The 9 year old’s Chinese photographer capturing candid portraits of the stars
A behind the scenes video of 9- year-old Zou Chengyu who is posing for a series of pictures with Aqua man star Jason was shared on social media. The actor is given explicit directions by the young Chinese photographer who appears unaffected by the actor’s massive six-foot-four-inch frame and asks him to pose in several ways.
Zou is a professional pseudonym Shengsheng and nickname for herself admitted in a phone conversation that she was really anxious about speaking in English. I asked him to make bigger movements and gestures because he was quite big.
Over the course of her four-year photographic career the fourth-grader from Shanghai has taken pictures of over a dozen prominent people including some of the largest and most powerful personalities in Asia.
Her pictures of rapper Lay Zhang, tennis great Li Na and actor Tony Leung among others have helped her gain over 500,000 followers and over 10 million likes on Douyin China’s answer of TikTok. Her father Zou Yupeng is a photographer and he often shares her work with his millions of followers on social media.
It all began when she was four years old and received a point-and-shoot camera. Speaking with his daughter Shengsheng’s father told he saw his daughter’s ability to start discussions wherever she went and pushed her to pursue street photography.
She started by approaching people and requesting permission to snap their photo. when Sheng sheng was five years old she claimed to have seen a stunning young lady in a Shanghai clothes store one day. The young photographer had no idea that she was going to take an image of the well-known Taiwanese cellist-turned-actress Ouyang Nana.
She was very sweet and polite and she even kneeled so we were practically the same height. Shengsheng said thatI knew I wanted to be like her in the futureeven though I didn’t know who she was at the time.
Some social media users have questioned how a 9-year-old could have picture sessions with some of Asia’s top stars which is maybe not unexpected. Shengsheng’s father however is adamant that her clientele is unrelated to him or her family.
Some doubters on the internet have also questioned if she heavily changes or filters her images after they are taken. Sheng sheng said that she never uses filters even though she claimed that her father assists with little changes like eliminating hair strands or changing the color tone.
Shengsheng typically uses analog film cameras for shooting, in contrast to many of her professional counterparts. She expressed her admiration for their lightweight nature and straightforward design in contrast to the majority of professional photographers’ current digital single-lens reflex or DSLRcameras.
Sheng sheng is explosive career is not showing any signs of abating She has shot more than 15,000 shots in the last year alone and her next goal is to capture singer-songwriter Yuqin. She is now concentrating on the here and now but eventually she hopes to work as a full-time portrait photographer.
