drag the windows and stickers · click anywhere for sparkles · the booth really prints
Jacob Yu:3
PHOTOGRAPHER · ART DIRECTION
RESEARCHER-PRACTITIONER
Hi! I take pictures of people being someone else for a minute.
I came up through production design, so I still think like one. Give me one prop, one colour and one wrong detail, and I'll build the rest of the scene around it.
- BASEDUK. Cambridge for now, and I'll probably relocate once the MPhil finishes.
- TRAVELLondon costs you nothing in travel or accommodation. Elsewhere in the UK, just ask.
- IN CHINAWuhan
- NOWMPhil Film & Screen Studies, University of Cambridge
- BEFOREBA Film & Television, First Class Honours, Edinburgh College of Art
Also in the toolbox
- Fashion. Styling and art direction. I took a short course in fashion design, so I can pattern cut and sew at a basic level on set, which is useful when a garment needs fixing five minutes before we shoot.
- Modelling. I've worked on the other side of the lens, mostly niche-styled shoots.
- Japanese. Conversational, around N4.
Poke around the folders. Every photo here I shot and graded myself.
i'm still not sure which one is me.
Concert
available for hiremostly available lightSmall rooms, loud bands, terrible lighting. My favourite conditions.
I usually work without flash, because a room already has a colour and I'd rather keep it than flatten it. If flash is the look you're after, I'm happy to shoot that way too. What I'm actually good at is finding the quiet second in the middle of a loud set, the breath right before the chorus lands.
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Gigs, EPKs, tour photos. I work fast and I stay out of your way.
Creative Photography
staged portraitsfx makeupcollabs welcomePortraits built with the model, not aimed at them. Costume, colour, and a scene we invent together and then take far too seriously.
⚠ FAKE BLOOD AHEAD
Being upfront: body horror is literally my research area, so when I reach for a wound it isn't for shock. I want the picture to land in your stomach before your brain catches up. Also SFX makeup is extremely fun and I will not be apologising for that part.
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♡ LET'S SHOOT SOMETHING
If you have a look, a face, a wardrobe or an idea you've been sitting on, I'd genuinely love to collaborate. These shoots are free, because I do them to make the picture. DM me on Instagram or email me with a couple of photos of yourself and what you're imagining.
Modelling
in front of the lensopen to collabsI spend a fair bit of time on the other side of the camera, usually as someone slightly wrong: a blood-soaked sailor uniform, a military jacket in a white room, a wig in a colour that doesn't exist.
Being directed is how I learned to direct. I know how long a pose can hold, and exactly how useless "just relax" is.
A lot of it comes out of the films I study. The two on Arthur's Seat are after All About Lily Chou-Chou: a kid in a field with headphones on, who only feels real inside the thing he's a fan of. It's the Perfect Blue question again, with me in the frame this time.
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Figure work
Black and white. Blurred until you click.
♡ MODEL FOR YOU
I'd love to model for photographers, designers and brands, especially anything with a strong look or an odd idea. Email or DM me.
Photographer credits are being added. All images used with permission.
Portrait Experiments
ongoing2026–The folder where I break my own habits.
It started from idol portraiture, which is built entirely on looking flawless, so I went the other way. One loaded prop, a ghosting double exposure, and a grade that pulls the glow straight back out. The red spider lily does most of the work: it already means goodbye, so I don't have to say anything else.
▶ NEXT
Do the doubling in camera instead of in post. An effect you can undo with a slider always feels a little like cheating.
There's also a batch of looser, more stream-of-consciousness work, heavier on practical SFX, including short films. That's moving in here as I dig it out.
Research
the academic tabit's short, promiseI'm a researcher-practitioner, which mostly means I refuse to pick one. I write and I shoot, and they aren't two separate jobs.
What I work on
- Body horror as a postcolonial mode
- Affect theory and embodied spectatorship
- East Asian cult cinema
- Idol bands, rock authenticity, and how female desire keeps getting written off as the less serious kind
My undergraduate dissertation was on Satoshi Kon's Perfect Blue, read through Lacan, Freud and Metz. A film about a performer losing track of which version of herself is the real one. You can probably see why the rest of this site looks the way it does.
Research and shooting are two ways of asking the same question: how does a body on screen make meaning and sensation at the same time?
Film & Art Direction
Shorts where I ran production design and art direction. This is the part of filmmaking I love most: deciding what a world is actually made of.
Ash Beverly
My graduation mockumentary. I didn't just write a fictional dark-fiction author, I built his entire universe: his books, his press, his rooms, the objects he'd own, the paper trail a real writer leaves behind. The film is a portrait of someone who never existed, assembled out of things that do.
YUME
Experimental short.
Moongrains
Art director.
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Stills and a modelling folder are still being filed. I'll fill these in as I scan them.
Leave me a note
Anything at all. A hello, an idea, a band that needs photos, or just a kaomoji. Only I can read these.
Say hi
Bands, artists, editorial, fashion, and anyone who wants something slightly odd made on purpose.
- EMAILjacobyu1126@gmail.com
- ACADEMICly411@cam.ac.uk
- INSTAGRAM@jacobyu_26
- BASEDUK
✿ FASHION
I'd love to work with brands, and I'm flexible about how. Shooting the campaign, appearing in it, or making the scrappy behind-the-scenes video that goes out with the collection. Happy to start small.
★ K-POP & K-BAND
I also shoot K-pop and K-band, in the standard fansite style, at fansigns and shows. Commissions open for that too, just ask.
Research or academic collaboration goes to the Cambridge address. Shoots, collabs and everything else, Gmail or Instagram.
© 2026 Jacob Yu (Liming Yu)