What Qualifies as a Project?

At McKinley Boutique Media, a project is a sustained body of work, shaped by intent, ethics, and time. My projects are built around a question photographs are trying to answer or, the project is part of a cultural commentary.

My projects unfold slowly, shaped by ethics, collaboration, and restraint. Each project exists because the work feels necessary, because something is absent, or flattened elsewhere, and because images can hold space where my language fails.

A Project Has a Reason to Exist

Every project is rooted in a defined purpose.

Some projects exist to make space for bodies rarely seen without distortion. Some exist to examine power dynamics, authorship, or presence.

My Projects Have Their Own Ethics

Each project carries its own ethical framework, defined before the first frame is made.

Consent is ongoing. Pace is intentional. Agency remains with the subject.
Boundaries are not negotiated in the moment, they are established in advance and honoured throughout. Care, aftercare, and review are part of the work, not additions to it.

A Project Unfolds Over Time

A single session can belong to a project.
A project cannot be a single session.

Projects are allowed to breathe, to shift, to teach the photographer how they want to be made. They resist urgency. They resist production schedules. They privilege presence over output.

Some projects take months. Others take years.
They are finished when they are coherent, not when they are convenient.

A Project Produces Work Which Belongs Together

Projects are not portfolios of strong images.
They are bodies of work meant to be read as a whole.

Sequencing matters. Silence matters. Tension matters.
Each image must hold its place among the others, contributing to a larger conversation rather than competing for attention.

If the images cannot speak to one another, the project is not complete.

A Project Is Authored, Even When It Is Collaborative

Projects are created with people, not extracted from them.

Participants are collaborators, not subjects. Their boundaries, decisions, and self-definition shape the work. At the same time, projects remain authored, guided by a clear vision and responsibility to the work itself.

Not every project is public-facing.
Not every project is shared immediately.
Visibility is earned through integrity, not assumed.

How Projects Differ from Services

MBM services are collaborative commissions, created for individuals, athletes, or clients with a defined outcome.

Projects are different.

They are not booked.
They are not transactional.
They do not exist to please.

Projects exist to say something carefully, and to say it well.

A project is defined by duration rather than output.

It involves more than one sitting, unfolds through conversation as much as image-making, and resists completion until its internal logic is clear.

Projects are entered deliberately and concluded deliberately.

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Athlete Profiles

Portrait sessions that attend to physicality, discipline, and identity without relying on action or performance. The focus is the athlete as a person rather than spectacle.

Editorial & Environmental Portraits

Portraits situated within a person’s lived or working environment, built through observation and conversation.

Long-Form Projects

Extended bodies of work developed over time, often through repeated sessions. These projects are consent-driven, collaborative, and authored rather than illustrative.

Next Steps

Some people arrive knowing which kind of session they want. Others arrive with only a question.

If you’re considering a service and want to chat before deciding, a conversation is welcome.