Charleston photography

An Interview with Audrey: What It’s Like to Be Photographed by Amy

Q: If someone had never seen Amy’s photography before, how would you describe her style?

Audrey: I think the easiest way to describe it is that Amy makes portraits feel like they’re about the person, rather than just being a nice picture of them. She actually let me go through and pick my favorite images of hers for this article! 

She does fine-art portraiture, but I wouldn't say everything she does is “painterly” or heavily edited. That’s just one part of what she can do. Her work can be classic and elegant, editorial, dramatic, whimsical, cinematic, or completely fantastical.

What ties it all together is that everything feels very intentional. The lighting, the posing, the expression, the wardrobe, the setting—it all feels like it belongs there.

And she really knows how to make somebody look like themselves, but somehow elevated.

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Q: You actually booked Amy for a birthday session. What were you looking for?

Audrey: Honestly? I wanted to celebrate myself.

It was my birthday, and I didn't want one of those sessions where you show up and suddenly you're being Photoshopped into somebody you're not. I wasn't looking for Amy to make me twenty years younger or change my face or turn me into some completely different person.

I just wanted to have fun and have really good photographs of me.

And that's basically how the whole thing started.

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Q: So how did you end up doing a Clueless-inspired session?

Audrey: Because apparently Amy and I can't just have a normal idea and leave it alone. 😂

We started with the idea of doing something fun and editorial for my birthday, and it evolved into Clueless. And honestly, it was perfect.

It gave us a whole visual world to play in—the clothes, the attitude, the colors, the poses—but it was still me. It wasn't cosplay. It was more like taking the visual language of Clueless and creating our own editorial version of it.

It was playful and feminine and a little ridiculous in the best possible way.

And I had SO much fun.

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Q: Was there a lot of Photoshop involved?

Audrey: Not in the way people might assume when they hear “fine-art photographer.”

That's actually one of the things I liked about it.

Amy didn't need to completely reconstruct me to make the photographs interesting. The concept, styling, lighting, posing, and expression were doing a lot of the work.

Obviously she retouches the images—it's still professional photography—but I didn't feel like I was being erased and replaced with some perfected version of myself.

I still looked like me.

Just…my Clueless editorial birthday version of me. 😂

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Q: What do you think makes Amy's work different from a typical portrait session?

Audrey: I think she treats the portrait as an artwork from the beginning.

She's not just thinking, “Okay, stand here, smile, turn your head.”

She's thinking about the entire image.

What's the story? What's the mood? What does the light need to do? How should I pose? What am I communicating? What should the finished photograph feel like?

And that can lead to very different kinds of photographs.

You could have a beautiful, simple studio portrait with gorgeous light. You could have something that looks like an editorial magazine image. Or you could end up in some completely imagined fantasy world.

But they still feel like they're coming from the same photographer.

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Q: So would you say you have to be interested in fantasy or elaborate Photoshop to enjoy being photographed by Amy?

Audrey: Absolutely not.

That's actually what I think people misunderstand about her work.

You don't have to want a fantasy portrait. You don't have to want a composite. You don't have to want to look like you've stepped into a painting.

I didn't.

I wanted a fun birthday portrait session.

And I got photographs that were artistic, polished, and completely different from what I could have taken with my phone or had done at a typical portrait studio.

Amy can take an idea as simple as “I want to celebrate myself” and turn it into something that feels special without making it complicated just for the sake of being complicated.

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Q: If you had to sum up Amy's photography in one sentence, what would you say?

Audrey:

Amy doesn't photograph you as an afterthought—she makes you the subject of something extraordinary.

And sometimes that means you're a beautiful woman in a timeless portrait.

Sometimes you're a character in a fantasy.

And sometimes you're Cher Horowitz celebrating your birthday.

Honestly, I think that's the fun of it.

Explore some of Amy's work below!