Meet Photographer Kiana Toossi

Meet 17 year old Los Angeles Photographer, Kiana Toossi.

Potential future Parsons School of Design student, she hopes to combine her interests of photography, drawing, graphic design, and music to create a career in the New York area.

How did you become interested in photography?

This sounds kind of lame, but I was at my sister’s soccer game and I saw one of the parents there with one of those massive white lenses, you know the ones that I carry around now when I’m shooting sports for the yearbook, and I just thought it was amazing. Later, I got the pictures from the game and they looked so professional and high quality and I knew I wanted to do this with my life.

What are your favorite things to photograph?

I like to shoot a very wide range. I do take the headshots for school plays, but for my personal photography I mostly shoot portraits just because it's what I'm most comfortable with. Making connections with my models is really important and I think it makes a difference in the quality of the images. I also enjoy shooting serene landscape and architecture.

Do you plan to go into a photo-based career?

I think I do. I just got into Parsons School of Design, part of The New School, and I'd be studying communication design and photography there. I would also be in New York which is such a great outlet for internships and careers. Photography is what I love; it's my passion so I would love to have a career that is photo-based. I think being at Parsons and getting to explore different projects would also help me discover what I really like to photograph and what I'm best at.

How did you learn about photography?

I taught myself the basics from reading little photography pamphlets, but my first class was at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. My teacher had been a professional photographer for thirty years, but where I learned the most about photography is from my high school photography teacher Rick Steil. He taught me all the “technical stuff.” Even though I'm in AP photo now, every time I take a picture I still think about everything that he taught me when I first took his class.

Who are your biggest inspirations and why?

Well, this is quite the question. Everywhere I look there are certain people and things that inspire me, especially my friends! There's a wide range of photographers I would consider to be my biggest inspirations but I really love Richard Avedon, famous for his celebrity portraits and fashion editorials, and I'm really inspired by the emotion conveyed in his photos. For more contemporary artists I really like Ryan McGinley. He does a lot of nude portraits which are very cool and kind of controversial, but it's very simple and includes more studio work which I’ve learned a lot about in the last two years. I also really enjoy Tyler Shields’s work. He creates these dramatic and fascinating scenes that tell a story and I think that’s really the ultimate goal in photography.

How do you see yourself as an artist in the future?

Have you seen the movie The Intern with Anne Hathaway? She basically started this online fashion site on her own in LA. It’s in this massive, restored building that lets in tons of beautiful, natural light. The coworkers surrounding her are all young, intelligent, and innovative people. I don't know exactly what I want to do but that's why I want to study communication design at Parsons, that way I could do advertising or marketing and incorporate my photography into that. So I'm not sure yet, but something in that general field. So basically, I’d love to do what Anne Hathaway did in the movie, whether it’s a fashion site or an online magazine. I’d just really enjoy putting my different interests in one project and making a living off of it.

How are your pictures displayed?

Right now I have my website, kiana2c.com, so I post most of my photography on that. I also did the school photo show so I've been mounting all my pictures for that and I've built up kind of a portfolio. I also use this app called Artifact Uprising to print some of my photos and it’s a sort of flip-through portfolio on the go.

What is something you have learned from photography?

Since I was the photo editor for yearbook I had to take and edit thousands of pictures which has definitely taught me to be more organized. I also realized that when taking pictures, especially with different models and props, you have to learn to be innovative and learn to work around the issues that you might come across.

What advice would you give to an aspiring photographer?

Well I’m bit of an aspiring photographer myself, but take a camera with you everywhere you go. That's what I did for about a year or two. You never know what there's going to be around you that will inspire you. Environmental portraits, one of my favorite types of portraits, capture people in their natural environments, what they do in their everyday lives. Most of the time they don’t even know I’m taking their picture. Photography’s also great for saving memories. Though I'm not much a “professional” myself yet, people who want to get into photography need to sell themselves to people. Offer help, make a portfolio, make a website, show people what you have to offer.