While we firmly believe that female-identifying creatives should be supported and recognised every month of the year, each Women's Month Orms likes to make space for the talented women among us to be acknowledged, encouraged and celebrated. Last year we asked some of our favourite creatives to nominate the women who inspire them and spread the appreciation throughout our online community.
This August we are dedicating our Instagram feed to the work made by women in creative industries, including photography, cinematography and content creation. We will be throwing it back to some of our most exciting collaborations with outstanding powerhouses such as Sarah Hugo-Hamman, Lauren Theunissen and Kenny Jules Morifi-Winslow. Finally, we are going to share informative and nurturing resources for women, by women, on Orms Connect.
If you want to unite with us in taking up space and honouring creative females, hop over to our Instagram and join our community.
Today, we would like to share our first resource to enrich and empower female-identifying creatives. We will keep adding new resources to this blog post every week, so be sure to check back each Monday!
RESOURCE #1: PROFESSIONAL MODELS TEACH PHOTOGRAPHERS HOW TO POSE (VIDEO)
Our first resource is this meaty video from Rachel Gulotta and Daniel Inskeep, a.k.a. the photographers behind the popular Mango Street YouTube channel.
While there has been a general relaxing of certain lockdown restrictions in South Africa and many other places all over the globe, a lot of creatives are still (rightly) approaching photoshoots with a great deal of caution or choosing to continue self-isolating. If Instagram and YouTube are anything to go by, there has been a surge in interest in self-portraiture, with many photographers deciding to turn the camera on themselves to keep creating during this time. In fact, if you asked lifestyle and portraiture photographer Paige Wood about the subject, she would tell us that all image-makers should get in front of the camera regularly so that they develop more empathy for their subjects and a better understanding of how to direct their models.
In this entertaining and extremely helpful tutorial, two professional models join Rachel and Daniel over FaceTime to coach them through posing themselves in photographs. They share these bit-sized tips and insights with us throughout the video so that other photographers can benefit from the experience and up their self-portraiture game. We're certain that this video will give photographers more confidence when jumping in front of the camera.
RESOURCE #2: LEGENDARY FILMMAKERS SPEAK ABOUT HOW YOU CAN ELEVATE YOUR COMPOSITION
Most videographers, filmmakers and cinephiles will know the name Roger Deakins. The English cinematographer is widely regarded to be the finest image-maker in the industry and his fifteen nominations and two wins for Academy Award for Best Cinematography certainly support that opinion.
What many of Roger's fans may not know, however, is that he is only half of "Team Deakins", with his wife, James, an industry-revolutionising creator in her own right, being an essential part of Roger's creative workflow. As a Digital Workflow Consultant, James is responsible for supervising the image-creation process and making sure that everything runs as seamlessly as possible from pre-prod to post production so Roger can focus on working his magic in-camera.
Roger and James have a podcast together (titled "Team Deakins" after their famous partnership) where they discuss the craft of filmmaking, answering questions from inquiring fans and frequently hosting world-renowned guests such as Joel Cohen, Denis Villeneuve and Linus Sandgren.
We would like to recommend the fifth episode of the Team Deakins podcast, titled "Composition", as a resource for creative women who would like to take their image-making to the next level. In this episode, Roger and James discuss the role composition plays in storytelling and how it differs between the still image and the moving frame.
RESOURCE #3: INTERVIEW WITH PHOTOGRAPHER RIKKI WRIGHT
Our final resource for creative women is this article featuring the work and ethos of LA-based photographer, Rikki Wright. Rikki lost her mother at a young age and says her life has been marked by this inescapable feeling of searching for examples of womanhood and femininity. Her warm, soft, intimate images explore the bonds between women of colour. We honestly could not think of an artist better suited to closing this blog post than this inspiring, insightful creative who uses her lens to speak about community between women.
You can read the full feature here on WePresent or learn more about Rikki on her website.
BREAK INTO THE INDUSTRY WITH THE SUPPORT OF ORMS CIRCLE
WAIT! That's not all. This Women's Month, we are thrilled to announce the return of the Orms Circle Mentorship Programme, where we offer a platform for one woman-identifying artist to step into the creative industry with experience, connections and confidence. Applications for this incredible opportunity are open until 30 September 2020.
You can learn more about Orms Circle and our extraordinary mentors over here and apply for the mentorship programme here on the Orms Connect blog.
