Here’s why this creative duo rely on Mac power in their ‘Dollie House’
Find out why husband and wife pair Rizqah and Reshaan from the Dollie House put their faith in Apple’s trusty products to make magic happen.
Creatives come primed with a trained hand, cunning eye, and quick reaction times, often capturing images that move, inspire, and leave viewers in awe. But even the most skilled creative needs a toolbox filled with tech and accessories that bolster their capabilities.
For Rizqah Dollie, image maker and co-founder of the visual anthropology duo the Dollie House, her faith is firmly placed in the efficient, premium, and reliable Apple ecosystem.
For as long as she’s been in the field from her early student days, Rizqah has found herself seamlessly working within the Apple ecosystem,
“Since the beginning, since I started studying, I’ve only ever used a MacBook Pro,” she explains.
After humble beginnings in 2010 as a side hustle – the Dollie House quickly expanded their reach and grew their brand up until 2016 when they became fully registered. “That’s when we left our more fixed employment jobs, and the journey has been interesting,” says Dollie.
Having built their business from the ground up, Rizqah and Reshaan are firm believers in the idea of putting in the work to reap the benefits that grow your skills, “It’s the 10 000 hours rule – you really just have to put in your time, and that’s how you perfect your craft,” she explains. This was a lesson she recalled when a budding student eagerly approached her at Africa Tech South Talks in awe of their work and polished photography.
They’ve built their brand to a point where they can pursue their passion projects more intentionally. The duo now leans toward bookings that fuel them and spark their interest in social justice work and documentary-style projects.
“The business is at a point where we are able to say ‘no’ to work that doesn’t align with what our interests are – which are specifically social justice at the moment and areas around social justice,” explains Rizqah.
As for what their team values in the tech they create magic on, Rizqah praised the compactability as well as the convenient and efficient AirDrop feature of Apple products. It’s some of these star features that set the tech giant apart from competitors.
“AirDrop is highly underrated, especially for large-size files. We work with a lot of high scale and high-definition media, so, nothing is lost – there’s no frame rate lost, there’s no compression, it just moves super-fast, faster than having to plug in and copy something over,” Rizqah adds.
This is a feature that especially comes in handy when their team is on set with their cameras, iPhones or iPads. “Both of our mobile phones are something that we use all the time – they connect to both of our cameras with ‘Canon camera connect’,” shares Rizqah,
“If it’s a ‘stills’ job, a client wants to post immediately, especially if it’s event-based – they want to be able to share high-quality images immediately. So, it helps us connect to all of our devices,” she elaborates.
When on set filming in-depth discussions, the duo also makes use of their iPads to help guide the process. “The iPad we often use for teleprompting when we’re doing interviews or pre-recorded speeches,” shares Rizqah. She goes on to add that after a day on set, they’re seamlessly able to AirDrop all of their content to their iMac when they return to their home base to back up their data and always ensure that they carry a trusty MacBook on the go if needed.
And in a nation riddled with loadshedding, the Dollie pair find solace in the power offered by Apple’s powerful battery capabilities.
“We can export a two-hour documentary without being plugged in. And that’s huge in terms of compression and processing,” Rizqah enthuses.
Relying on Apple tech means you need a team that is dedicated to helping you purchase only the best for your creative task needs. Rizqah explains that not only is the experience of visiting an iStore akin to being a kid in a candy store as a tech enthusiast but the in-store service and assistance have been a guiding light when investing in new devices or needing tech assistance.
“The service is great. The store layout is magnificent and there’s a lot of attention to customer detail, customer relations, the way they engage with you and they’re very open to sharing product details with you – they have vast product knowledge compared to the other retail outlets,” explains Rizqah.
When they consider their growth trajectory over the next five years of their business, the duo is hopeful to continue expanding their documentary work.
“I definitely see us doing more documentaries, we’d love to preserve more of history – we’re doing a lot more of that today. So, essentially, I’d love to see that the work that we create can form part of people’s family archives and that the visuals will be accessible to them so that they can carry this through in the same way that rock art was able to tell stories. We hope that what we document is going to be able to give people the same opportunity and restore some of the history that was lost – through storytelling,” Rizqah muses.
“What I hope to see is that products become more compact for us. Often, we work in compromised environments and what I try to do is ‘the backpack’. This is a term we coined in academia – it’s your backpack you take with you and this backpack could represent a physical backpack or an emotional or psychological backpack. So, we have this backpack and for me, if all the devices could be compressed into this backpack – that would be great,” adds Rizqah.
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