Licensing Contributor Marvin Herrera is an American portrait and wedding photographer based in Vancouver, BC. Working with natural light, Marvin keeps his portraits bright, his details sharp, and his color palettes simple—ideal for the commercial market. Browse his Licensing collection here.
My involvement in portraiture was always hiding in the background. Growing up in Los Angeles, I was a huge cinema and music aficionado (which seems pretty common for most folks in southern California). My goal was to be a film composer, and halfway there, life took me elsewhere.
I moved to British Columbia at 20 years old. During the long immigration process (and realization that my college units were not transferable), I took up photography as a hobby after my wife gifted me a DSLR camera.
My career as a photographer started almost accidentally. I had shadowed a few photographers for fun during a couple of weddings, and the brides ended up loving my work more than the folks they had hired. I shot 35mm for most of my life, mostly architecture or landscapes—but my younger self never would have anticipated I’d end up in the wedding industry, working as a photographer!
I have been shooting weddings since 2012 and up until late 2016, when I started working on my portraiture. At the time, I felt I was heading into a creative rut, and at the same time, I hit a super busy wedding season.
My portraiture work takes its influence and inspiration mostly from that nostalgic feeling you get when you watch an old (or new) film. Each of my works aims to evoke that feeling in you, like a brief escape into and out of that mood or feeling.
This series, however, is a bit different. Even though there are traces of my usual style in it, this series is meant to represent renewal.
We live in a time where visual media is served as quickly and frequently as fast food; where we now quickly become overwhelmed and/or depressed that we aren’t working on projects as often, or experiencing as much success as others. I’ve seen it happen in and out of the industry, and even to me. My goal is to help promote more thoughtful works—works that are more raw; works that embrace mistakes when they inevitably come.
The gear I used in this series are: Pentax K-1 paired with a Sigma Art 35mm f/1.4. A vintage-glass pane from a chandelier that was used to refract light. An ND filter to help capture motion blur during some shots, as it was very well lit, naturally. The glass pane and ND filter were intended and planned for the shoot, as they helped me to drive the point of our heads always being clouded by the busy and ever-growing world of social media.
The location was a local and intimate spot in Abbotsford, BC, called Our Studio. I choose it mostly because it promotes functioning as a blank canvas for projects, and I needed something that wasn’t your usual white-paper backdrop or elegant couch setting to help promote the “clearing your mind” feel of the shoot.
The styling was done by my model / friend, Savannah Joiner, and I. And last but not least, makeup and hair was done by my lovely wife, Amanda Herrera.
Model: Savannah Joiner
Makeup / hair: Amanda Herrera
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500px: http://500px.com/marvinhrrr
Website: marvinherrera.com
Instagram: @mrvnhrrr
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