Jake Hicks
Jake Hicks is a commercial fashion and portrait shooter based out of London UK. Jake’s work is often described as bold, vibrant, colourful and of course different. In a world where we all see thousands of images a day, Jake strives to catch his viewers attention by showcasing engaging in-camera lighting effects as well his signature highly saturated colour gel shots.
Jake has been shooting commercially for close to two decades and in recent years has also become very well known for his engaging educational content, both online with video tutorials and with his international workshops. Like his personal work, Jake is passionate about instilling foundational knowledge in new and young photographers that focuses on teaching them how to keep the skills in the camera, and not just on the screen.
How would you define your style?
Jakes style is about creating visually engaging imagery that makes his images stand out for the right reasons. In a digital world where anything is possible, Jake believes that the foundation of any great image, is great lighting and his vision for that often involves a lot of highly saturated and bold coloured lights to make his subjects leap off the page.
What do you enjoy about working with Rotolight?
Bold, bright and highly saturated colours are at the core of a lot Jake’s images and the Rotolight products makes that look very easy to achieve. With millions of colours instantly accessible at the touch of a screen, along with an incredibly clean edge-to-edge light source thanks to the larger Rotolight panels, clean and vivid colours are simply so easy to achieve across the entire subjects body.
Favourite project you have worked on?
As much as Jake loves to be creative in his photoshoots, teaching and imparting knowledge to other eager photographers is also a passion of his. Any project that enables him to combine both of those element is always going to be among his favourite projects. Along with that, location shoots that demand a lot of creative lighting in engaging spaces are also atop his list of most memorable projects as well.
What advice do you have for those looking to go into photography?
In a world where education has never been more accessible from the industries top professionals, it can be easy to fall into the trap of only doing what others advise you to do. Never be afraid to try new ideas yourself and most importantly, never be afraid to make mistakes as this is how we truly learn about what we like and don’t like, especially when it comes to our own creative vision. Mistakes are the seeds of creativity.
