Rooted In Dopeness
If you’re reading this, it means that the FYA Man is back with another lit blog. I have a few things to cover, so let’s get into it. First off, I just completed another successful brand shoot on Sunday, August 3rd. Once again, I was teaming up with the very talented J-Cam on the photos, and the lovely ladies Rose, and Drea as the models for the shoot. Initially, there was supposed to be four models, but two of them couldn’t make it due to personal reasons. And even though we were down two models everything actually worked out just fine. I wanted to do another brand shoot for a couple of reasons. One, I’m in the process of updating the website. And two, I wanted to showcase Drea as the lead model for the shoot.
To spice things up, I thought this would be a great opportunity to do another collaboration with my homegirl Andrea @rootsovdopeness for the shoot. Andrea makes custom crochet hats and just about any kind of garment you can think of. And she’s really good at it. So, I reached out to her and asked if she would be interested in doing another collaboration. She was all in. Since I was promoting the Big FYA t-shirts in the shoot, I wanted 3 matching hats. We decided that each hat would be multicolored and could be used interchangeably with the tee’s. This would actually be the third time that Andrea and I have collaborated on a brand shoot, but it had been a minute since the last time we had worked together. As a matter of fact, I’m wearing a custom-made hat by Andrea in the featured photo of my first blog.
I met Andrea at a venue in Berkeley the night before the shoot to pick up my hats. It had been a while since the last time I had seen her in person, so it was good to reconnect. J-Cam also happened to be there as well. We chopped it up for a minute before I headed home. The shoot started at noon on Sunday, and I wanted to make sure that I got plenty of rest. The day of the shoot, Jay and I met a little early and we did a walkthrough of the studio. Even though we knew the layout, it would be the first time that Jay would be taking photos with the multicolored backgrounds in the studio. Drea arrived a short time later and it was time to get to work.
Drea was reppin’ the black, red and yellow hat, while Rose was wearing the blue, red, and gold one. The hats were a perfect match, too. I had Drea and Rose model two looks apiece for each hat. Let’s just say, they slayed it. The shoot went smoothly, and we took a lot of really good pictures. Drea also modeled a couple of other outfits for shoot, and they were equally FYA!!! Overall, this was my sixth brand shoot to date and with each one, I get a little more comfortable. We even finished on time. All in all, the brand shoot was a total success.
In other news, we’re also in the process of creating new AI sticker sets. Each sticker features our IG URL code and some really cool anime art. We include these stickers with each purchase of our merch as souvenirs. We’ve also been tinkering around with AI stuff and it’s really cool. And we’re just scratching the surface in terms of the potential it has to help boost the brand. New merch will be dropping soon, too. Stay tuned.