Her name is Juj Winn and she is a photographer based in Kansas City, Missouri, USA. "I create photos and animated images for web and print media for brands and editorials. I love creating content that is bright, colorful and has a touch of good cheer. I want to make the world a little more colorful and try to do that with every single photo."
Juj was born with a camera in her hand and has been taking photographs for as long as she can remember, but she graduated from college with a degree in painting and drawing. "After I graduated, I did a lot of graphic design and illustration and started using photography as a tool for that. Over time, I gradually put the pencils and paints aside and devoted myself full-time to photography."
How has your personal style evolved over the years?
Regarding your very special, colorful image editing: Can you explain your style to us?
“My style is an extension of my design and painting background,” says Juj.
"I would like to say that I do not 'take' pictures, but 'make' them.
And it's true. She tends to create things that are very clean and graphic, with a lot of attention to detail. The editing makes the image walk a fine line between photography and illustration. Some true masterpieces if you ask me. "Coming up with new concepts for brands and bringing them to life is one of my favorite things to do. I love my job and I feel so lucky to have it."
There's certainly a lot going on in her life at the same time. But she seems to have developed a system to keep everything under control. When asked how she keeps up to date with new ideas and projects, she replied: "Ideas keep coming to mind, and when they come, I write them down on a little post-it note and stick it on the wall in my studio. I have more than enough ideas on my wall and I'll probably never be able to implement them all."
Her own system makes her laugh a little. Maybe because it ends up being more chaotic than she had imagined! But there are also times when she just isn't in the mood to shoot something from her list of ideas, so Juj sometimes spends the day thinking up new and inventive ideas. "I don't work on a recurring theme, but I do reuse my props a lot, so some things keep cropping up." And of course, when I'm working on a particular image, I'll try lots of different variations of it to find the one that works best, so there are different images from that shoot, but they're still similar."
Looking at her Instagram feed, it's hard to miss how often the colour pink appears in her work. And why not? Here at Pickmotion, we think it's a great colour too! When asked about this, Juj replied: "I like pink - I think it's a great neutral and I'm glad it's making a comeback - but it's not my favourite colour. I don't actually have any pink in my house. I tend to gravitate towards colours from nature - blues, greens and oranges. My house is very earthy and my wardrobe is mostly grey and black."
Juj feels inspired by literally everything: the fruit at her local market, the rocks and leaves and feathers she finds on one of her daily walks, her friends, her family, strange characters at the hardware store, and ads she sees on TV. "And there are way too many artists that inspire me to name (or even remember!) them all. In school, I was very inspired by the Dadaists, Surrealists, and Pop artists, and that hasn't changed. Wayne Thiebaud will forever and ever be my favorite, and I love Robert Jackson's work. I think Adam Voorhees is a genius - his work is so clever and clean and simple, but it hits the mark, and of course all the people I find on Pinterest or Instagram."
Juj first joined Instagram in 2011, when she was just using it as a place to share observations and photos with friends, family, and people she knew from Flickr. But the longer she was on the platform, the more she realized the value of sharing some of her commercial work, until she eventually reached the point where that was pretty much all she shared. "When I scroll through my feed, my past posts seem much more authentic, and I really miss that. I've been thinking a lot about shifting things in that direction lately. I'm tired of keeping a tightly curated feed, and I'm less concerned about whether something 'fits' and more concerned about whether it speaks to me in the moment. I think we overthink what we post too often because we're worried about numbers, followers, and likes, and I like those things too, but it seems unhealthy to let that influence what I post."
She loves following certain people on Instagram. She's a bit of an introvert herself, so it's not that easy for her to reach out to other people for collaborations, although she'd love to do more of that in the future! She especially enjoys seeing what @paloma_rincon_ , @jessicavwalsh , @lellopepper and @thefeedfeed.vegan are up to. "There are so many talented people on Instagram and I feel like every time I open the app, there's someone new to discover."
