Q&A PART 1

Hello loves! Some time ago I made a Q&A on my IG stories which I said I’d answer on the blog. I separated them into parts and here is part 1:

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How can you travel so much and how do you handle constant travelling?

The reason we travel so much is because we can, we can mostly work from everywhere and our job is also about traveling. Half of the traveling we do is for work – shootings, events, press trips, etc etc. The other half of the trips is for content, we call them “content trips” where we go somewhere to shoot new content for our accounts, for us to get inspired and to share different views to our audience. We invest a lot of the money we earn with the jobs to be able to travel and shoot content all over the world, now that we can do it we take advantage of it :)

We handle it very well, we always have some days in between at home in Berlin where we wash, re-pack our bags and have some free time, meeting friends and getting new energy.

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Who cooks better, you or him?

I would say I’m the better cook, I love to experiment in the kitchen, create my own recipes and trying out new things. Klemens has two signature dishes though – tacos and pasta bolognese which are amazing, then he has full power in the kitchen.

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What do you owe to your parents?

I owe my parents everything! They gave me my life <3 My parents have always been my inspiration and have motivated, pushed and supported me to do whatever I wanted to do.  They have always been adventurous and met in Australia. When I was 9 years old they decided to move to Mallorca because they were tired of the bad weather in Sweden, it took 3 months from the plan until we moved and they opened a restaurant, it was very hard to make it and they were struggling the first years, but they kept working hard and in the end they made it and they still live there. They brought me and my sister on long trips all over the world to discover new things, they worked hard to give us good educations and a home full of love. My sister is the best sister ever and we are like best friends. I’m forever thankful to have them as family.

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If you could give your 20-year old self an advice, what would it be?

My advice would be to take it easy, enjoy the most of it and don’t worry too much. At that age you don’t have to have everything figured out and should take the time to experiment and have fun!

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How did you start your career?

We started this Instagram/blog career after 2015 after I attended a blog awards as a guest with my sister, she won tickets through another blogger. We went there and I got so inspired by everyone and thought “wow I want to do this too!” The day after I did research on their blogs, I saw that a lot of them work together with their boyfriend so I asked Klemens if he wanted to do it and he was on it.

We were both freelancers at the time, he was drumming at the time and I was shooting for different projects, we had some money saved and decided to just quit everything and go all in with the blog and Instagram. It was very hard in the beginning, we were experimenting a lot (which is a good thing), it didn’t move forward at all and I was many times about to give up, I thought “why are we spending all this time working on something that doesn’t work?” Klemens convinced me to continue and one day we figured out our photo style which we loved and felt really comfortable with and then it just said boom. We started growing on Instagram and people recognised us. It took about a year until we started getting some jobs and now it’s been thee years and we are so happy that we didn’t give up in the beginning.

I used to dress very colourful in the past, which is the complete opposite of now, it changed over the years and I finally found my style, I think maybe I thought I had to dress up extra for the photos but in the end it’s all about your personal style, so when I shot what I was actually wearing during the days when I didn’t dress up – that’s when it worked out. (I kind of miss the old Mikuta though, haha)

It is a lot of hard work and it takes up all your time, but with a positive thinking and by continuing even though it feels impossible you can achieve anything. We are still fighting for it and have many days when we feel confused and don’t know what we’re doing. But we just have to continue, be creative and keep the motivation alive. It’s important to look at what you have achieved and not what you haven’t achieved, you also shouldn’t compare yourself with others, I know its hard to not do that, but we’re all special in our own way! <3

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Did you have any jobs before doing this?

Yes, I’ve always been freelancing and was doing a little bit of everything. I was doing make-up and styling for commercials and movies for some years (one of them was Cloud Atlas with Tom Hanks, I assisted his make up artists for some weeks, hung out in their van every day and was so starstrucked!) When I moved to Berlin I started shooting more and shot portfolios for different model agencies, fashion editorials for online magazines and look books and small campaigns for clothing labels.

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Do you think studying photography is necessary to become a good photographer?

Absolutely not, it’s all about learning and practicing. You need to have the interest and will and you can teach yourself anything by practicing or even over the internet nowadays. All you need to know is how to use the camera and then shoot away, find your style and way to shoot, how to play with the light and how to edit the pictures in post production. Klemens has for example never studied anything with photography, he gave me a camera for my birthday and started playing with it himself, watched a lot of youtube videos to understand how it works and now he takes beautiful photos and works as a photographer full time. When it comes to work, every good photographer could have become a well booked photographer with our without a school, the key is to have the contacts and to be seen, the “best photographer” in the world might never have done a job because no one knows he exists.

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When will your bracelets be back in stock? Do you ship to Italy?

We will have a new product coming up in next week which I’m very excited about and right now we are working on an upgrade of the silver bangles which we hope will be done in the near future. Yes we ship worldwide :)

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How many shots does you take before you know you have a winner? And what do you try to capture in every photograph?

We have three different scenarios –

1: we shoot and take 20 photos and we know we have it.

2: we shoot and we take 200 photos, we say whatever we must have it now without being sure.

3: we shoot, we take 200 photos, feel like it doesn’t work out and after we notice that one of the first photo was the one.

It always depends on the mood and how we feel. Sometimes when we take photos we think they are terrible but then some days later when we decide to look at them again we find them amazing and one of our favourites. So it always depends, we judge depending on our mood or expectations, and to be honest, it’s also a lot about my hair ;) (I’m very picky with my hair)

What we try to capture in every photograph is the right moment, the right feeling and mood. Sometimes when we go though the photos on the camera I see one and I directly know it’s the one we will be using, it can be exactly the same photo as the previous one but it can have a small little detail that gives the right mood we want to deliver. 

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What hair products do you use whilst travelling? Do you bring your own specials?

I aways use the same hair products while at home and travelling, I just have them in different sizes. I always use Aussie, the volume shampoo, the Aussie Miracle 3 minutes intensive mask and their miracle oil which I use several times a day. For the curls I use the curve creative curl wand from Ghd, I’m not very happy with it though, I still haven’t figured out how it works and it leaves uneven curls. Please let me know if you know any great curlers <3

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What was your dream job when you were a kid?

I think the first job I ever thought about when I was really young was to become a hairdresser, probably because my aunt is one and I liked to see when she cut peoples hair. When I was 10 years old I started drawing in fashion magazines and pretended I was retouching them and spoke with my imaginary clients on the phone. Since then I knew I wanted to work with fashion, photography and advertising.

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Next Q&A coming shortly <3

Lots of love xx Mikuta