Scholarship Focus – Michael Cardiello
The Scholarship Class quickly turned into my full time job. I would shoot all day and then go directly home and research photo shoots.
 It was a bit of shock at first scrambling to catch up. Aside from photo assisting I hadn’t shot a photo in a studio since art school. Previous to the class I had been shooting with 90’s era 35mm rangefinders. In the beginning I spent a lot of hours just figuring out what each modifier could do. Midway through the scholarship everything started to click. I quit worrying so much about the lights and was able to direct my focus back to the talent. That’s when the fun started to happen and I was able to really experiment with fun projects.
It was inspiring just being around the studio everyday meeting and watching fellow photographers. I really took note at how hard some of the photographers worked. Some of the photo talks that Luke set up where amazing. I was inspired by the generosity and openness of all the professionals that came to speak to us. That doesn’t happen everyday. It’s a kind of dream world for an emerging photographer.
At one crit, Christina Force said, “Shoot the personal work you want to make, not what you think you should make†which really resonated with me.
Another great piece of advice from the Scholarship was “Either charge the full amount or do it for free and learn when to say no†I immediately started practising this and it really worked for me.
It was totally amazing to be part of a community of photographers in the Scholarship. Everyone seemed to bring something unique to the table; Inspiration, questions, advice, and friendship would be some of the benefits.
The biggest excitement was that by the end of the studio class I had secured a couple of larger for me commercial jobs which was a direct result of some of the personal photos I had taken at Kingsize.
After the Scholarship I spent time in Montana and have recently moved to New York where I’ve been working at Milk Studios. My immediate goals would be to break into the New York market and to assist some new influential film crews and photographers. I also want to continue bridging my newfound studio lighting skills with location work. Longer term goals would include getting into larger commercial film productions and taking my photography to the next level with bigger budgets and crazier sets.
