Student by day, professional photographer by night

Evan Robinson went to six Greek formals within a week, but not because he is a member of multiple Greek organizations on campus. Rather, he is a professional photographer.

Robinson, a senior in the College, has been running a photo business since junior year of high school. He is known on campus as the go-to photographer for shooting the numerous Greek formals every season. His photos capture moments from the night, but he lends the original images an edge by adding streaks of light.

“Formal’s a time when a lot of people try and take photos, but it’s usually at night and people have been drinking and it doesn’t always look so good,” Robinson said. “People were really surprised when they saw streaks of light going through and everyone smiling and having a good time.”

However, shooting photos of other students at formal is only a very small portion of Robinson’s business. He has shot a wide range of subjects, including National Hockey League players, Lupe Fiasco, fashion models and kids from his old high school back home in Pasadena, Calif. One of his photos was even used by the Canadian government in a tourism advertisement.

Closer to campus, Robinson is working with Wharton MBAs to shoot pictures for an upcoming business venture and HubBub Coffee, a coffee truck on 38th Street.

“I think there are a lot of people that are taking pictures, [and] a lot of people are good at taking photos, but what differentiates them from another is their ability to see what you were trying to do and try to capture that, or try to challenge that and take it to another level and I think [Evan] does that,” Drew Crockett, founder of Hub Bub Coffee and 2005 College graduate said.

The first shot

Robinson says he came to photography in a “roundabout” way, and that he didn’t begin until he was a sophomore in high school. He originally planned to go to music school, having played classical guitar since the age of four.

The starting point for a change in plans came from a basketball game Robinson was playing in.

“I reached out to try and steal a pass, and when I looked down my hand, my pinkie was facing completely sideways. My hand was broken beyond belief,” Robinson said.

After undergoing hand surgery, Robinson could not pick up the guitar for a long time. In an effort to give him something else to do, a friend of the family lent him a camera, since that didn’t require an intact pinkie. For the first several weeks, Robinson, who was still recovering from the surgery and taking medication, barely touched the camera.

One day, though, he decided to take a look. He looked up the camera on Google and got a bit of a shock as to just what the friend had given him so nonchalantly.

“All of a sudden I realized this guy had lent me five grand in camera gear,” he said. “And I was like okay, I better learn how to use this, I’m never going to touch a camera this nice again for the rest of my life.”

From there, Robinson dug in, reading all he could about photography and taking photos when he wasn’t reading about it.

Shooting professionally

In Robinson’s junior year of high school, he became the photo editor of his high school paper and yearbook, taking photos for both publications. He also started his own photo business, taking photos of prom and senior portraits for classmates.

“I decided I would charge three times what [the current photographer] did for senior portraits, start a website, and within a couple of weeks I had about 30 or 40 percent of his business,” Robinson said with some amusement. “The school was getting angry calls and emails because this guy was furious that he lost business for the first time in years.”

“He was livid but there was a big demand because nobody else was doing stuff that actually looked at all creative,” he added.

“Evan would go and take his camera and take pictures for fun and his pictures were so much better than whoever they hired,” said Jennifer DeVoll, director of the Pasadena Community Foundation, whose son attended Robinson’s high school. “He emerged as the go-to photographer.”

Robinson believes he was able to do a better job because he tried to take each photo in a way that reflected the person he was shooting and their tastes as opposed to the standard portraits against a neutral background.

“They were a little different, fun, not so cookie-cutter,” DeVoll said of the images.

His success may also come in part from how he approaches each shoot. Before going in, Robinson says he researches “every interview this person gave out, every photo a major magazine has taken” so that he is “incredibly prepared”. This way the client can be more comfortable and Robinson can get a shot that he may not have otherwise gotten.

The preparation even goes down to personal details such as if a client likes a certain type of food or a certain band. Robinson may play music by their favorite band to make them comfortable, since not everyone is comfortable in front of a camera, he explained.

“Everyone has something in common. Some band that you both like. Some type of food that you mention in an interview,” he said. “You just need one ounce of connection to make them feel comfortable.”

Back on campus though, Robinson is a fixture at Penn’s formals.

“[We] love his work. It’s super awesome and original and everyone waits around after formal for his photos to come out because they are always spectacular,” College sophomore and Chi Omega member Katy Villanueva said in an email.

Villanueva added that they have hired Robinson for all of their formals.

“When I was a freshman I never saw a photographer at formal,” Robinson said. “Now at this point in time, I would walk in [to a formal] and people would run up to me and they’d know who I was.”

But his work goes beyond Penn’s formals and Penn’s campus. While attending those six formals this past semester, he fit in a client trip in New York. Robinson’s work requires travel, but he also spends a month each year traveling and doing photography. Last year, he traveled to Paris.

“The way I photographed coming back from Paris was different,” he noted. The fashion, the style there and his work with a French model for a client all influenced the way he took his photographs.

Now, Robinson is traveling through Germany for a month. As a rising senior, the pressure is on to find a career or a calling, but Robinson does not seem pressured.

“We’ll see where I am,” he said of his future plans. “I’ll always be doing something in some form of my life with photography.”

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