Walking through the dimly-lit Studio Arts building and down a staircase overtaken by palm leaves, art history senior Malarie Zaunbrecher led the way to a small courtyard on campus full of possible photo backgrounds. From location suggestions to lens preferences, It was clear Zaunbrecher was in her element.
The 21-year-old has been photographing professionally since 2013, but has recently expanded her portfolio beyond the wedding photos and senior portraits with which she started. Since arriving at LSU, she has taken her camera all over the country photographing former American Idol contestant MacKenzie Bourg and social media influencers such as Cameron Dallas and Jacob Sartorius as part of the MAGCON Tour.
The MAGCON Tour — a large-scale meet and greet convention with male internet stars — lasted from December 2015 to halfway through 2016 and also included stops at Houston, Philadelphia, Minneapolis and San Francisco. Zaunbrecher would arrive at the venue early in the morning to prepare for the event, take photos of the men interacting with their fans and would stay up until 1 or 2 a.m. editing photos, she said.
Meanwhile, Zaunbrecher was managing being a full-time student by attending classes Tuesday through Thursday, flying to MAGCON on Friday and then back in on Monday almost every week.
“It was hectic, but it was the most fun I’ve ever had in my life,” Zaunbrecher said. “It was as close to feeling like a celebrity as I think I’m ever going to get. People chase down your cars and find your hotels — some of us had fan pages. It was just wild constantly.”
One particularly wild weekend was the tour stop in San Francisco where Zaunbrecher ended up in the hospital with kidney stones, but the ornate venue where the event was held made up for it, she said.
“It was still the most fun day ever,” Zaunbrecher said.
Zaunbrecher acquired the MAGCON job through her close friends — University alumnus Caleb Phillips and former student Darrick Landreneau who did videography for the first MAGCON Tour in 2014. The three met when Zaunbrecher attended one of singer and former MAGCON member Shawn Mendes’ concerts.
When the second tour came around, Landreneau and Phillips invited Zaunbrecher to the first event to take photos and get a feel for the environment. She ended up enjoying the event, fortunately for her friends who had booked her next event before the first event one came to a close.
“They were like, ‘Sweet, because we already booked your flight to Boston,’” Zaunbrecher said. “And then I was on tour, like, instantly.”
Bourg, a singer and Lafayette native is another one of Zaunbrecher’s notable clients. The two have become close friends, and over the summer she traveled to New York City to shoot Bourg at the Metropolitan Museum of Art was — of her all-time favorite shoots, she said.
While Zaunbrecher loves doing polished, curated studio shoots for designers, she also loves more casual shoots where she takes people out and sees what happens, she said.
Zaunbrecher taught herself to edit on Photoshop through YouTube tutorials. Her editing style has emerged from her personal eye as well as observation but is constantly evolving over time. She tries to avoid “editing trends” where people put the same filter on every photo, she said.
“That makes for an incredible looking feed, but I don’t think you can treat every photo the same way because every photo is different,” Zaunbrecher said.
Zaunbrecher currently works managing the LSU Museum of Art’s social media and as a photographer for Landreneau and Phillips’ local film company, From My Eyes Productions.
In the future, Zaunbrecher wants to combine her passions for photography and art history. She plans to attend graduate school for art history and venture into the film industry, working on research for period pieces.
“Art historians can do set dressing and researching for period movies to make sure everything’s historically accurate,” Zaunbrecher said. “I think that would be really fun.”