10 Questions with Andre Rucker
Andre Rucker
Featured Artist
About andre:
Andre is a Philadelphia based photographer incorporating animation, 3D printing and CGI, along with traditional photography, to give new perspective to ordinary objects. Andre has made images for clients such as Runner's World Magazine, Anthropologie, Merck, Nair and more.
What would you describe your style/niche as? How did you find it?
I would describe my style as conceptual still life photography. I've just always liked making things and playing around with objects so I eventually realized that not everyone shares that desire so I embraced it as something that could make my work stand out.
What gets you up in the morning? inspires you to keep creating?
I think that most things in everyday life are pretty interesting so even just a trip to the grocery store can trigger a bunch of ideas for photos. It's less of a decision to keep creating, it's more like I have ideas constantly overflowing and I have to do something with them.
Biggest struggle/teaching moment on your journey - to staying a creative rather than giving up on your dream
While I was a photo assistant for years and years it really felt like I was never going to transition into being an actual photographer. It felt like even when I was shooting for my portfolio, no one ever saw it or cared about what I was working on. I love making images though, so I just kept doing that and kind of stopped trying to make traditional "commercially viable" work and just made images that I would personally really want to look at. It sounds like a Disney Channel movie but I had to learn how to be myself.
If you could go back 10 years and tell yourself one piece of advice, what would it be?
If I could go back 10 years and give myself advice I would just tell myself to shoot what I want to shoot and not to be concerned about what I think other people want from me.
What do you do to reset or take a step back and look at the bigger picture? I.e. hobbies
Skateboarding. Or even just watching skateboarding is really relaxing and comforting to me for some reason.
I think why skateboarding relaxes me is because I've been doing it for 20 years so it's been there for the majority of my life.
I also think that it's like any other sport in the way that it forces you to concentrate on that one activity for the time that you're doing it. This makes other stressors fade away for the moment because your full attention and energy is going to this one skateboard trick. Pops skatepark is pretty close to my house so I'll usually go there for an hour or two, before heading to my studio if I have time, a couple days a week.
When do you do your best work? 6 a.m.? Midnight? Noon?
I don't think that time really plays a big role for me. It's just kind of happening constantly day and night.
How much time do you spend on the creative vs. business side of your work?
I think that they go hand in hand but I probably spend 20-30% of my time making actual imagery, whether it's photos and videos for instragram or client work. Then most of my time is spent responding to emails, making estimates, keeping up general accounting, planning shoots, retouching images, making props etc
How much production/pre-production goes into your work?
Most of my personal work doesn't require a ton of production which allows me to produce a lot of it, fairly quickly. For my client work, those jobs can start to invovle a lot more production than most people think. People assume that I'm shooting everything by myself just because the set might be small or there aren't any models but there can be a lot of moving pieces even just with the product itself.
What projects have you been working on lately?
Lately, I've been getting into a lot of CGI with my personal projects and then I have a new national project that I'm actually art directing and shooting which has been taking up all of my time but it's looking pretty exciting so far.
Who is your dream client to work with?
I'm not sure what my dream client would be, probably Target. They've done some really great advertising over the years and the creative direction is usually really strong. I imagine the budget wouldn't be too shabby either.