My “Alice” Moment: Framing the Future at Dallas College
By David Loi
DALLAS, TX — Last year, David Loi Studios was tapped by Dallas College to anchor their “Future-Self” campaign. We found ourselves in the middle of a bustling campus, realizing that we weren’t just there to shoot special portraits of people for a school ad campaign – we were there to collapse time and show everyone what it would feel like to get a good education.
Like Alice in Wonderland, I prepared myself for a warren of adventures as we conceptualized how a future with education would look like. What depth and spectrum of colors did this Wonderland hold for Dallas College’s wonderful audience?
The assignment, coordinated with the sharp minds at Alpha Business Images (ABI), and our team, was deceptively simple in its premise: show the students of Dallas College not just as they are—earnest, hardworking, often balancing three lives at once—but as they are destined to be. We wanted to distill the spirit of an institution that serves as the bedrock for so many North Texas families. But we wanted to avoid the clichés of the “inspirational” brochure. We wanted something that felt like a haunting, beautiful encounter with one’s own potential.
The concept centered on a series of photographs where a student looks into a mirror and sees their future self looking back. An aspiring engineer sees a professional in a hard hat; a culinary student sees a chef in a pristine white coat; an adult learner, returning to the classroom after decades in the workforce, finally sees themselves in a graduation gown.
In the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, I like to say that good portrait photography is a contact sport (like good literature), and this project demanded more than just a trained eye. It demanded an almost surgical approach to lighting and composition.
The “Future-Self” images are puzzles in themselves. Each final image is a composite of multiple “plates”—individual shots taken from the exact same tripod position—stitched together in post-production to create a seamless reality.
To get it right, we had to play a high-stakes game of geometry. We used Cheetah Stand heavy-duty booms to suspend the mirrors, but the mirror is a double-edged sword: it reflects the future, but it also reflects every light, cable, and stray person in the room. We spent hours “flagging” the scene—using black curtains and boards to kill unwanted reflections—ensuring that the only thing the camera saw was the narrative we were building.
There is a unique pressure when a client is on set watching the “tethered” capture in real-time. As the images popped up on the monitor, clients could see the raw outputs. Our audience weren’t just seeing a technical feat; they were seeing their mission statement rendered in high definition. In the smallest steps—the tilt of a chin, the straightening of a collar—we were showing that the future isn’t some distant, unreachable country. It is right here, in the reflection, waiting to be stepped into.
We featured over a dozen stories in this collection. Each one felt like a short film. We worked with culinary magnates in the making and engineers who were still mastering their first equations. The technical difficulty of the mirror-image shots required a deep knowledge of positioning; if the angle was off by even a fraction of an inch, the “future self” wouldn’t align with the “present self,” and the illusion would shatter.
But that challenge is exactly why the David Loi Studios team exists. We don’t just show up to document; we show up to build.
The Future-Self campaign ultimately became a testament to why so many students trust Dallas College until graduation. It’s about the proximity of the dream. Often, in the grind of midterms and commutes, students lose sight of why they started. Our goal was to create a visual reminder that the person they want to become is already looking back at them, urging them to keep going.
Standing there on set, surrounded by booms and flags and the hum of the city, I realized that these weren’t just portraits for a campaign. They were mirrors held up to the community. And when you look closely at the eyes of the students we photographed, you realize they aren’t just seeing a chef or an engineer. They are seeing a version of themselves that is finally, undeniably, real.
Behind the Scenes: Institutional Photography Services in Dallas, TX
