231 ☼ 102 portraits in two days
how constraints sharpen your work
Hi friends,
Last week, a project I’ve been working on with my friends and collaborators Robert Gaal and Sanne Koemeesters officially launched. It’s called Vliegwiel, and it’s a portrait series of 102 Dutch startup founders. All shot in two 10-hour days.
I want to tell you what that was like.
The style I chose was to shoot everything in black and white, in an editorial style. To achieve this our setup was very straightforward:
a white seamless backdrop courtesy of Studio 13, plus some blocks to sit on
my Canon R5 with the 24-70mm
a big vintage continuous barn-door light, plus a handheld bounce and a small Godox V1 flash
Each person got a ten-minute slot, which would include a short three to four minute chat followed by three to four minutes of shooting. If that sounds fast, it is. But fast doesn’t have to mean rushed.
The biggest challenge with a shoot like this isn’t technical, but human. When you’re photographing 50+ people in a single day, many of whom have never done anything like this, the risk is that you fall into a formula and it starts to feel like a conveyer belt. Same angle, same crop, same energy. The work gets flat and impersonal. So the question I kept asking myself was: how do I make person number 47 feel as seen as person number 3?
I’ve been doing this work for 10+ years and it’s always fed by my curiosity about the person in front of my camera. Everyone who walked in front of my camera was building something different. I talked to a founder whose textiles company uses human hair fibers. Another one figured out how to grow hardwood furniture from cells, no trees involved. When you’re learning things like that every ten minutes, it’s hard to go on autopilot.
The other thing that made this work was the environment. Robert and our co-producer Sanne Koemeesters handled all the community management (and more). They did an amazing job curating and scheduling the group and made people feel at home. When you walk into a room with a photographer, two assistants, a BTS photographer, a BTS videographer, and two producer-interviewers, that can be intimidating. Especially if you’re not used to being in front of a camera. But nearly everyone walked in comfortable and open, and I think that’s because they felt seen and appreciated before I ever picked up my camera.
What surprised me most was how genuinely lovely everyone was. Not that I expected otherwise, but there was a warmth and eagerness to connect that I didn’t anticipate at this scale. Between sessions, founders were excitedly meeting each other, swapping stories, finding overlaps. It felt less like a photo shoot and more like a community forming in real time.
If you’ve been following Process for a while, you might see the DNA of many of my other Community Documentary projects in this one, and one project in particular. Last year I did something similar with The Best Medicine: 101 portraits of people from Amsterdam’s English-language comedy community. That shoot was all full-body and expression. Comedians are used to performing, so my job was mostly to prompt and document.
Vliegwiel was different. These founders aren’t performers. They’re builders. So I had to take on more of the creative responsibility to find their story in the frame rather than waiting for them to give it to me. I’m very excited about where I was able to push these portraits with more varied and adventurous compositions and crops. Each portrait is its own thing because each person brought a different energy, and I tried to respond to that instinctively rather than forcing everyone into the same mold.
A word about Robert, because this project doesn’t exist without him. He’s a serial entrepreneur who is currently building Klime, an analytics startup focused on customer intelligence. But what drives him beyond his own company is a deep commitment to the Dutch startup community. He uses his position and voice to advocate for policy changes that would help the whole sector.
Vliegwiel the broader organization is his, and this Vliegwiel portraits project evolved out of one of our breakfast conversations originally. Robert was looking for a way to put a human face on the people who are building companies, creating jobs, and facing real hurdles that better policy could help address. He was also there when I launched The Best Medicine and these things made a lot of sense together.
Aside from Vliegwiel’s online presence there will also be a limited edition zine that’s coming out of this project will featuring all 102 portraits, an essay by Robert, and a set of concrete policy proposals based on the stories from founders and builders. I’m proud to be part of it and thankful to some wonderful partners who made it all possible, including Mollie, Ingen Housz, Remote, Gemeente Amsterdam, Sendcloud, and Klime.
The launch event is happening in late March or early April at an incredible dream of a venue in Amsterdam. More details on that soon.
If there’s a takeaway for your own work, it might be this:
constraints can be a beautiful motivation to push yourself
"Two days, 102 people, ten-minute slots" reads like a a recipe for generic work. But the pressure forced me to be present, to listen fast, to trust my instincts. Some of my favorite portraits from the past year came out of those two days. Like this one.
If this letter did something for you, I’d really appreciate it if you shared it with a friend. ❤️
Your Turn — Giveaway
Is there a constraint you’ve been fighting against that you could flip into a motivator or knife sharpener? Some examples:
Can’t afford color film → Shoot black and white and focus on light over color
Want to take portraits but don’t know anyone where you live → Focus on just your own street and make a project about your neighbors
Drop your constraint in the comments, no need to add a positive version of it (but feel free to!) and I will respond to all of them with some ideas.
One commenter gets a mystery goodie bag from my studio with a photo books, some test prints or film, whatever I pull from the drawer that week.
Talk soon,
Wesley
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This Week’s Camera + Tools
Camera: Canon EOS R5 + Canon RF 24-70 mm f/2.8 L IS USM
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My constraints are my over thinking and exhaustion from it.
Amazing job wow! On my side I would say that for now I can't afford a lens for landscapes so I try to see travel photography only through a portrait lens, it gives me interesting angles to explore!