About Sid Marin, creative director and fashion photographer, Paris
What makes my eye
I started photographing as soon as I could hold a camera, and I never stopped. It was a daily habit long before it was a profession.
Over the last five years I have travelled across five continents and forty countries. That changed how I shoot more than any training could: people of every age and culture, cities, mountains, beaches, and light I did not get to choose, including places where the sun never sets. You learn quickly to work with whatever stands in front of the lens, and with whatever you can carry: little equipment, lenses I know by heart, and the certainty of which one to reach for and why.
But I travelled without a team. No model, no stylist, no make-up artist, nobody to scout locations. To make anything more ambitious I had to find those people wherever I went, and accept that sometimes I would not: you do not stay long enough, or moving everyone becomes impossible.
So I did a little of each job. A little styling, without being a stylist. A little make-up, without being a make-up artist. Art direction, which I pushed until it became my profession. And if I am a signed model with an agency, it is for the same reason: knowing what it feels like in front of the lens so I can direct someone better there, and step in myself when there is nobody else.
What I gained is not one more skill, it is understanding what each person does, because I have done it. And knowing how to build a team anywhere: finding the right people, sensing the one who will not turn up, and already having a plan when they do not.
That is where my creative direction comes from. Not from a course: from necessity. I build a project from the concept to the final image because I have held every role it contains, and I understand what a team needs because I have needed it myself. In French, English or Spanish, depending on the set.
How I direct someone in front of the camera
It depends entirely on who is in front of me, and that is where the work happens.
Someone who has never posed needs a starting point. There I do not ask, I show: I make the movement and the person copies it. I wave, they wave. I put a hand on my hip, they put a hand on their hip. Nobody is lost, because there is something to watch rather than an instruction to interpret.
A professional model does not need that. There I start from what they already do well, take nothing away, and lead them somewhere else. Often by giving a story rather than a pose: a situation to step into, from which their own ideas come. The best frames almost always come from there.
Between those two, everything depends on the person. Their height, their build, the reflexes their profession gave them, what they like about themselves and what they do not. I am not trying to make them do what I would do, I am looking for the place where they feel right. It is the only one that shows in the picture.
When there is no second take
I have photographed two reigning queens, in a museum closed to the public for the occasion. I had never worked with royalty, and you do not learn its rules in advance: they are written nowhere.
What carried me through was everything that came before. Photographing people whose time is counted teaches you where to stand, how to speak, what you may ask and what you do not. Above all, it teaches you not to need a second take. These people come once, for a few minutes, and leave. You have to be ready before they arrive, get the picture, and clear the room just as fast.
I have also worked inside the luxury world. I know its codes, its rhythm and its silences, and I don't need them explained to me on set. That is where the difference lies between someone who takes beautiful pictures and someone a situation is handed to.
A Spring/Summer campaign shot in January, in Cape Town, in real summer light. For a brand producing in Europe, six months gained on the calendar.
Work with me
What can be commissioned, in Paris, Cape Town and elsewhere:
- - Editorial and campaign photography for fashion houses and brands
- - Creative direction: concept, casting, styling direction, art direction on set
- - Fashion Week coverage: runway, backstage, street style and celebrity portraits
- - Lookbooks, e-commerce and brand content
- - Event photography, delivered through a private gallery
For a commission or an event gallery: sidmarin.ph@gmail.com