A Personal Vision
Bulgarian photographer Nikola Borissov is
relishing the chance to be in control and to use his beloved
Hasselblad H4D-40 to create a portfolio that will showcase his
creative skills and win him new clients.
For the past five years Nikola Borissov has been
producing fashion and beauty pictures for some of the world's top
magazines, and his vision and visual panache has helped him to take
a fast track to the top of his profession. However, for someone
with such a strong creative drive, the requirement to follow a
tight brief can become frustrating.
His solution to the problem has been to set up a
series of personal projects that are completely under his own
control. His latest project is a big production job centred on the
old Royal Palace of Vrana, located in Nikola's home city of Sofia
in Bulgaria, and was designed to showcase what he could do - as
well as to create a strong set of pictures that could ultimately
form the nucleus of a new, more representative, personal
portfolio.
"My current portfolio is full of beautiful pictures,
but there is nothing of me in there," he says. "All of the pictures
have been produced to meet a brief and I really wanted to get away
from that and to build a portfolio that was more representative of
me and my personal vision."
As always, Nikola tackled the Palace shoot using his
favoured Hasselblad H4D-40 - a camera that ideally sums up the
high-end approach that he is determined to take. "The quality of
the images straight out of the camera is amazing," he says, "Way
above anything that you could hope to achieve using a 35mm style
DSLR. Its handling of dynamic range is fantastic, and there's
something about the craftsmanship that the camera embodies that
makes it feel good in the hands. I love working with
it."
The big problem facing any photographer wanting to
set up their own shoots is that they are inevitably expensive
production jobs, involving not just models but exotic locations,
cutting edge designer fashions and a back-up team of stylists and
make-up artists. However, during his years in the business, Nikola
has built up a strong network of contacts and he begged favours
from people he knew to create the team he needed.
"Ultimately the shoot showcased the talents of so
many people who are based in Bulgaria," he says. "This included
everyone from the designer whose clothes we used through to the
model, who is one of my oldest friends: we've known each other for
ever. The creative team was also based in Sofia and they all gave
their time for free to help make things happen. I can't thank them
all enough."
The Royal Palace of Vrana itself proved to be an
inspired choice of location and Nikola appreciated the freedom that
the personal nature of the shoot gave him to choose his settings.
"The building had been abandoned for many years," he says, "and is
now starting to be restored to its former splendour. They wanted me
to shoot in the refurbished areas, but I was far more attracted to
the rooms that were still as they were. The feeling of grand decay
created exactly the backdrop to the pictures that I was looking
for."
With his new portfolio coming together nicely,
Nikola is convinced his personal projects will help him to achieve
both creative satisfaction and his long-term career ambitions. "I'm
hoping that it will appeal to a new set of clients as well as my
current ones," he says. "In particular I would love at some stage
to move to New York, and it's crucial that the work I'm showing to
potential clients there really represents me and shows clearly the
direction I want to move in."