Cottagecore with Pelumi!

When I relocated to Port Harcourt in 2019, Pelumi was one of the people I highlighted to be photographed. Her fashion style and her poise generally resonated deeply with me. At the time, I was just starting out my photography career, so I didn't buzz her or have any form of communication with her. I wanted to bide my time and make the move when I was ready. Guess what? I didn't make any move until last year.

Last year, April precisely, I finally decided to text Pelumi about a shoot. The theme was cottagecore, and it was 100% her thing. In fact, she has so many cottagecore smartphone photos she created by herself (that's amazing). The shoot didn't require so much planning as we pretty much had everything needed to pull it off, but we lingered until September to execute the project.

The delay worked in my/our favour somehow as I was able to learn new colorgrading patterns I needed to edit the photos from the session with. Looking back now, I'm grateful for the delay.

On 2nd of September under a heavily exposed condition, I created some of my best portraits from last year. The session was one of the best I had, and the results was from it confirmed it. Check out the photos;

Can you feel that vibrant green and yellows? I was super impressed by what I created. In fact I was so impressed that we had to do more shoots. But those are stories for another day.

For this project, I opted against shooting with Nikon and had to rent a colleague's Sony camera. I did that because I had an 85mm f1.8 while he had a 105 f1.4 Sigma art lens. As much as I wasn't (but now I'm) a fan of Sony's color science, I needed the extra bokeh the 105mm lens would give me. And boy! The Sony rocked. It was all the convincing I needed to strengthen my resolve to own a Sony camera.

I've read several reviews for different Sony cameras I could get. The ones within my price range are the Sony A7III and the A7riii. I wish Hive would sponsor that purchase. My birthday was last month, I'm still receiving gifts 😁.

Lemme know in the comments section which photo you liked more. Thank you.