Fuse Personalities

Philadelphia-based portrait photographer Chris Sembrot thrives off of shoots that require him to reveal a subject’s true personality. That’s one of the reasons he was excited to take on a recent assignment from Fuse, a television network dedicated to music. Fuse’s creative director wanted Chris to photograph some of their on-air personalities and bloggers for a new contributor page of their website. Fuse wanted environmental portraits that told a little about each person’s persona, presented in a slightly stylized way—in other words, Chris’ specialty.

Chris had worked with Fuse in the past on a Times Square billboard of Blink 182’s Mark Hoppus, and he was happy to work with their team again—especially since he was allowed to give the shoot his own creative direction. After the CD shared a few comps with the look and feel of the new website, Chris got together his ideas and prepared for the shoot. He says,

I was basically given total creative freedom, which was great! Six out of the eight locations we improvised with New York City as our canvas. Post treatment was in-line with the client’s vision of gritty New York bio photos.

The only real challenge for Chris was fitting in eight portraits of people with very busy schedules into two and half days. But he and his team made it work, and they ended up with some great photos. Chris enjoyed the shoot and working with the Fuse contributors.

The shoot reinforced to me to always engage as much as possible with your subject prior to sticking a camera in their face.  Having that conversation first landed us in two amazing locations: a karaoke bar in Koreatown and the Westminster Dog Show.

Fuse’s creative director loved the final images, and within a couple of days they were up on the new Fuse.tv contributor page.

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