In 2016, Singapore fashion, travel and lifestyle blogger Melissa C. Koh had about 182,000 Instagram followers, and her boyfriend James Chen took most of the photos on her feed. He did the heavy lifting, sometimes literally, and she handled the creative side and the posing.
James called himself her “Insta-boyfriend”: the partner behind the DSLR, waiting out the poses until she had the shot she wanted.
Who is the Insta-boyfriend behind Melissa C. Koh’s photos?
James Chen and Melissa first met in church when they were around their tweens. They were close friends and study buddies before they started dating. In 2016 he had been her full-time photographer for about three months. Melissa paid him for the work. Before that he had been a finance analyst, and he was then starting a new job in branding and marketing.
He said at the time that he had once wondered why everything needed to be photographed. Over the following months, he said, her DSLR came to feel like part of his hand.
How did he learn to take such good pictures?
He started with no idea how to use a DSLR. It began on a trip to Hong Kong in 2015, when Melissa asked him to help with her outfit-of-the-day shots. She posted one of his photos from that trip, and someone commented on its poor composition.
After that, she coached him. The couple went through Pinterest and Instagram feeds every day. She would flag the images she liked so he could see the style she wanted. One lesson he passed on was to hold the camera at waist level for full-length shots. He found this showed body proportions most accurately, so the head didn’t look oversized and the legs didn’t look shortened.
Her advice in 2016 for anyone hoping to turn a reluctant partner into a photographer was to avoid pressuring him. She suggested getting him interested in photography first by letting him shoot what he enjoyed, such as sports or wildlife. Once he knew the camera, any subject would be easier. On a shoot, she recommended giving clear directions on where to stand and what should be in the frame.
Not all of the pressure was on him, either. Professional photographers covered most of her work trips, and she would tell him to shoot freely and leave the editing to her.
What was it really like on their shoots?
His favourite photo was taken in Bali, with Melissa sitting in the open boot of a van. To get it, the couple had their driver empty the boot, carried the hotel-room comforter out to line it, and added props that included a plate of croissants. The villa staff watched, puzzled.
Once everything was set up, they found the light was coming from the wrong direction. The van had to make a seven-point turn in a tight space, which took about five minutes. Space was limited and they were using a 50mm lens, so James climbed a mound of dirt to get the frame.
On a good day, he said, one click was enough. On bad days, when she felt her face wasn’t right, he could take around 50 frames without getting one she’d post. He would try to convince her the shots were fine, and she admitted she rarely changed her mind. She also kept everything, including blurry frames. He had deleted all the music on his phone to make room for about 9.84GB of her pictures.
His hardest shoot was in a remote part of Tuas, scheduled to last about 40 minutes. He needed the toilet badly, couldn’t concentrate and finally found a bush. He joked that the photos got much better afterwards.
Where does the cheerleading come in?
While fooling around one day, Melissa taught him the cheerleader’s lift, which puts her up on his shoulders. In Japan, he had held her around the waist for about five minutes so she could photograph a flower field from above without stepping on the blooms. From then on, the shoulder lift became their way of getting overhead flat-lay shots.
Asked who worked harder, Melissa named James: she said he would sweat heavily through shoots without complaining. He said she took on the riskier poses. In Bali she posed on the edge of a three-storey building until security guards called her down, and she came down straight away.
Both gave the same reason boyfriends make good photographers. He said boyfriends take the nicest pictures of their girlfriends. She added that they know which angles work and care about the subject.
Did Melissa C. Koh and James Chen get married?
Yes. James proposed in September 2016 at the church where the two first met, and Melissa said yes. They married in August 2017 in a daytime church wedding, followed by a reception for family and friends.