I’ve waited a lifetime…
If there is one thing that I can say with confidence, it is this. I have loved photography since before my parents bought me my first polaroid camera when I was living in Fairbanks, Alaska at 8 years old. For close to 30 years, I have always been taking pictures on any number of random point and shoot cameras or the packages of disposable cameras we would stock up on for road trips, my parents knew that I could easily be persuaded for a pack of film. For a brief time as a teenager, I used an entry level canon rebel 35mm SLR with a kit lens that I had bought for around$350. I wanted something that would give me better capability, but it was nothing more than a fancier looking point and shoot camera with the auto settings glued into a stationary position so I could look cooler in a feeble attempt to impress girls. And like most people, once the iPhone came out, my camera and phone became a singular entity.
I largely consider myself a casual photographer with a passion to improve my eye for composition. When I had my career change a few years ago, I decided to reverse engineer a career from the things I hated doing from prior occupations and pursuing more personal fulfillment. through that process, I ultimately came to three paths that I wanted to choose from.
Interior design. Photography. Hair.
I eliminated interior design, because, in 2014, Boise didn’t seem really like the market that would find much opportunity in the venture, and I wanted to stay in the Treasure Valley. It’s crazy how 7 years can change your perspective because I probably would have been stupid rich by now if I had gone that route. I really liked the idea of photography, but I had defined my personal success as being a photo journalist for National Geographic. There’s an incredibly romantic idea I’ve always had of through the ability to travel the world and seeing sights that I want to experience in the little time I have around the sun, and being able to make a career off of it. The barrier of entry seemed really high, though. Cameras are expensive, and that’s before you talk about lenses. There’s also so many different avenues to learn, but most of them come from getting your hands dirty and few offer financial aid. Once you do learn and you can get into the market, then the competition is fiercely abundant. This is why I opted to go the route of cutting hair. It fulfilled all of the requirements I had wanted out of a career, it seemed like an easier gateway to success as a first business, plus it would give me an opportunity to learn more about photography. I can’t market a haircutting business without taking good pictures, so it seemed like a good chance to get my hands dirty.
I used the power and capability of the increasingly powerful iPhone to start learning more about manual settings and refine my skills with photography. I invested in moment lenses and began using their app along with gimbals and drones to create short movies and deep dive into the world of content creation. iPhone photography became a new hobby, and I quickly became the guy taking hundreds of pictures to find the two or three REALLY good ones that I could spend fifteen minutes pouring over. When my ancient PC finally died, I decided that I wanted to start taking the hobby seriously so I invested in an iMac to make 4k content even easier. All of this proved incredibly beneficial for my barbershop, because I was able to create content in house and learn more about the process, and it built a foundation for a second business.
A second business? Hold on, where are all the pretty pictures? What’s going on with the travel blog? This just got super wordy, and it’s been 6 weeks since your last update! what happened to the bi-weekly updates that you were doing?
These questions are an excellent segway into more words and also less pictures, but I promise you it will be worth the wait.
I was talking to a client during his haircut, and we were talking about how I wouldn’t accept work unless I had a camera, and even though most jobs would pay well enough to get me a camera, I couldn’t get paid in getting a camera. I had done projects he had seen and he was wanting to hire me for work, but he agreed that he couldn’t justify paying someone to work on their phone. It was the first time that I realized that an actual person with an actual job actually wanted to hire me, and the only thing stopping me was hardware. I needed to shit or get off the pot.
I started asking photographer friends a year ago for advice on what to get into.This couldn’t be something to simply scratch an itch, this would need to open some doors, so I knew this wouldn’t be an easy get. I debated between the Canon R5 as a high power still camera with capable video handling and only mild limitations alongside a Sony A7S III as a stellar video production machine with simply adequate photography handling. The real debate I was having was what world did I really want to present myself into, photography or videography? I loved photography for the casual nature of it, but there are SO MANY photographers that the competition is real. Going the video route would limit some of the sizes I can go with large scale prints of photos I take, but if I’m buying a camera as a tool to build a new career out of, there would be less competition in the world of video creation, and the return for my time is greater than that of photography.
Sometimes, the best decision is to embrace the struggle that comes with providing yourself a challenge to overcome, so here is me putting my intent out into the universe.
As I see it, I have experience in photography and business development and management, a camera to capture quality moments, as well as a machine capable of producing quality 4k content , the motivation to spend more time with my wife and dogs, and an intent to fill a gap in the current content creation market. I plan on spending the next six months creating a few projects as opportunities to learn the true capabilities of my story telling and content creation skills, and I am giving myself a deadline of the end of 2021 to put out my first 25 minute documentary, as well as create my media production company, pricing structure, and service model. This has been something that I have been stewing around the idea with since the pandemic began, and I think it will be a great second business to run simultaneously with the barbershop.
For those of you interested, I went with the Sony A7S III and a Sony G Master 24-70mm 2.4f lens. Here’s some of the cool shit we’ve been up to since separating my camera from my phone.
I’m going to stay as busy as a bee.
Until next time,
-Chris
