My friend Rehman asked me to take his author photos for his new book, A Jinn in the Family. After reading the premise, I knew a standard headshot wouldn’t cut it.

Rehman had a clear idea about the colors he wanted, something that matched the book’s ominous mood. My goal was to translate that feeling into a portrait. We didn’t want a smile for the camera. We wanted that sense of something lurking just out of frame.

The book is about a psychologist who returns to Zanzibar and has to confront the supernatural stories he thought were just superstition. It’s a story about family, memory, and the things that linger in the silence.

So we shot with a specific, muted color palette, using shadows and light to create a quiet tension. I was trying to capture that moment from his book—the feeling of a modern man realizing the ancient world he comes from is very real, and it’s not letting go.

It was about making a portrait that feels like a quiet, unsettling whisper.