
it? Not yet. You can't show me or anything. I
don't know, I feel like I’d get in
trouble if I did. Clients could flip.
Yeah I guess that is the same in music photography,
and any kind of the photography like that
is that your embargoed for a while.
You shoot this amazing campaign and you instantly
want to put it on Instagram and go look what I did.
I recently shot the H&M X Kenzo
collection for, it was like the Irish
exclusive for Irish Tatler and we have
to sign like the non-disclosure
agreements and the minute I signed I
wanted to put everything up on Instagram.
It's just that thing of signing that
form that you can't do it.
Tell us a bit then about shooting
campaigns like the Kenzo campaign and
things like that, from you know your
agent will put this to you, do you want
to shoot this yes? Yes I do then what happens?
From then it's kind of, I will be then
linked up with the stylist or the
creative director on set, or the editor of
the magazine and they will kind of give
me my brief and if I you know don't
understand something fully or kind of
feel like it could go, we could do this
instead it might be easier or cooler idea
or concept I'll go back to them with my
own ideas and it will kinda be back and forth
for a while and then it's obviously
casting the models and the team. So hair and makeup,
usually a client will ask you
who do you work best with or who is your go-to
team and then book you through that. So do
have a kind of a team then. a go to team?
It kind of, it varies through the times.
At the
beginning I had a team that I did
everything with the beginning, but
people would always say, don't pigeonhole
yourself at the same time, with the same
people. True. So it kind of changes quite
a bit.
There’s loads of people out there I mean you will
learn from other people and they learn
from you. Absolutely, and it depends on the job
as well, because there's some makeup
artists that are really light but
also be very slow, so if you're very
fast-paced set or you need to go through
like 15 looks in a day you're gonna
know not to book that person because
they're amazing at their job but they're
quite slow so they're going to take up
time.
Ok, you obviously just
learned that from experience? Yeah learned it the
hard way.
Kind of standing there going, come on you should have done loads by now.
In terms of like the creative side of
things, if you know if there's a creative
director working on the
on the issue with you then do you just
follow their lead and you try and
shoot to what they have set out. Yeah so it really
depends on the job. If its editorial
you'll have a lot more creative freedom
with it. If you're on an advertorial
it's kind of like a middle ground, you
can do what you like but once you get
this vibe across them are good, and the
clothes need to be featured in this way and
then you could walk on set for a
campaign and you have literally a shot
list and it will have exactly right down to
the T where everything is placed and
how you have to photograph it. Is
that quite restrictive? It kills me
sometimes because I’m like it could look so much cooler if
we did this way but they have brand
guidelines and stuff like that. Once we are getting
on set like they'll have where you
can't crop the bag in this certain way
or this can’t be lit this way because it
doesn’t, you know it's insane.
Kinda of like kills me because I'm like oh.
Yeah it's taken away you eye. It looks so much cooler
as an image when it's just that little
bit out of shot or you know sometimes
people crop the heads and it would look amazing.
Like I'd love to do that
sometimes but they are like no, it needs to this and
we need this dimension. Oh my god when
people give you dimension of shots.
Really? Yeah it's very restrictive.
It's just sounds like you just you know
the cameras just. I know that's you feel like
you feel like, a robot.
Set up on a tripod and just
press the button. Exactly. So I’m going
to be a bit cheeky now and ask you then. If
you're on set and you're working to a
really tight brief and given you
dimensions and you're basically just,
not that you're just a robot
and a tripod but kind of that, and then
there are other shoots where you're mad
creative and you're putting a lot more
of your energy and your ideas into it.
Is there like different price scales
then? Do you charge different day rates
for the amount of creativity you're
giving back?
It's actually the other way around
usually. The jobs you do less on you get
paid way more. Fantastic, I love it.
Editorial, you won't get a great day rate for that.
Really? Yeah, sometimes you can be,
there was sometimes in editorial where
they give you a budget and say it's like
three thousand and that has to pay for the
model, team, location, everything. That's
what you are work with. And your fee? Yeah, you will
sacrifice your fee to get a really cool
model, really cool location and go
90 with the editorial, but that's what most
creative people are like. That they'll do
it just for the art really. They don’t mind really. They don't
mind reducing your rate so that you can
do something really cool that you are going to
be proud of in your book. Okay and then I
guess you're so busy that you probably
don't have a lot of personal projects on
the go would you? At the moment no and
I'm like back-to-back shooting and then
I'll book a few days off to retouch and
then get back to shooting. Like
it's crazy. So you do your own retouching as
well?
Yeah the moment I don't out source
anything, because my clients like the way I
retouching, so I would be afraid that they
wouldn't get the product that they want
if I outsourced it. Yeah I suppose it’s all
still about quality control isn’t it? You
get you can't really hire someone else
if, you know, you can do the job yourself. If I
ever get to Mario Testino level where there is
like 12 people retouching live on set, I’d be
like grand. Isn’t that the dream? Can I come with you?
Then finally would you please talk us
through some of maybe what you
consider your best shots or fun
shoots that you've had.
okay I have a few, I don't have like a
favorite because my latest shoot always
seems to be my favourite shoot, but I have a
couple of like portraits that I've done
of friends that I kind of really love
and go, yeah I’m proud of that shot
because of the story behind it more so
than actual image. There's one shot in
particular that is of my friend Kelly
whose a model and we go to Fashion Week together
every season, she kind of writes and does
behind the scenes for magazines back
here. So when we were saying in London
two seasons ago and the, so our
publication covers obviously your
hotel and everything like that and we arrived
to hotel there must have been other
publications staying there as well because
they thought we were Vogue. So they were
giving us the whole spiel about the
hotel showing us into this incredible
suite it's was amazing and then he was like
so you’re Vogue, I was like no I'm
Tatler and he was like oh, he just
lost interest.
He spent all that time giving you the
full works here and showing you around because your Vogue.
Then it was just ripped away. You'll come back
next year and you will be Vogue and he will
just be so delighted to see you.
In that hotel room I took a portrait of
my friend, Kelly just no makeup she's
just out of the shower with like a towel around
her head and it's just really pure
because her skin looks incredible,
the light is just natural light out a window and I
just I loved that shot because of the gas
story behind it. It’s really striking as
well and is there reasons why you
choose like black and white over color a lot of the times
or do you just go with what
feels right for the picture? There will be times actually
on set, if the colour of say the room
or something is putting me off, I’ll shoot
the editorial in black-and-white just so I
don't need to worry about color until
I get into post-production. Wow
that's unusual. Because you can get very
like caught up and be like this doesn't
look right because of the colour,
but like you're going to do colour
corrections anyway when you get back in
post so why not just shoot in black and
white and then you can get that
relationship with the model and
everyone on set without having to worry the
whole time and go oh my god that looks
weird.
So your programming the
camera to shoot in black and white, yeah because it’s in raw anyway so it's
not doing anything to the file. Then you're adjusting it to
colour after? Yeah, that's if I get
really frustrated on set, I’ll be like
I’ll shoot it in black and white it will look great. That's really
fascinating.
Then everyone on set will feel better as
well because I'm not going,
this doesn’t look right. You’re not stressing, you’re not
trying to tweak things and things like
that.
I'm going to try that.
Like just see how how much I’d change my
everything by just shooting in
black-and-white and then guessing what
the colour is. People think I’m a weirdo when I do it but
it's just ,yeah. It works for me. I think
you'd be really suited to
shooting in film. I'd be afraid that I
wouldn’t have a clue what I’m photographing. Yeah
but that doesn't matter it's trial and
error and you'll get there in the end
but the way that you shoot and the
things that you just said I think you'd
be suited to film completely. Come back
here to the darkroom someday and we’ll have a go.
We’ll have a go for it. Aaron
thanks so much.
Pleasure chatting to you and I'm
definitely gonna see more of your stuff
everywhere. Really delighted that you
have time to come on the show. Thanks a
million.
Well that's all we have for this episode,
I hope you enjoyed the show if you want
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