Life & Work with Çoul Crenshaw

Today we’d like to introduce you to Çoul Crenshaw.

Hi Çoul, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
My journey as a street fashion photographer started in 2012. I was attending East Carolina University as Mass Communication major and happened to be one of a few students that got fully dressed to class every day. Then, I was also really considering being a wardrobe stylist. Through others on campus, I met my now best friend, Phocus, a beauty and fashion photographer and owner of Artisan Photography.

I started as his stylist and photography assistant. At one point, he told me, if I was to better help him in producing better photos, then I would need to become a better photographer on my own. He helped me get my first professional camera, a Nikon D70s and from there, I practiced daily by shooting everything. The main incentive to taking on photography for me was that I was blogging at that time and thereby needed photos of myself more than anything. COULSTYLE.com is the name of my blog. Phocus exposed me to the basics of photography and from there, I was on the self-portrait path and fashion photography path.

Like most photographers of course, I was shooting leaves, flowers and buildings, but I found a blog called The Sartorialist. That was a street fashion travel blog featuring images of random creatively and well-dressed people on the streets of mainly the fashion capital cities. That blog was the star of my aspirations. I started shooting people on campus. The one’s who were well dressed. That continued until I graduated in 2013.

By then, my blog was growing really well, I was taking street photos of people in any city I visited. Downtown Raleigh was my main source of content. I will forever advocate for street fashion photos as the best and easiest way to grow a blog. People tend to not mind sharing the well-taken fashion photos of them and their family from your website when all they had to do was just be themselves and continue about their business. Note, between 2014-2017. I was very consistent some years. Then some years, I was not consistent at all posting randomly. However, when I asked people to let me take photos of them, that would always drive my site views and subscribers back up. I got really good at this in 2017-2019.

In that time, I had been to NY Men’s Fashion Week twice, had outfits featured on a few blogs like Vogue and met so many kindred spirits. By the time I went to fashion week, I was really yearning to be amongst people who love fashion like I do. We are so far and few between in North Carolina. The dissatisfaction of not seeing enough of “my kind” also awoke a new yearning to see images taken in my home state that looks like they could have been produced in any fashion hub and featured in any magazine. It would take me about three more years to start producing work of comparable quality.

Today, I am a street fashion and content photographer, among many things. I’ve shot events, produced a full day of fashion events for Women’s Empowerment, photographed several local influencers, hosted a year-long fashion photography meetup series. My specialty is in helping other influencers produce high-quality images and self-portrait photography. My aim is to make each digital post I produce look like the images in editorial fashion magazines millennials grew up with.

I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
All of struggles along the way were in the realm of mind frame and spirituality. My college years were definitely a redefining of what my spiritual boundaries were. At that time, I was staunch religious. Even though I was and very, very open minded. My mind frame was and still is. Just cause it’s okay and good for you doesn’t mean it’s okay for me. However, in that time, I realized some of my own standards was unreasonable to the human experience and kept me from doing what I really wanted to which is connect with and understand people. That translated to how I approached fashion and fashion photography. Questions like how the feminine can a guy be and still have a masculine appeal? How do you respect and honor someone’s faith while asking them or myself something that falls outside that understanding for a photo?

Other struggles were typical money problems, I think this probably typical of most people. The most impactful struggle is how to enroll people in what I’m trying to do and learning if and when I can trust people to be there for me. Still working on that one. What I can say about that is that not knowing if I can depend on people has driven me to learn to do a lot of things. I think most self-portrait photographers will probably lean this way.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I am a street fashion, natural light and content photographer. I think I’m mostly known for my editorial style content and personal style.

As a photographer, having a better-than-average personal style and creative eye is what helps me stand out. I can be trusted to deliver great quality fashion images because I frequently show that I do it for myself. Thats one of the great things about being a self-portrait photographer. I get to practice a lot on myself. The result is I can produce the same or better quality content or images in less time when I photograph other people.

So maybe we end on discussing what matters most to you and why?
I have never had such a fervent drive to produce fashion editorial content like I do now. So what is most important to me is that in every photo production, a clear story can be told. I think that really a part of the emotional appeal, or the “aw” of a photo when you can relate to it when you can create a world in your mind based on the photo in front of you.

Contact Info:

• Email: iamcoulstyle@coulstyle.com
• Website: COULSTYLE.COM
• Instagram: instagram.com/coulstyle

Image Credits
All images we shot by me COULSTYLE names of models are in the file name. Orange and green photo: Mallory B. Richardson. Blue brown photo: Adrian yellow purple photos: Stratton Parr brown and white photos: Hunter Howell