Jen Van Der Vecht

Artist Jen Van Der Vecht is first and foremost a portraitist, and uses photography as her medium to create the black and white images she has come to be known for.

The cover photo in a backyard swimming pool is representative of Jen’s portraiture.

“The picture is an example of the type of work I do,” Jen comments. “A portrait tells a story, it reveals part of who a person is,” she adds.

The picture also acted as a launching pad for her professional career. Spurred on by friends and family who liked the candid shot, Jen
decided to become a professional photographer.

She was no stranger to photography. Her earliest exposure to photography was through a brief modeling career around the time she turned twenty.

She later launched her own model scout business, marketing new models and directing photo shoots with renowned photographers.

She considers that part of her life to have been a formative period. “I’ve always been a visual person,” says Jen, who credits those early
years with “forming an eye as an artist” and gaining insight into the creative photography process. It was also there she learnt the basics of good photography, studio designs and the set up of photo shoots.

Since then, Jen developed her personal style. She shoots almost exclusively outdoors. “If it rains, we reschedule the shoot,” Jen remarks
about the one to two-hour sessions she spends with her subjects.

She loves shooting outside for two reasons: location and natural light. “Location forms part of developing who a person is,” says Jen,
explaining that when shooting an up-and-coming actor, for example, she’ll shoot in the city, but she’ll typically opt to take portraits of children in a grassy garden.

When shooting, Jen pays a great deal of attention to the sun, keeping an eye on how light registers on her subjects as well as the surroundings. “The sun is of equal importance as the subjects in my compositions,” she remarks.

Jen also does wedding photography and other assignments in colour, but she rarely strays from her trademark black and white photography – it’s part of her vision. “I think in black and white, that’s the way I see it when I photograph,” she says. “It’s not an afterthought.”

She recently converted to digital photography. This switch was “an eye opening experience,” she notes, admitting to having to overcome reservations about going digital.

She discovered the look of film could be emulated when manipulating the picture electronically. “It’s all in the post-production when shooting digitally,” she says. To create her highend
frames, she typically spends up to two days editing a photo shoot.

When shooting digitally, Jen tends to convert her digital shots to black and white prints. “Black and white is important to me as an artist,” she says reassuringly. “It’s still my thing.”