THE LAB: DECOY – A portrait session with a twist

I watched this amazing video produced by Canon Australia that asked 6 portrait photographers to capture the same male subject, but the twist was they gave him 6 different back stories.

What resulted were 6 different photographs that brought out the personality of each adopted persona. The man portrayed a psychic, someone who saved a life, an ex-con, a self-made millionaire, a recovering alcoholic, and a fisherman.

The Canon “Decoy” project proved a point that it’s not just the camera, but it’s the photographer who creates their vision with the camera. Interestingly enough, I believe that even if the man told the photographers the same back story each photographer would still have made a different portrait.

It proves that photography is a creative, artistic, and documentary art form that captures the essence of a moment, a person, nature, an abstract, or whatever is in front of the photographers lens.

This was certainly a really great marketing idea by Canon.

Rest of the portraits captured as screenshots: