The following is the first of a series of interviews launched for Fetish Portraiture photography week in Project Educate 2008.

~MrSyn is a fetish and concert photographer who really portrays the lifestyles through his work. Clean, edgy, and funky, his photographs are eye catching and stylish.

Basics and Background

Name and location?
Patryk Pigeon – Montreal Quebec Canada

How long have you been practicing photography?
6 years

Do you have any formal training in the arts?
Not at all – The only training if I can call it a training - is that practice a lot

What cameras are your personal must-haves on a shoot?
I love my new Nikon D300 – I also like to shoot with my 50m & 10-20m for two complete different styles

How did you come to embrace the genres you prefer to work in?
I love music… so concert photography first attracted me and then i've tried to shoot models and fell in love with it

Art and sexuality

What initially drew you to fetish-related subject in art?
Anything dark and out of the ordinary

How do you personally define fetish fine art versus pornographic imagery? How do you feel about the controversy overlaid on this style of photography?
There is a thin line that is easy to cross I think. But if you don't portray any sexual act in your pictures I don't see why it could be call porno. I see fetish photography as style (clothing and habits) so you can do fetish without porn and that's very easy.

Do you find influence from other mediums?
Yes of course. I love to watch what the other photographers do. I try not to copy.

What kind of in-camera manipulations do you perform to glam up your portraits?
Sometime the effect of my 10-20mm lens is enough but from time to time I love to play with photoshop brushes and colours.

What suggestions would you give other photographers about harnessing light to create a desired mood in their imagery?
I've been trying a lot of colours before I decided to use mainly white light. The results in both case can be very nice. Experimentation will take you where you want to go with your art.

Words of wisdom

What advice do you have for beginning photographers?
Practice and if you don't plan on studying photography, please make some photographer friends and ask a lot of questions!

What advice would you give to professional photographers in a rut?
Be yourself!

What advice would you, at present, give yourself 5 years ago if you could reach back in time?
Buy yourself a reflex moron!!

What do you hope people find in your art? Or, what do you hope they definitely don't find in it?
I do these kind of pictures for me at first. But what I like the most is when different peoples have different visions of my work. Then I think i've done right. If it's to easy to put a story or a style then I think i miss the spot.

What inspires you most? How do you translate that to your fetish (or nude, or expressive, or other types of glamorous portrait) photography?
Women... they are such inspirations! Also the challenge to do stuff with a model that none of us ever thought of doing one day.

Ego

Who is your favorite deviantART photographer and why?
This guy rocks! ~tvds

What is your favorite image of your own, so far? Why?

I love Mistress V – she's got to be one of the greatest fetish models in Montreal and I always love to work with her! But there are so many pictures i could have picked.

Is fetish a lifestyle for you or an expressive art form? Why?
It's not a lifestyle for me. I'm more of a voyeur like most photographer. I dare any photographer to say they are not voyeurs lol

Favorite ice cream flavor?
coffee

If you could be any other person, who would it be and why?
Alice Cooper – he's a survivor and he had the chance to make music for a living and he's still doing it a 59 years old!

Do you have your own fetish or infatuation, and if so does it influence your concept brainstorming?
I wont go into details but my biggest fetish is anything that is not conventional in our society. Anything that most people think is taboo. But my biggest fetish is women. So women inspired me in my work!

Anything else you'd like to say?
Thanks for your questions! Visit my website [link]


#thevaginamafia is the dAmn headquarters for fetish portraiture week. Be sure to drop by this week to meet the artists interviewed in this series, myself, and many other photographers of varied types here on deviantART!