Aritzia, a clothing retailer with its own online magazine, recently hired Vancouver-based fashion photographer Evaan Kheraj to photograph actress Alexia Fast for their December 2012 issue. The shoot was timed to coincide with Alexia’s appearance with co-star Tom Cruise, in the feature film “Jack Reacher”. As is often the case with shooting a celebrity, Evaan would not have a great deal of time with Alexia. Though she would prove to be incredibly comfortable in front of the camera, the challenge for Evaan was to come up with a number of options for Aritzia while working within a very tight timeline.
The unexpected moment is something every photographer looks for. While Evaan shot Alexia, he didn’t hesitate to experiment with all the opportunities presented in the studio—hoping to catch that elusive unexpected shot. He had the support of a very strong team on set: Fashion Director Michelle Reneau, Editor-in-cheif Luke Crisel, hair stylist Isabelle Cummins, and make-up artist Melanie Neufeld. They tried a playful photo with a clothed Alexia hopping into the studio bathtub. This spontaneous point in the shoot yielded standout images from Evaan’s session with Fast.
The shoot was a success, and Aritzia put together a beautiful story on Fast using Evaan’s photos. Looking at the images, it’s clear that Evaan’s unique photographic style—loose, moody, and evocative—was a great fit to capture the spirit of the young actress.
I asked Evaan if it was different to shoot and edit work for a strictly online publication, to which he replied,
It’s not any different, the only thing that is perhaps a little more liberating is you don’t have to worry so much about the orientation of the photo. You have more room to flex in that regard and since you aren’t paying for physical paper space, you do have the potential to run more photos. Typically this sort of feature would run two images, but because we have the room to flex, we ran more. Now this comes with a catch—you don’t always get paid for more photos. Which means while you do get to show more, you also have more work to do without compensation. But that’s a personal choice you have to make with the Photo Gods.