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Through Emilynn’s Lens
Interview & Words Phadria Prendergast
LA based photographer and director Emilynn Rose is usually found behind the lens and has had her work grace the glossy covers of the biggest platforms in media. She talks mentorship, being independent at 19 and why women are powerful when they come together.
“I was a really bad troublemaker. when I was in school,” she laughs, recalling how her journey in photography began. “I was a really big party animal. So my mom was just like,’ can we find you a hobby? We just need you to settle down,’” to which Emilynn had replied that she loved taking pictures. At the time, she had been taking pictures on her iPhone one. She laughs again as she explains. “My mom was like, ‘OK, like, let's get you a camera.’” Growing up in Inglewood, California and coming from a family that didn’t have much, Emilynn remains grateful to her mother who saved up to buy her very first camera, which essentially changed her life forever. “The moment I held it, I knew it was meant to be. I became the girl with the camera. I was the girl in high school, taking pictures of everyone. I was taking pictures for the yearbook club at the time and then I was also the Fashion Club president.” She reminisces on the days of playing dress up with her friends, and taking pictures. More laughter. “I got really influenced by America's Next Top Model. I was just like, oh my gosh. This is exactly what I want to do. I want to be Nigel Barker.” I laugh. I’m sure she wasn’t the only one.
After high school, her mother gave her an ultimatum. Her first option was to take photography seriously and her second was college. “I'm not a college kind of girl. I’m a full-on creative.” She decided straightaway that she was going to pursue photography and she was going to move out. She saved two thousand dollars and did just that, resolving in heart that she was just going to make it work.
Nineteen year old Emilynn moved to Hollywood and gave her entire life to photography. “I wasn't making anything at the time, but I was just shooting, shooting, shooting. Everything I did from Monday through Sunday was just photography, editing, networking emails. I was just cold emailing everyone. At twenty one, she moved into her own two-story loft, and it was here her first studio was born. “My dream at the time was to have a studio underneath and my bedroom upstairs. So that's how the whole studio thing started. I started having photoshoots at my house, we started doing hair and makeup at my house, and then I even had a rooftop.” Her second, official studio came through a client who was relocating their office. Emilynn jumped at the opportunity, partnering with them however, later taking the bold move to buy them out aged just twenty three years old. Not wanting to lose sight of her passion for photography, her assistant at the time, Mandy, who was now her business partner, took on the business side of things. Now aged twenty six and just three years down the line, Emilynn owns four studios and three roof tops. “I call my photography my eight year old child and then my studio is like my two and a half year old toddler,” she laughs.
For Emilynn, her team is the most important to her. “Especially when you're doing fashion photography, you have to be in sync with your team. One, it's trust because everyone has this vision of what they want the project or the shoot to be like, but you need a team to just be like, ‘hey, this is the concept,’ then we all know what we're doing and I can step back slowly because I'm not a micromanager. I just love for my shoots to go the way I plan them.”
“I do love having a full on female team,” she admits. “When I was starting in photography, usually I was the only girl and my mentor was also a male photographer, so it was a lot of masculinity. And it's not saying that men aren't great, they are. I just see this industry with everything going on. And I'm like, well, let's give more women chances. Let's just give them the opportunity to be at the top. Men have been at the top of the fashion industry for such a long time. The power that we're all seeing [through] working together - you can create such miraculous things through the power of women.”
Emilynn credits her mentor Luis Trujillo, who not only became a male figure in her life, but also someone she could look up to and follow. “He's just an amazing person - someone who truly believed in me. Growing up, her father was absent and though she had an incredible mother, she worked full-time. Encouragement wasn’t something she had been familiar with. “He was just like, ‘you're going to be something’ and hearing that at 16, was like wow. If it wasn't for him, like, I don't think I would be here today, because he really pushed me. He gave me the opportunity and the vision to get to where I am. I tell everyone I would not be here, I owe him my life, you know.”
Emilynn also encourages those around her to find a mentor. “I have assistants under me and I always tell them, I want more than an assistant. I need an apprentice, because what me and Luis have, it's just so beautiful, because for us to be where we are ten years later, we were growing together. Like I said, he really helped me get out of being in trouble and just really knowing what I was, which is so rare.”