{"id":118064,"date":"2019-02-28T13:59:46","date_gmt":"2019-02-28T18:59:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/models.com\/oftheminute\/?p=118064"},"modified":"2023-03-18T18:37:08","modified_gmt":"2023-03-18T22:37:08","slug":"how-dana-scruggs-went-from-test-shoots-to-milestone-covers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/models.com\/oftheminute\/?p=118064","title":{"rendered":"How Dana Scruggs Went From Test Shoots To Milestone Covers"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nDana Scruggs by Erik Carter<\/small><\/p>\n

As the world turns, so does the abundance of photographers that set to carve their way out of what some might feel is an oversaturated market. Is it that there are too many visual voices screaming into the void or that the creative industry has finally started listening to the stories beyond a homogenous few? One who has many opinions on the matter is budding photographer Dana Scruggs<\/a>. The Brooklyn implant has taken the tenacity she’s picked up from growing up in Chicago to push her towards marking major milestones off her client list. On the heels of our new editorial<\/a> with Scruggs, we delved deeper with the promising artist about how she got her start in the industry, how she first gained access to photo editors and reflecting on being the first black woman to contribute to two major magazines in a single year.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Interview by Irene Ojo-Felix<\/a><\/p>\n

Why did you first get into photography and when did it evolve from something that might have been a hobby to something you started doing full-time?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dana Scruggs<\/strong> – Well, I started being a photographer about seven years ago. I was going through a period of severe depression. I was too depressed to work and basically too depressed to leave my house. I was living in Chicago at the time and I had an apartment full of vintage furniture and clothing. I was working in real estate. I thought to myself, “I can’t leave my house to show places and apartments, so let me just try to sell all the stuff that I have on Etsy so that I can pay my rent.”<\/p>\n

I started taking photos of clothes on hangers with a terrible little point and shoot. I asked my mom if she would let me buy a DSLR on her Best Buy card on Black Friday. That changed everything because my mom believed in me enough to say, “Okay, I’ll trust you to do this and follow through,” and pay off something that wasn’t a non-significant amount of money. I bought a DSLR and then I found models on Model Mayhem – which I don’t go there anymore (laughs), and said, “I’m a photographer and I’ll trade you photos if you model for my website.” I just started shooting models or girls for my Etsy shop, it was called BeautifulShyt. Then, I would just add more photos to my Model Mayhem profile to find more models. I had no intention of being a photographer, but agencies [in Chicago] started reaching out to me and asking me to test with their models. That was the first time I actually thought that maybe this could be something. That maybe I could actually be a photographer or I could try my hand at photography, at least. The first agency that reached out to me was Ignite<\/a>. I think they’re in Minnesota. I shot two or three of their girls. Then, within a year of starting to do that, I moved to New York to pursue photography as a serious endeavor.<\/p>\n

How was that first year or two in New York City? Obviously moving to a city like New York, the pool got bigger, as far as creative talent. How did you first carve your niche in what was already present and existed here?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dana<\/strong> – Well, from the beginning, I’m self-taught. I didn’t have any industry connections when I moved here. I didn’t know anything about the industry at all. All I knew was, okay let me reach out to some agencies and see if I can test. I was surprised that agencies actually said yes because from my perspective I was from a podunk town with kind of a crappy book. People were like, okay, yeah sure. The first week I was here I shot two girls. That was fine because that was mainly what I shot when I was in Chicago, but I had always wanted to shoot male models. The third model that I shot ended up being a male model and it was a revelation honestly. <\/p>\n

When I shot him, there was something so physical and incredibly masculine about my images. That was the strongest work I\u2019d ever done. From then on, I was like okay, I\u2019m not interested in shooting women. I\u2019m only interested in shooting men. So for the first three or four years – actually up until last year – I was only known for shooting men. I wasn\u2019t really known for shooting women at all. Then, within maybe two years of being in NY, I switched over to mainly focusing on the black male form and developing that and portraying black men in a way that wasn\u2019t objectifying. My thought process is: I\u2019m a woman and this is my perspective of them as a black man, but it\u2019s also not coming from a place of fetishization or exploitation or hopping on a train of \u201cthis is trendy\u201d \u2013 because I was shooting black men before the industry started really acknowledging them.<\/p>\n

Going back to your point of being self-taught. How was your experience teaching yourself as far as the education of light? Where do you even start as far as materials to expand your understanding of the industry? Is it just half book and half experience on the go?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dana<\/strong> – I guess it was a blend of all of those things. It was a very slow learning process business-wise. I just started recently having more of an understanding, because honestly a lot of other photographers weren\u2019t interested in giving me any information. Especially when I finally started meeting people that were peers and even a bit ahead of me. I would ask them, \u201cHow do you go about this? How do you get clients?\u201d They just wouldn\u2019t tell me or give me vague answers. Some people aren’t willing to help you because they’re afraid you’re going to take their jobs or their clients. My view is: If that gig is meant for me – I’m going to get it. I’m not going to keep a peer or a friend ignorant because I have a fear of scarcity. So, for the longest time – I stumbled. It’s so hard to make it when you don\u2019t have the basic tools to understand: “Who should I be reaching out to? Who should I reach out to at a particular company? Who’s in decision making positions AND can actually hire me? How often should I be reaching out to them? How do I even find these people’s emails in the first place?”<\/p>\n

One thing that I\u2019m making sure that I\u2019m doing, now that I have a platform, is letting everyone know: this is how I went about it and this is what changed everything for me. If I had known then what I know now, I would be much farther along in my career. Also, it’s really important to shoot as much as you can when you’re first starting out. I think that\u2019s why my work and my aesthetic developed very quickly, because I was doing three shoots a week. I was just living photography every day and being poor. I wasn\u2019t getting paid and I was doing a lot of free tests. That\u2019s also a problem in the industry – agencies not wanting to pay photographers. You have to shoot 10 models for them to start considering you for paid testing and often they don\u2019t. Often they just rely on people who are happy to shoot models for free. There are so many photographers who are constantly shooting amazing work for agencies and they rarely get paid. You\u2019re developing somebody\u2019s book and that model\u2019s booking jobs and making money off of the work that you\u2019re doing, but the agency can\u2019t pay you $250.00 or $300.00 for a test? It\u2019s not a lot of money when you really put it in relation to how much you\u2019re actually helping a model\u2019s career.<\/p>\n

Do you feel like black creatives have a responsibility of contributing their own personal narratives into the current cultural space? Do you think that there are still more hurdles to get over and is even talking from a black perspective necessary or do you find that sometimes it can be limiting?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dana<\/strong> – I don’t think it’s limiting to want to focus your work on black people. Just because I am interested in black narratives and creating black narratives around my work, that doesn’t mean that I don’t get opportunities to shoot other people. I’m not solely interested in only shooting black people. I’ll just say this, it’s very frustrating for me when I see black photographers in the industry that don’t photograph other black people. I’m not saying you have to solely shoot black people, but you’re perpetuating a status quo of not being inclusive of black people and people of color. It’s like white-washing your work. I understand it because when I first moved to New York, I mainly shot white guys. I didn’t really want to shoot black people because I felt like I wouldn’t be taken seriously. You have huge black male models now – Alton Mason, Adonis [Bosso], there’s a bunch. But back then, the black male models that were out there were very commercial and there were only maybe one or two black male models on a board. It was just a different time and I thought if I had black men in my book then maybe I won’t get work. I thought maybe they\u2019d think that just because I’m a black photographer, that I only want to shoot black people. Or that I don’t know how to shoot white people. My main focus at that time was trying to eat, so I focused my work on white models because I thought that was how I could start to get paid.<\/p>\n

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