TOGETHER LOVES: Morgane Cazaubon at Petite Visuals

Introducing the every so lovely and talented Morgane of Petite Visuals Morgane is a regular contributor to Together Journal and we love seeing her work featured across our channels, its always so full of love and light. We chat to Morgane about her journey to date, what she loves about her job and what inspires her creatively.

My name is Morgane (pronounce here as Morgan), and my business is Petite Visuals

Tell us about what you do and how it came about:

I have the insane chance to take pictures for a living. I mean, it’s quite crazy to be able to live off a passion. I capture moments, emotions through my camera.

Since as long as I can remember, I have always been obsessed with watching movies, cinema, advertising, photography and looking through old family albums (not even necessarily my family either! I would browse flea markets and look for old pictures in shoe boxes).

At 14 years old, I left my home to go to a special school which offered cinema and photography classes. After I graduated, I was told it wouldn’t be possible to make a living by making movies… so I studied the closest thing I thought would be financially acceptable: advertising and marketing. I studied in France, and then Scotland where I also decided to do some creative art studies on the side. I worked in marketing strategy, communications and web design. Then after working in web and marketing for a fashion brand (assisting art directors, and photographers) I decided to try out photography myself. I thought well, maybe I could do it too.

So here I am, in Australia, travelling and living off my passion for photography and moving pictures.

What brand of camera do you use and what are your favourite tools and lenses? 

I use a Sony a7riii and a Sony a7iii. I love the Canon cameras for the softness and colours of the images, but Sony is the ideal for doing pictures and movies (which I switch to and from a lot during weddings doing photo and video).

I also shoot on analog / film cameras. I have a Pentax F1000 and a Hanimex point and shoot.

My go to lenses are: 35mm, 24mm and 55mm . I like playing around with neon lights, tilt shifts and prisms too.

What makes you and your work and style unique:

That’s a hard one. In the field of wedding photography you have to both be unique, stand out but also offer something approachable enough that people will connect with. It’s a fine line… I do a lot of personal projects where I explore more risky techniques, try out new things, new compositions and go a bit wild; and when I shoot weddings for couples, I would implement some of these, but still keep an approachable style that focuses solely on the couples’ story. It’s their wedding, their images, so it has to reflect them, not just my ‘style’.

In the end I am not sure what my style is… but I do like this quote: “it is not what it looks like, but what it feels like”. I like seeing the quirky details, the more documentary style photos.

Any career or photography dreams or aspirations you would like to share:

For a long time I wanted to be a feminist version of Don Draper. Nowadays, I would love being in the shoes of Greg Williams (https://www.instagram.com/gregwilliamsphotography/ ) for a day or Julien Mignot ( https://www.instagram.com/julien_mignot/ ). Both of my passions colliding: portraits and cinema. Their talent to capture people and human nature at celebrity level is breathtaking. I would love to travel around to capture portraits and learn more about of the world of ‘pictures’.

What the best thing about your job:

Watching people. Documenting. Documenting them, documenting situations and documenting love. I reckon we need more proof of love nowadays.

After the fact actually taking pictures, I love that the job takes me places I would have never been otherwise.

Tell us what you are looking forward to in the future: 

I am looking forward to grow my skills, learn more, and expand my business to photograph people in love worldwide.

Rules or words you live by… 

My set of rules change a lot… That’s why they’re called rules right?! But “milk was a bad idea”(Will Farell in Anchorman) has been the most constant and useful reminder in my life.

Any artists, musicians, writers etc who inspire or influence your work? 

Photographers and cinematographers like Raymond Depardon and Roger Deakins have had a big influence on me. Then you have the whole cinema of Spielberg as I was growing up. And Orson Wells during my studies. It’s like looking at a puzzle: a bit of a lot of things, people that influence me or inspire me. The visual comedy of artists like Norman Rockwell, or the painting composition of Hopper… books like Kafka’s, while listening to a bit of Otis Brown! 

Since moving to Australia I have really enjoyed discovering more indigenous artists too; and meeting artists like Si Moore and Sophie Bayly (Bayly & Moore) have influenced and helped me grow significantly creatively. 

See more work from Morgane at her Instagram account here or her website here