Actor Mushema Housen’s studio photo session

A s a writer, I see the world in words. The doctor sees things differently than I do, as well as the designer, carpenter, and florist. My craft influences how I see my surroundings and how I interact with it as I do professional photography

Having opened up a studio recently to cater for professional family Photography, corporate, headshots and product photo services, I linked up with Mushema Housen to get that Photo experience with him.

Mushema has become a household name in Uganda’s movie industry. If you’re a movie lover, you might have caught him up in Veronica’s Wish, Bed of Thorns, Power of Legacy, Mistakes girls Do and many more. Photographing a person like Mushema needs great planning, from wardrobe to the actual day that is suitable for him away from his work schedule.

Preparations

From our arrangement to have a lifestyle and corporate portrait photo-session, I can comfortably say that it was an awesome experience working with Mushema. His modeling background yielded lots of positives and we managed to bring our ideas to life. We have to give thumbs up to Kai’s Divo Collection for styling him. One thing that helps bring a photo session to life is proper styling. And this brought out the photographs to life by 20%.

Mushema came in at the agreed time. To spice up our behind the scenes, we had a chance to capture his entrance and he was all full of smiles as usual… very comical indeed. Like we always say, we want to give our professional photography clients an experience, an experience only visible in movies.

Since we had pre-meditated over and over about this impending shoot, the team at Malaika Prints was so prepared, camera batteries charged, cameras ready, memory cards in place, all from the night before.

Shooting

Mable and Jackie (interns), helped with ironing his outfits as Jackie (operations Manager), Rose (asstistant) and I organised the lighting. Michael as usual shooting behind the scenes.

We normally set the professional photography shooting time at 2 hours maximum but Mushema was too fun to shoot that we might have slightly exceeded the 2 hour cap. I was the main photographer but each of the photographers took a turn to capture some magical moments.

Post Production

The shoot really took a long time than expected, nevertheless, we achieved our objective. At the end, we had to give Mushema a chance to select the photos with the team’s help. Each of the editor put together a couple of photographs which were later shared as soft copies and others printed. Professional photography is much more fun with team work.

Lessons Learnt

According to my reflections, there are many more valuable takeaways that come from the experience of doing professional photography. Perhaps, you might have some of your own to share too. The truth is, any discipline or art has its valuable lessons to be learnt.  

1. Communication Is Key: It became easy to work with Housen Mushema, he was at ease and felt at home the moment he entered Malaika Prints studio
2. Preparation is King: Nothing beats this, and keeping time. It makes the booking worth it in case there are other clients in line.
3. Creativity: think and explore new ideas as you do professional photography