As a normal, male human being (arguably anyway), my relationship to reality TV has been close to nonexistent over the years.  Sure I watched a couple early seasons of Real World when I was a kid, but I feel it was as much to do with the lack of choices back in the day (I didn’t have the internet to keep me company) as it was with an actual interest in watching people spurred into arguments or uncomfortable boundary pushing for the purpose of entertainment.

As a photographer, I will admit that I enjoy shows like Project Runway (and Next Top Model) because I do enjoy watching creative people actually create. Having dabbled in fashion photography myself a little bit, I’m always interested to see the industry from the inside out, plus Mrs Squeeze loves this stuff, so it’s much easier to get her to watch TV with me.

Enter season 13 of Project Runway.  Okay wait, let me take a couple steps back.  Years ago, I met Korina at an annual Portland Fashion Show founded and run by Erin Cry (now a cohort of mine at the ELK Collective) and her friend Elizabeth Mollo, called Doom Town.  Korina was going to school at the time, involved in the show, and I’d been asked to photograph said show.  A little while later, Korina asked me to shoot her senior collection.  Being that I’d just started to wade into photography in a serious way, it was an awesome collaboration and experience (hopefully for the both of us and the awesome ladies who modeled).  Korina moved from Portland to Brooklyn to pursue her fashion career, and wouldn’t you know it, while shooting with our friend Erin this last week (more on this shoot coming to a blog near you soon), she told me that Korina was a contestant this season!  Pretty awesome, and may I say that those of us back in Portland are very excited for her.  Get it girl.

Project Runway – Season 13 is currently running Thursdays at 9pm on Lifetime.  For those of us who don’t have cable, or are reading from outside of the states, you can stream full episodes on mylifetime.com HERE.  You can also vote for your favorite designer (uh-ahem Korina!) on the site too, or you can post your favorite designer via that omnipresent and all mighty hashtag followed by “designer” and the name, like #designerkorina on Twitter.

It is interesting to see how they paint certain people, and with a bit of personal insight, I now know that there are certain liberties taken to help build a bit of drama and some may say, cattiness.  Hey, it makes for good TV I guess, and while I’m only an episode in, I am already hooked.

All images here are from the “Hot Love” Collection by Korina Emmerich 2008

Hair/MU Stylist: Aura Rose Steiner

Models: Katherine Tabor, Laurie Craft, Amanda Ziebell, Aura Rose Steiner

Photos by and © of: Tyson Robichaud

Bizarre to think that this shoot was 6 years ago, and now Korina is on TV with that lady from Modern Family.  Tim Gunn, Heidi Klum, Nina Garcia and Zac Posen, you guys are pretty cool as well.  It’s a fun show to watch, and knowing I’ve got a friend to back, I’m very excited to see it unfold this season.  So, let’s go Korina, make it work!  Good luck to all the designers this season.  Mrs Squeeze and I look forward to watching you all push things to the next level.

Go support Korina and find her on Instagram HERE, and Twitter HERE.  While you’re at it, you can find me on Facebook, Twitter and now Instagram too!

That will be all the piggybacking of a far more famous friend I’ll be doing today, so thank you for the read.  We’ll get back to our regularly scheduled programing soon, but in the mean time, have a watch, it’s been very entertaining so far.

Happy shooting,

Tyson