Elle & Cee World Girls is a doll company that represents girls of all cultures. The company was founded by Carlissa and Laken King, identical twins from Brooklyn who have always been on a mission to make a difference in the world. Recently, they launched a Kickstarter to help fund the company’s first production of dolls, and last week, New York kids photographer Caitie McCabe spent an evening at the carnival photographing some girls playing with the new doll. The photos are fun and adorable, and we had to share! Check them out, along with some insight from Caitie, below:
How does this project fit into your style? How did you get involved with this?
This project is exactly my style! I try to photograph girls being confident and strong, I aim to use humor and fun to celebrate the intelligence and beauty of all my gals. They found me through a friend, and once I heard about the project it was easy to say yes! This shoot was for their Kickstarter launch, they are a startup and are looking to raise money to fund the initial production of the dolls.
Were there any challenges involved with this project? If so, how did you overcome them?
This company has so many wonderful aspects to it, the biggest challenge was trying to figure out how to create a “wow” image that would show the strength of their mission. We decided to just focus on the spirit of their target market, the girls. We will be shooting a larger campaign in the fall which I am very excited about. We had about a thousand ideas, picking one to shoot for the launch was the hardest!
What was involved in planning/preproduction?
We didn’t have much time to plan (one day) but we wanted to make sure that we showcased the spirit of the girls and the company in a couple of key shots. We cast very diverse girls and essentially let them have a blast hanging out together at the carnival before we shot. All of the girls met on the day of the shoot but it was important for the shot that they were close so we let them loose to bond, fed them lots of sugar and came out with shots that were perfect!
Did you learn anything during this shoot?
Don’t feed children sugar before a spinning ride. Just kidding! Would have loved more time, I think we all didn’t expect the girls to hit it off as much as they did, since we had to shoot on a school night our time was limited for the models. When casting, I usually spend a preproduction day with the kids just letting them get to know each other and have fun so on shoot day we can just start shooting. I learned how important that is to do when trying to portray “best friends.”
Check out more of Caitie’s work on her site, caitiemccabe.com.