Protégé turns the camera toward someone usually working on the other side of it.
Ollie joined the studio in 2024 as its resident makeup artist, bringing another creative eye to sessions and helping transform concepts into finished looks. Since then, she has increasingly picked up the second camera herself, learning the technical language of photography while developing an approach of her own.
Our connection goes back much further. I’ve known Ollie for most of her life; her parents have been close friends for decades—close enough that family is probably the better word. By coincidence, we even share a birthday.
That history makes Protégé more personal than a conventional portrait session.
These photographs capture Ollie at a transitional point: not as a finished artist, but as someone actively discovering what she wants to create and who she wants to become while creating it.
Mentorship can provide technique, opportunity, criticism and encouragement. What it cannot provide is someone else’s creative voice. That has to develop independently.
Protégé is therefore less about where Ollie began than where she might go next.
For once, the person helping create the image is the person inside it.
