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A celebration story worth watching.
A portrait as refined as the milestone it celebrated. Zada's graduation from Howard University, told with class and intention.
About the project
Zada had a vision, and so did I. All it took was the right time, the right space, and Washington D.C. to bring it to life.
It started with Pinterest frames — a mood, a feeling, a direction. From there, conversations over the phone shaped the vision into something real: the dress, the tone, whether her friends would be part of the story. Every detail was decided with intention before a single frame was shot. What came out the other side wasn't just a shoot — it was a fully realized creative vision, built from the ground up between two people who knew exactly what they wanted it to be.
Behind the story
The rain had other plans — and so did the dress. Neither were accounted for in the original vision, and both threatened the tone and feel we'd carefully built together. The conditions we had weren't the conditions we planned for.
The timeline we had in mind didn't survive first contact. The dress was larger than expected, and before we could even settle into a plan, the rain arrived — and it arrived heavy. Right at the meeting point, before a single shot was taken, the conditions had already shifted everything we'd prepared for.
We waited an hour and a half. Terrain I hadn't shot before, a dress that needed managing, and a mood that the weather was doing its best to dampen.
But I made a decision in that moment — we weren't going home with anything less than something phenomenal. Because once you take the sun out of the equation, Washington D.C. gives you something else entirely. The city lights. The glow. The kind of atmosphere you can't manufacture. The rain didn't ruin the shoot — it handed us a different canvas. And we painted on it.
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