Nigel Barker Took the Best Part of America's Next Top Model and Turned It Into a Brand-New Show

"I've actually been wanting to do a show like this for years," Nigel told me. "Since America's Next Top Model days, people have always said to me, 'My favorite part of the show was the behind-the-scenes and the photo shoots.'"

Considering our world today, Nigel thinks the timing couldn't be more perfect. "Everyone's got a phone with a camera, or they have a camera, or an interest in photography. Whether everyone's actually a photographer or not, we all have an interest in it, in a way we've never had before."

"We had tens of thousands of people entering into the competition, submitting their best photo," Nigel said. "It's hard to do one photo — oftentimes a photographer can't represent his entire portfolio in one shot. Once we picked our top 1,000, we got them all to submit videos. That went down to 20, and I then really looked at every single portfolio, every aspect of what they'd done, and there were five photographers who really stood out to me for different reasons — lifestyle, and fashion, and portraiture, and landscape. We had someone from each different area."

"Some of our contestants have hundreds of thousands of followers [on Instagram], and others only have a couple of hundred. I didn't select them because of their social media following. I found out afterwards we have two that have double the amount of followers as I do."

Follow the Contestants:

Since it's not on regular TV, you don't have to tune in at a set time, and each episode might be a different length. All you have to do is head over to the YouTube channel AdoramaTV to watch it all unfold — maybe even (secretly) at your work desk!

Nigel recruited his friend designer Pamella Roland, and contestants were tasked with shooting a fake ad campaign for her Spring '17 collection. "They had to choose the models, choose their gowns. They also had to work with the hair and the makeup and they had to tell the makeup artist what to do with the makeup," Nigel revealed. The key takeaway here? "It's not just about who you are, what you do. It's what the client likes."

Some contestants had never even shot fashion before, but Nigel said that's "the fun part of the show." According to him, "Someone who is truly the top photographer is someone who is flexible."

The judges for each episode align with that week's challenge, and there are some big names who will appear on the show.

"I wish I could give you a grocery list and say here are the 10 things you need to have in order to be a successful photographer, but that doesn't exist," Joe Zee admitted before judging the finale. "For me, it's about emotion. So you may only get two things on that grocery list checked off, but I can be like, 'Wow, that picture really grabs at me. That picture makes me think. That picture gets me to stop and not look away.' That's more important than saying well, you've got perfect light right here. Sometimes, there is a lot of beauty in imperfection."

Coco Rocha, on the other hand, told me she was looking for the opposite. "To a normal reader or viewer, you look at [a photo] and say I like it or I don't like it," she said. "But as a model, I go in and [look at] lighting, what position did they shoot, the angle they shot in, how they style, why they did what they did. Even cropping. Cropping is a huge thing to me and if it's not right, it looks wrong. All of those silly little things might be nothing to some people but in the end, they're kind of what makes the photo look good or not look good."

The show was filmed at the supercute Paper Factory Hotel in Long Island City, NY, but the set itself seemed like a whole other world. There were desks where the photographers edit their work; moody, dim lighting; and then a separate section where the judging and elimination happen. For that part of the show, contestants enter down a long staircase and stand on a small stage-like platform, while Nigel and the judges peer down at them, over a railing, from a level up. Chandeliers hang overhead, and a TV screen to the side reveals the photo being reviewed. Needless to say, it's all pretty intense.

In the end, the grand prize is a photography equipment package and a photo exhibition in NYC, all of which is valued at $50,000.