Jamie Nelson and Danielle Brown are a photographer / art director duo you see. They met back in sunny California, and had an inkling they were kindred spirits from day one, when Jamie met Danielle as her boyfriend's ex. And even before then, they both wanted to be doctors. Through a gradual turning towards image production, Danielle ended up majoring in film at Santa Barbara City College, and Jamie in photography at Brooks Institute of Photography, Santa Barbara. Both agreed that they would rather follow their calling than play it safe with assisting, regardless of short term costs or disapproval.

While her classmates went off to work for more established photographers to make ends meet, Jamie set herself up in New York and became a successful freelance photographer. "I worked damn hard for four years of college, and I didn't want to stop that to assist. I knew I wanted to be shooting."

Danielle soon flew over from the west and the two made the transition from student collaborators to a professional creative team. Danielle explains that "since our first shoot it became obvious what our different roles would be. Jamie sees things in one way and I in another and we complement each other that way."

They also work with a regular stylist, hair stylist and make-up artist. "If we don't have much of a budget, I retouch myself, but if we do, our make-up artist's husband is a retoucher - we like to keep it in the family." They finish each other's sentences to explain what they do. How it's all about helping each other, how the fashion world can be bitchy, the commercial jobs demeaning, but how that must all be understood and accepted in order to move ahead with what they want to do - how it's crucial to be able to produce images that are marketable as well as beautiful.

Not that to be commercial is their priority. Jamie originally wanted to be an art photographer, but was told at college that she must focus on something she can sell to make a living. She chose that something to be fashion, but a creative element remains constant in her work - the frequent introduction of animals into shoots, the unique arrangement of colour, the shocking poses that appear to mock as well as serve the fashion modus operandi. The films that Danielle and Jamie create together have a Super8 feel all the way - little music videos that have nothing to do with selling, and all to do with fun self-expression - they usually involve the girls dancing, all dressed up, cute and ironic. Not that Jamie doesn't respect the skill needed to produce strong visual images; "the Terry Richardson aesthetic is really strong at the moment, and we know friends who take snapshots of drunken girls and call it art or fashion. But the truth is, that anyone can do this, and when the trends change in two, five, or ten years, what are they going to do? We want to create something that we can continue to develop and master as trends shift."