Bill Gekas’ Portraits of His Daughter in the Style of Dutch Master Paintings.

I recently had the good fortune of speaking to the final year students of Design Centre Enmore alongside three other seriously awesome people. What an honour. It was a really fun evening where each of us got to share our experience and the windy, sometimes convoluted roads we’ve all taken to claim our place in the industry today. I spoke about my somewhat unconventional career path before starting Yellowtrace, concluding my talk with top lessons learned along the way.

One of those lessons is the importance of having a passion project, especially for people in the creative industry. Some might call it a hobby, but I like to call it a “project” as it suggests a certain level of commitment a hobby doesn’t necessarily reflect. Once you find something you love doing, it’s important to prioritise it, as we all know how easy it is to put paid work and life’s endless commitments ahead of your own ideas. Although it’s not always going to be easy, taking the time to give your ideas the chance to grow and develop will result in your own personal growth. And who knows, it may even lead to discovering what you’re really made of – and once you do, pretty much nothing can stop you. Anyway! Forgive me, I got a little bit carried away as I didn’t mean for this intro to become a mini lecture. The reason I bring this up today is that this post is a perfect example of a passion project taking it’s creator places they never previously thought possible.

Enter Bill Gekas. Bill is an award-winning portrait photographer from Melbourne. He is entirely self taught having practised the art of photography and constantly refined his style since the mid 90s. Since 2010, Bill’s has been creating a series of portraits of his beautiful five-year-old daughter Athena, inspired by Dutch masters’ classic paintings. What was originally intended to be just a few personal portraits, became an ongoing art-project for Bill and his family. Mastering the intricacies of studio lighting, combined with a huge amount of preparation painstakingly undertaken by the photographer and his wife in their spare time, has allowed Bill to capture these incredible images.

It’s important to note during the time of creating these images, Bill didn’t work as a full time photographer – he part-owns and successfully runs another business in a completely unrelated industry.

This project now has a worldwide following, countless published interviews, a whole bunch of coveted art prizes from around the world, and a huge influx of requests for commissioned work, workshops, exhibitions and other projects. Not a bad outcome for a passion project, huh? Bloody good, I say, and so well deserved.

To see more of Mr Gekas’ work, please visit his website and his blog.

[All photos © Bill Gekas, courtesy of the artist.]