Evaan Kheraj is a Vancouver-based fashion photographer, director and cinematographer. His days are spent creating emotional fashion stills and videos in a style that he characterizes as “cinematic realism.” Evaan’s unique and colorful photographs have caught the eyes of fashion magazines around the world—from Vancouver, to Los Angeles, to London and now, even Sweden.
Evaan’s Scandinavian connection all began after he received a call from Jonna Berg, the editor-in-chief of one of Sweden’s biggest fashion magazines, STYLEBY. Jonna was looking for a Canadian photographer to shoot up-and-coming Swedish actress Alicia Vikander while she was filming in Vancouver. She thought Evaan would be perfect for the job.
Evaan was excited for the assignment as he’d been itching to photograph Alicia for some time now.
I’d seen images of her in movie posters and thought it would be great to photograph her because of her intense emotion.
With ideas already in mind, Evaan agreed to the assignment and soon got to work with Jonna concepting the overall look and feel of the spread. The STYLEBY team pulled photographs from Evaan’s portfolio to create a mood board for the shoot and they worked from there to set a cohesive tone. Evaan also put together location ideas and sent those over to Sweden for approval. Then, once everything was set and Alicia’s schedule was in place, production began.
According to Evaan, celebrity fashion shoots are standard assignments for him, but this shoot was a bit different as he’s used to having the client on set.
Given we were in Vancouver and the STYLEBY team is in New York and Sweden, my team and I were shooting on our own, which is atypical.
What was typical though was the tight time frame Evaan and his team had to work within. Alicia was busy filming “The Seventh Son” with Julianne Moore and Jeff Bridges, so they only had a small window to photograph numerous set ups—six setups in four locations to be exact. However, according to Evaan, Alicia was a trooper and they were able to make it through all of the locations.
Alicia was fabulous. She was extremely pleasant to work with and was about as natural as it gets in front of the camera. At no point did we feel rushed and she made my life easy.
STYLEBY was thrilled with the results and ended up using shots from every set up in their July issue. Evaan was also pleased with the photographs.
It’s probably the most representative of the way I like to use light. I love natural light and shadows, they go hand in hand with realism.