David Suh once played both roles in his own skit: the photographer coaching a nervous client, and the client herself, dressed in a poofy gown and flower crown, transforming from shy to confident diva on camera. He had no one else to shoot that week, so he became his own case study. The video went viral, forcing him to build an actual business around what had been, until then, a side hustle photographing college graduates.

David is a portrait photographer and self-described “posing king” who has built his career on the idea that a good photo starts with feeling safe in your own body. He runs DASU Studios in Los Angeles, coaching clients, 95% of them women, through the shift from stiff and self-conscious to camera-ready and confident.

His TikTok following has grown to 4.4 million, with another 1.9 million on Instagram, built on posing tutorials that double as commentary on body image and self-worth. This year, though, David has scaled back client bookings and shifted most of his revenue toward brand partnerships while he builds toward something closer to a media company than a single photographer’s studio.

“The thing that makes me really passionate and wake up with passion every day is to help people who feel disconnected with their bodies, who feel disconnected with their identities,” David says. That mission, more than any platform metric, is what he says drives every decision about what he teaches for free, what he charges for, and which brands he lets stand next to his name.

From Grad Photos to a Skit in a Flower Crown

Before TikTok, David spent years building a photography business offline. While studying graphic design at UC Davis, he charged $100 for a two- to three-hour session photographing fellow students’ graduation portraits. “Maybe I can afford to eat out a little bit here,” he says of that early rate.

The bigger shift came from a mentor. He joined an online educational community run by portrait photographer Sue Bryce, who taught him to charge for outcomes rather than deliverables. “I had to learn to value my skill beyond just the photo aspect,” he says, describing how he began thinking about what season of life a client was in rather than pricing a shoot like a JPEG file.

Early in the pandemic, working out of Sacramento with no clients to photograph, David began posting comedic skits recreating his studio sessions, playing both photographer and client. “I had to be me as a photographer who was giving confidence and showing them how to pose. And I also had to play my client,” he says. People, in his words, “just ate that up.”

Running Two Platforms Without Two Different Playbooks

David’s TikTok and Instagram audiences feel different to him as a creator, even though his output on each is largely the same. Early on, TikTok did the heavier lifting for community building: followers would ask specific questions: what if I’m tall, what if I’m bigger or more muscular, and he would answer them on camera. 

“All I had to do was go back to serving people, which is what I’m really default at doing,” he says.

He has since started paying closer attention to Instagram, too, without building a distinct approach for each app. “There’s not a really specific strategy, yet that is unique per platform,” he admits, adding that he would like to be “a lot more casual on TikTok” by the end of the year.

Deciding What’s Free, What’s Paid, and What Comes Next

David gives away much of his posing knowledge for free and still is not sure exactly where the paid line should sit. “I’m trying to decide that even now,” he says. For now, the decision comes down to instinct: “I put the community’s needs before my profits.”

That instinct is shaping a bigger ambition: something closer to a media company than a photography business, modeled loosely on outlets like BuzzFeed but centered on identity. “My dream is to be like a media company,” he says, “but then it’s David, where there are resources for anything that has to do with not just posing, but identity and how you express yourself creatively.” 

Turning that into a business, he says, means finding a “core engine,” a consistent offer that can fund a bigger team. In the meantime, he has adopted the keyword-triggered automation tools many creators now use, routing comments into Manychat flows that deliver links to workshops, though he admits “it doesn’t feel great for me” as a human, even if the data justifies it.

A Brand-Deal Filter Built on Mission, Not Just Money

David evaluates sponsorships against a short mental checklist: “Is this brand sponsorship going to dilute my brand or is it going to help me get closer to my mission?” When client revenue was strongest, brand sponsorships made up roughly half his income; this year, as he has pulled back from bookings, that share has climbed to around 80%.

He credits part of his perspective to Vivian Tu, a former Wall Street trader known for teaching people to negotiate for more money. “She’s like, ‘David, just get that bag,'” he recalls, contrasting her comfort with pure profit against his own instinct to lead with mission. He does not always side with purpose, admitting a cash flow gap can tip a decision toward taking a deal “for the greater good,” even one that would not otherwise pass his filter.

Being outspoken about identity, David says, has never cost him a deal. It has instead led to opportunities he would not have predicted a decade ago, including a photography assignment with the cast of Marvel’s “Thunderbolts” and a train ride from Italy to Paris with the cast of “Emily in Paris.” 

The “Thunderbolts” shoot tested his composure most. “The prep took a long time, but it happened in just five minutes,” he says. “It was very stressful, not gonna lie.”

The Backlash That Reshaped His Posing Method

David’s biggest public misstep also became the clearest articulation of what makes his teaching different. Trained in a traditional, gendered approach to posing, he initially applied those assumptions without question. “If you’re a woman, this is how you should pose. If you’re a man, this is how you should pose,” he says of what he was taught.

Early in his TikTok career, plus-size followers asked him for posing advice, and David answered using the same industry convention he had learned, coaching curvier bodies into poses meant to look smaller. “The way we’re taught as photographers is if there’s a plus-size person or curvier person, the way you pose is to make them smaller,” he says. The response was immediate: “I got a lot of backlash from a lot of plus-size women who were saying, ‘Who is this man telling us that we need to look smaller?’”

Rather than retreat, David treats the moment as foundational. “It allowed me to learn that I cannot assume what another person wants based on just their body,” he says, tracing the instinct back to a pattern he grew up with. “I’m Korean, and academics are number one priority,” he says, describing an upbringing shaped by patriarchal norms he has since had to unlearn.

Building a Movement Instead of Just Scaling a Brand

David describes the current stretch of his business as a kind of cocoon. His team has shrunk from five full-time staff to roughly half that size as he works through a financial rebuild. A book is due out in the first quarter of 2027, which he expects will bring press, touring, and speaking engagements that shift his revenue mix again.

What he wants on the other side is not simply a bigger version of his current business. David wants to bring his approach to body image to a younger audience, particularly middle and high schoolers navigating body dysmorphia, and he is explicit that scale, for him, should not just mean personal growth. “I think whatever community I make, there could be one in Singapore, there could be one in Hong Kong, there could be one in London,” he says.

That framing, community over personal brand, is the clearest throughline in David’s plans for the next three years. “We’re all doing this not for my growth, but everyone’s growth,” he says.

Subscribe to Our Newsletter

Check Out Our Podcast