Chelzea is a professional photographer hailing from Vancouver, BC. Her focuses on fashion, beauty and commercial photography, while trying to capture the differences in each of her subjects. She uses her lens to capture what she sees, instead of altering the subject. With the use of natural illumination and anti-Photoshop beliefs she is creatively pushing the fashion world boundaries into different realms. With her vibrant, invigorating and provocative approach she is always continuing to captivate her clients. She is candid, creative and with her inspirational mentality; this is Captured by Chelzea.
Chelzea started Captured by Chelzea in February of 2009, and lays most of her focus on fashion beauty and glamour. She has worked with many creative others but her team consists of Barborka Jindrakova; a stylist/coordinator who graduated from Fashion merchandising in 2005, and Jessica Knittson; a makeup artist who graduated with honours from makeup school. Chelzea has no formal training is completely self-taught and always enjoys learning new techniques as she goes along. She describes her photographing style as “raw and rare… a style that you do not see every day especially in this industry.” She photographs with a Nikon D60 and usually photographs in digital.
As a teenager she came across the work of David Lachapelle and was completely blown away. She was drawn to rawness of his photographers. Although she never thought of herself as photographer there she was pondering what she wanted to do next in her life. She started by photographing a friend of hers and the next thing that she knew the photos were spreading all over a social networking site. If it were not for the friend requesting her to take the pictures, and without all of the supportive people she has met along the way, she would not be where she is today.
While seeing the amount of girls and even young boys struggling with their confidence, which leads to eating disorders and plays a huge part in today’s suicide rate she developed anti-Photoshop beliefs. She believes in capturing the subject as they are and makes sure to emphasize their differences. She one day hopes that “[She] can show the world that it is not about air brushing flaws, but capturing the oddness in such a way that it makes you feel slightly more comfortable having one.” It is amazing that she never finds it to be a challenge to photograph subjects without editing. Her biggest challenge is to keep up with outside competition that has become Photoshop dependent. It’s difficult to keep going when it’s you versus the rest of the industry.
Her most fond memory of photography was her first magazine spread. She never chases magazines like the rest of the industry and one day J. Bolin a renowned celebrity stylist and Editor-In-Chief of Denim magazine contacted her asked for some of her most recent work. After a month passed over and the thought had left her mind she received a phone call, she remembers it was a Friday at midnight, informing her of the greatest news. She had been published.
Why I chose Chelzea was not for her popularity, but for the authenticity that she demonstrates in her work. She has worked hard to get to where she is today and it excites me that someone with such a different mentality can have such a great success in such a difficult industry as this.
