jb

Not long after I bought my first camera, I started following a photographer’s blog where they were doing a 350-day photo project with a little cardboard box toy called Danbo. The photos were so creative and full of personality that I ended up buying one for myself.

I didn’t shoot every single day like they did, but I photographed Danbo as much as I could with the little time that I had. This tiny figure ended up teaching me a lot of thing. How to work with lighting, how to think about composition, and how to pull some kind of emotion out of a completely expressionless toy. It also trained my eye for balancing color and tone in every shot.

I’ve tried to get rid of it a few times, but I never could. I still use it to test lighting setups before any studio shoot with a real model. These days, it sits on a little shelf above my desk, quietly watching over me. It’s like a reminder of how I started and the long, winding journey that’s brought me here.