Skip to main content

In Focus: A Career Takes Flight: Adam Senatori

Lesson 1 from: In Focus: A Career Takes Flight

Adam Senatori

In Focus: A Career Takes Flight: Adam Senatori

Lesson 1 from: In Focus: A Career Takes Flight

Adam Senatori

buy this class

$00

$00
Sale Ends Soon!

starting under

$13/month*

Unlock this classplus 2200+ more >

Lesson Info

1. In Focus: A Career Takes Flight: Adam Senatori

Lesson Info

In Focus: A Career Takes Flight: Adam Senatori

just looking at my watch and taking a peek at my heart rate up. Um, so I am thinking the introduction. I am going to present today about my experiences of being a commercial airline pilot and then transitioning to becoming a commercial photographer. So again, I'm Adam, signatory at Adam, signatory on Twitter and Instagram. And, uh, I'm from Madison, Wisconsin. Um, that's pretty much it. Other than that, I travel globally for work, sometimes for pleasure. But today I'm gonna cover my journey from pilot to photographer, discovering my voice in a competitive world, finding inspiration as a landscape, uh, and aerial photographer taking in life as it revolves around me, some of my creative inspirations that I use on a daily basis and learning to be spontaneous and less structured in my personal life, which is kind of a new thing for me. So, um, start with a short story here. It's a good It's a good hard landing story. We've all sort of been in a hard landing before, right. Well, I got one f...

or you. Um, brand new pilot. I looked like this spiky hair. Thought I was the king, um, Brandon pilot in the Airlines. This wasn't my first flight, but it was. I was relatively new. I was going from Cincinnati to Minneapolis and it was my late to fly. So the airlines, the captain flies leg. You alternate all day long. So if you do six legs, which do three takeoffs and landings. So this was my leg and the captain was just as you would imagine, a captain to be six foot three silver hair big, Um, and we're on approach to Minneapolis, which is out of all the airports have ever flown to. That is the trickiest airport to land that I don't know if it's because it's on a plateau and there's some strange winds, but it's it's tricky, so we're on approach to land. Everything's fine. I'm flying, We get over the runway and the wind just cut. The wind stops from what I was used to on final approach. So when you don't have a loss of wind, you're kind of hit the runway. Little hard is that sweet spot where you just needed have everything perfect. Get the wheels rolling on the ground. Well, about 10 feet out, the wind cut and I was young, didn't have the experience enough to bring the power on toe kind of cushion the blow. Eso um we hit hard and this is where things going to slow motion. You always hear people in traumatic situations, everything at that minute just go slow motion. So this is where the story goes. Slow motion. We bounced back up into the air and there's no full. It's a full house and back. Um, and I remember holding onto the oak looking over the captain Captain looking at me, and he said I didn't know these things could bounce this high, But in reality he was saying, I'm going to kill you Way come down for the second landing And, you know, if you looked at it from outside the plane, that probably wasn't as traumatic as I remember it was, but it was stiff. So we taxied back. I hear the flight attendant on the p a saying Please use care when opening the overhead bins because items surely have shifted way. Go to the eight Park. The plan captain grabs my hat from It was that hook above my head, slams it into my chest, says get up to the door and tell everyone goodbye. Hope, Right? So one of a few lessons I learned as being an airline pilot for seven years is humility. And the next five minutes I learned mawr, I learned empathy. I learned about caring because the comments that I got from the people coming out that plan were pretty interesting. I got anger. I got a lot of God bless, use Ah, lot of good lucks. Few. You should be fired. But I survived. So I went from this guy here to this guy in 10 seconds, hotshot to bam. And that's a story that I care with me. One of many stories that I care with me from my yours is an airline pilot into being a photographer. It's helped tremendously, but anyway, no harm, no foul life moves on. And the other thing I've learned how things really that big of a deal. Very few things, a lot in life are truly life in death. So that's my approach is most things in life are just really that big of a deal would kind of make them bigger than they were. So I love the fact that their captain need me a big piece of humble pie, because here I am, 15 years later, 10 years later, whatever it was talking about, um, so empathy, humility, learning and problem solving on the fly. All things I've used since being a commercial photographer, um, problem solving the big one. Things always go wrong. You need to be able to think quick. So my take away from this story is recognized and leverage the things you have now and apply them to things down the road. So if you're in a situation of job, whatever it is that you're not really happy with now, I don't think of it is I need to leave this job and I'm gonna be leaving everything behind. You're not. There's a lot of things are going to be in your head that you're going apply to the next level. Um, little teaser here for my overall global message. Here is, um, learning. When you leave, you take new perspectives, new opportunities, and just be don't be afraid to take the jump. So my journey from pilot of doggerel spend a little bit of time just briefly, but I can't just say Elson became a pilot. I started young, the desire started young here at four years old. Yes, I was all business. That's my body. For some reason, I was wearing the hat, but four years old, I think even younger, because that has pretty weathered. So I was ready to follow their dream and my whole life I just structure myself so I could become an airline pilot. I went to college at the University, Wisconsin, Basically, just because I needed four year degree Teoh become a pilot. So everyone watch me girl up. The only wanted to be a pilot and at 22 I did Airline pilot 22. So the common refrain might tell people I'm no longer a commercial pilot is what happened, especially people who knew me. Like why what happened? I'll get into that, Um, the long short is seven years and airlines the the the industry took a toll on its tremendous amount of stress all things I knew, of course, going in. But when your when your living the dream, sometimes the blinders around, you don't look at things. They tend to be a little bit worse in than they are. But anyway, huge sacrifices a lot of time away from home. Not that great pay. I won't be. I'll be asked with its the pays at the level I was at is not good. $50,000. It's not much money for being gone 18 19 days a week, enduring all the stress on a daily basis. Check rides, weather mechanicals, all these different things. So after a while I started getting just a little bit discontent. Um, I did stick with it, and after five years, I finally became a captain, which is a big deal. The ship was mine. I had full command and I hailed opposition for about a year. Then I lost it. Fuel prices went up and they started furloughing pilots. They furlough off the bottom. The only way you move up as a pilot is through seniority date Your hired is, is is how you move up the ladder. It's that's it. But when they furlough, when things get bad, they cut from the bottom. So I lost my captain. After a year, my cat position went back down. The first officer pay got cut. No idea when I would ever get back to captain or even further my career. At that point, This was the first time the notion of a dead end job sort of percolating in my head. It, uh, it kind of lingered and stayed. Um, and I kept having this feeling. I don't really tell anybody. Maybe my wife, but that was about it. But once you actually verbalized that you want to leave or you want to make a change, it's over. I mean, you're gone best, just my philosophy. But I think once you make that click, you know, here I am six years in the airline career and it clicked and like, Oh, man, I need to move on Then it was just a matter of time, but I still needed a reason to walk. I just couldn't leave. I didn't have the confidence to leave. I didn't know what I was gonna do, so I stayed for a few more years. And this is the kind of the take aways here. I recognize I had the requisition that there are too many variables industry that made it the potential for things to get worse. Not better on a daily basis. When I realize that things started clicking in my head and more importantly, realize there are too many variables are out of my control. And I was following this path to fulfill this dream, This story that have been telling myself since I was, as you saw that the four year old photo, um, I realized the job holding onto this dream, fighting to defend the dream, the passion. I was keeping me from doing something else. And that was kind of it. Once I sort of rationalized why I want to leave this dream. That was it. I knew staying longer meant the cost of continuing to invest my life and something that wasn't get going to get better was just too high. That's huge. If you want to keep going, got be able to invest your life into something that you know is gonna get better. And I didn't think that passed this test. Then came the window of opportunity. 6.5 years in the airline started offering senior pilots like me are the option toe to take a volunteer for low so you can leave for six months and the the holder seniority number, you're gonna get paid, but you can go do something else. Boom! That was it I got, I got the opportunity. Um, the option was there, I took it. Now I wanna take away. So before I left before I left, I wasn't necessarily ready. I didn't really have a game plan, but something inside here's a window. Take it because you're not gonna get the next You might not get it again. And if you do, it's not gonna be on your terms. You can't time these things and you need to take risk. Rarely have I ever talk to anybody in my position or somebody's made sort of a big move like this that they've said I should have stayed on my job. When you go through these steps up here and you rationalize why you can't continue investing your time and it's something that you're not behind any longer, nobody ever says I should have stayed. I've never run into him. So here I am left the airline's January 65 2031 years old that photos taken right before I flew from Des Moines to Detroit. That is not a happy smile. That is a smile of, uh oh, all kinds of things. That's an emotional smile, probably probably some tears in the eyes because I knew even though I was going to do some other things in my life, I was gonna invest my time into other dreams. Um, didn't how I wanted to. That's OK. It's fine. So I moved on. Now I'm back home. Uh, what do you start hustling? Very first thing I did was jumped into firefighter training at a local community college. Six months later, I, um, state certified firefighter State Wisconsin, looked at the career options there. And after going to the training religion, it's not right. It's not right. It's There's too many parallels. What? I just left a lot of a lot of circumstance that I'm a control. It's kind of the same move. They're both great jobs. But I don't think that feels right to me right now, Uh, 19 to do the Iron Man that year. So I sort of really, you can tell I was really sort of diving into some tough things, you know, firefighter training, training for iron Man. That kind of stopped near the end of the year. I needed to get a job, so I went with a one page resume into a liquor store and got a job. Ended up selling wine. Um, and whiskey did that for? I think three or four years loved the job. I put all my put all my time and energy into it. Absorbed it that winemakers, whiskey makers and head agreed. Time I did it more or less full time. But here I am, thinking cash. I'm selling whiskey now. In six months earlier, I was flying jets and no hair. So there's that little sort of tinge of regret. Sort of percolated, but off to the side. Anyway, I grew up in an artistic household. My dad is an art director. He still is. My mom is an art history buff, so I grew up in a very artistic household. So the question I always get is weight. Airline pilot, photographer. Where's the link? That's it. I grew up in dark rooms in studios like this. My mom always took me to galleries. Andi looked at paintings all the time, so that's the connection. It wasn't just boom to boom. There was a little bit of that behind me. But it's true. The last 20 years, I didn't really do much with that creative side. So now I am picked up a camera. A Sony Cyber shot real tiny little thing and started shooting. Ah lot Andi. This was so about 2005 11 years ago and get really thin built up this really thin kind of just really Indian cooking portfolio. After, like a year of shooting stuff ahead. No continuity, no continuity, no continuity to it whatsoever and got a job at a local sports magazine. And they're like, We've got an assignment for you going on a Milwaukee and shoot Tom Crean and some of its star basketball players. The university Marquette Cool didn't know what I was get myself into ended up being my first commercial shoot cover for that magazine. Not a huge magazine was inside with Scott's in Sports, but that's pretty crazy. At my very first job was shooting a cover with Tom Crean for magazine. After that continued in a little bit more editorial photography, I worked my way through sports, fashion, food, music. After a year, I decided I was becoming a meandering generalised, and it was starting to bug me because again my portfolio didn't have it was all over the map But the important take away there is that I learned what I didn't like to shoot. I don't like shooting certain things. I just didn't feel a draw to them. I didn't jewelry and doing in shooting fashion. I did it just fine. But it wasn't my wasn't fit. Um, So through that process, I was able to still what I didn't like to shoot Then in 2000 and eight already luncheon in Milwaukee. And, uh, I was eating lunch looking down and one of the presenters waas a try a lawyer and he gets up and introduced himself as the go to guy for explosion and fire liability cases. I remember putting the fork down and sitting back and probably leaning back in the chair saying, Ah, that's it like I need, I need I need something like that. I need, like, a niche. That was it. That was the wo ah ha moment. And from there on, um, I just started focusing on aviation aerial, um, some travel work, but everything revolving her own, going from one place to another in the air plans all that. So I went to air shows and shot on my own I'm still pilot. I was back then. Even after I left. The airlines have continued flying small aircraft. So I'd fly, shoot some aerials out of the window by myself, and it's sort of built. Started building from there, I put him on flicker. I put him on Tumbler. This is pre Instagram. Um, And then in November of 2011 I I was sitting on the couch looking through my IPhone, and I sell its app called Instagram, and I immediately sign up for my meeting with signing for almost every new service. I'm a like early adapter. Just if it's out. I signed up for most of my never returned to this one. I did. I love the interface. It was clean. It was focused on the images. That was it. So I joined Instagram in 2010. This is now eso that the two key points here is I had the ah ha moment and 08 and I had the join Instagram in 2011 and the following spring, Community relations contacted me and said, We love your work. We saw we like your perspective because at that time I was posting some aerials. I would like to put in the city, suggested users list and from then and they did, they did. The caveat was, it's going to be different. You're not gonna build an organic audience. Remember them saying that? I don't care. Put me on there. I wanted an audience. I want people to see the aerials and my aviation work. So I got a suggested users list. It was it went bonkers Every night I went to bed and wake up the next morning to be like another 1000 followers. It was crazy, actually. Stayed on that list for quite a long time. A number of years. That's how again, such a huge following, Um, 2011 conscious decision to not work with a conscious decision to work with bigger clients. So I was at the time doing very small editorial jobs, 200 $100 jobs. It was not quite satisfying. I had the epiphany. I'm gonna stop fishing with with a warm and a hook for just a little bluegill. I'm gonna take a bucket of charm and dump it overboard and go from big sharks, because now I felt a little, had a little bit of confidence with my work and my portfolio. It was pretty focused at this point with aviation and Ariel. And again fate comes into these into your life. It does. But in 2012 less than a year later, after I made the conscious decision, G ran in Instagram contest a photo contest that I end up winning the prize. Waas you go the fly you to whales and go all first class travel. Who's nice? The flight of whales do tour of their engine factor there. Jet engine factor there. And it just makes Mr Grams. That was it I took. I took Well, let me. So I was 38 when this happened. Okay, so right now we're, uh, five years in. I took advantage of that opportunity, shot some gifts, shot some extra material that they didn't need the election, what they're seeing. They hired man, and I end up shooting 2012 13 14 15 and 16. All the global air shows for them. So they send me to these air shows. I go and shoot the aircraft with their engines on it, their technology on it. So that was it. 38 years old. And that's my that was my big break. That was when I finally bridged the gap, the long gap, um, of seven years from when I left the airlines to when I consider myself an established photographer, at least in my world. That's the take away seven years between leaving one career and the next. And that's huge because nobody very few people can just go from one of the next, especially to big, different things. And establish yourself reference this book. There's two books in reference to this one is huge. Seth Godin, the dip and you can see here That's the dip. So you have to be able to plow through this part. This is the seven years right here. You have to know that you want to do something bigger. You have to set your sights on this in this part sucks. That's seven years I was selling wine. I was doing all these different things firefighting, all this stuff. Im not saying its stock because I took so many experiences that apply to today. But it obviously wasn't what I really wanted to doing, which is what I'm doing today. So seven years you got to get through that chin down every single day, every single day on Lee. And I'm not here. I don't know when I will ever be there, but im late least 3/4 with the dip. This isn't my final stop. Eso Seth Godin, The dip by the book You can read it. It's 80 pages you ripped through it if you have any. If you have any trepidation about moving forward in life towards that right hand side of the graph, read the book. It's It will solidify it Things for you. Number two. Discovering my voice in a competitive world regarding Instagram I don't use that since this is that was sort of a springboard for my career. The five factors that help me get my voice time and I was an early adopter. I was using number one 17 152, to sign up for the platform. I don't know how many users on Instagram now, but it's it's gotta be hundreds of millions. I was within the first month that that platform opened up. I jumped on it. I got in the aerials. It was a specific thing that at the time this was way before drones. People really didn't see too many aerials, especially on instagram serendipity. I somehow found and followed Chris Connelly and Coal Rise. I think we might have known each other loosely through flicker before instagram. But anyway, they found me back and they were influential. Obviously, Cool Rise has a filter named after him, but they were influential with the people at Instagram, and they got They got the year off of the people in interim state. Check out Adam, and that's how I got in suggested user list. I was the very first blawg post to INSTAGRAM ever did. The number one block post was about my Ariel and my story. Hustle work a lot. Even if you're not working at your craft, working a side hustle that you think is gonna help you. And, of course, luck Luck plays into it. I have it at the bottom because I don't think I think the ones above it have a little bit more weight. But I definitely shows the right platform to focus all my efforts on because it's the biggest, and I think it'll be around for a while. Eso um, regarding shooting aerials. I understand not everybody's in a plan in the aircraft. In aviation, I'm super niche like super eso. When I shoot my photos, I try and make them transcend what normal like aviation geeks involves. To some, it's it's hard to describe. But when I shoot, I try to frame them in a way that even if you're not a fan of aviation, you still look at these objects as sort of like works of art. Like when I look in a tease aircraft, I'm thinking it's amazing that this thing has 600 people on it and has just suspended in the sky. So I try to relate that I'm trying to bring in my my love radiation. I understand I have a huge following of people that love planes, but not everybody does. So when I shoot aircraft, um, I keep that in mind. Um, and in fact, if this a load quick. But this is a shot. One of my favorite aerial shots from the ground of of an aircraft flying. Um, is this one here? That actually has been. I've done limited edition prints big up to 90 inches of that, and when you see it, you're not looking at just the plan. You're looking at something that's just suspended in the air, even though it's going a couple 100 miles an hour. It's just sitting there. So that's that's sort of my mind, said. It's like I don't want to just be an aviation, because I know everybody's not in airplanes trying to broaden it out and make airplanes mawr of like, Wow, these things that just are their incredible machines. How do we just get in these and go from point A to point B to Point C? Um, so, um, same way with aerials. I like to, um, shoot my aerials in a way that make people stop and look. So I shoot wide, but I shoot high definition enough that you can. Actually, if you look at a print, you can go up and actually look into people's backyards or looking look at cars and that kind of stuff. So I'd like to be able to look at should Freeman aerial that it's interesting to look at as a whole. But when you step into it, you can start seeing all these different intricacies, Um, real quick. As far as finding my voice, you have to realize that your channel, you're you're you're broadcasting everyday TV consisted of three channels. Now there's thousands, and with social media, there's millions of channels competing for your your view time. So I just try and keep things. I try and keep the value high. I try and keep, um, the interest level up and I'll get a just a little bit more. But here, attract and hold your audience by making a promise that one will provide value every time. Um, I deliver on that problem September. Try to consistently, persistently, every day. So that's my you know, if you look at my instrument, I've been on there for five years. We only have, like 600 photos because I don't upload that that off. I try and keep the value as high as I can, will not losing my audience. But I try and deliver on that promise, which is value. If you do that, you'll gain trust and they will come back to. I've learned that with instagram stories as well, but in reality it's a war of attrition, and if you're willing to go across that dip every day, eventually we'll get to the other side, and you will have, um, inorganic audience. Um, I have a note here. Things in social media out of my control never waver. It's tiring. It's exhausting. But the cost that's the cost of being successful. So the take aways on this think outside the box. For example, last fall I gained a very unlikely client when I would have never imagined I would be working for when I left the airlines and that's Louis Vuitton. They contacted me because their designer, like my Instagram Feed and wanted to license five photos to turn into five or six different pieces that used for Thea Summer Spring summer collection of this year. So right there, you can see he hacked him all up. But like there's ah, tail cone of one of my engine shots and other photos that he built. So finding audience, um, think outside the box number three, Finding inspiration as he landscape and aerial photographer I referenced. My mom was art historian, so I was exposed to this a lot when I was a kid. 17th century Dutch sees Seascape and landscape painters have always been attracted to the way thes artists handled light clouds, vignettes contrast color framing all that. I mean looking out here now, and I love these clouds on def. You look A This photo here doesn't really look that much different from out there. That's what I'm attracted to. So So when I shoot landscapes and aerials, you'll notice a lot of clouds. My photos and I like toe work, contrast and shadows in there to this. I'm also attracted to the photographers from the mid 18 hundreds. They were contracting by the US government to go west and do surveys. But they had these. They had these huge eight by 10 cameras and they go out there and shoot under adverse conditions and loved with the came way, with their very matter of fact. There very clinical, very crystal clear again. You can look at all these different aspects of this port of this cell landscape. Eso highly influential. As far as my landscapes go. Um, And then again, this is a shot that they did in Paris last year of an Airbus. This was for G E. But again, you can see some of these things come into play. I worked clouds into a vignette on gave the aircraft a sense of space, so I didn't just have a close into the plane. The the emphasis here is on the sky and how this this aircraft is heavier than air and it's just suspended. So you can see these things go into my creative, uh, sort of thought process every time I shoot aerials real quick, Um, again, I'm attracted to the to To the artists that came long before us. This photo here was really, really launched my interest in aerial photography. This was 1906 and it was done off San Francisco after the earthquake, and the photographer used George Lawrence of music height, and this was a 17 by 48 inch contact print. And again, you can see this is this completely drove high with shoot landscapes. And I love how you can lie like the perspective he lined this up. You can see you can dive in this photo and look at all the little details smoke the bullets, all that stuff. I imagine seeing this in person, you could really dive into it. But if you look at it as a whole, it's a totally different picture. So that's how when I'm shooting aerials. I framed my thought process. When I'm up there in the helicopter, I don't do kites. Here's one more Signal Hill, California boys love this shot. Lower level aerial might not even be from a plane but doesn't make a difference. And aerials and aerial. But this is actually self Los Angeles Back in the days when it was all oil rigs. Love that shot. It's just it's super wide panorama on. And here is the shop that I did last year in L. A. Um, again, it's just a neighborhood taking eight o'clock in the morning. I like it as a whole. It's interesting to look at asshole, but you can dive in like there's a person there. There's like Why is there a tent there like random stuff? You can you can dive in and look at photos, so that's sort of that's kind of how I came to shoot this, Um, some of my thought processes taking in life is it revolved around me, a listener. I like listening. I like talking to people. I'm curious about everything I love engaging with people. Most importantly, um, and I have a little tricks I won't get in heading out because I'm running short of time. I have little tricks that I do to engage with people on daily basis, like one of them is. Get my news from other people. That's it was fun. Documentation instead of creation, miss no opportunities to explore and force multiply. What does that mean? I do activities that I can do two things at once and still grow creatively. I run a lot when I run a lot. I get to see more. Today. I'll be running probably Ron all over the place, all of my phone on me. So I'm running. I'm getting exercise, but I'm also taking photos. So that's what I call force. Multiply force multiplier activity, My creative inspirations I absorb all day long. So when I wake up in the morning, first thing I do before I roll out of bed. As I usually fired my instagram and go through my feet, it's a different looking at other contemporary photographers. It's a different kind of inspiration for me, other than the ones that worked before us. Contemporary photography is more motivational. Get off your butt and get out there and shoot when I get up in the morning. It looked the ministry. Um, like only long people around the world have been following have been uploading. I'm seeing Iceland. I'm seeing all these. You know, Greece, All these different locations. People been to in shot in the last 12 hours. It's 12 sleeping in our six hours and that's like, Okay, I'm ready to get out of bed. So that's I absorbed from beginning to end during the day. I'll watch if I'm on the treadmill. Watch YouTube. Casey Neistat Love case. I watch him every day Gary Via Watch him listening Podcast Tim Fair Tear, Brock Jackal, Will Nick and Joe Rogan I listen to their They're in my ear all day long again listening to others reading books Seth Godin, The Dip, Another book that I highly recommend Everybody all creatives is this won the War of Art. It's about breaking resistance, breaking free of that resistance and just starting to create instead of letting excuses take takeover and preventing you from creating. I take notes all day I read my record sounds. I make screenshots, I take photos. I noticed colors and patterns, um and ah, contemporary doctor to talk about that. Six learning to be spontaneous and less structure to my professional life. This is a new one for me. Up until about a year and 1/2 ago, all my work had to be thought out on my commercial work. I had to be thought out and it all scripted body last year in Dubai was working for G. E at an air show in a change things up. But first came for the Dart board. This is one concept that I like working on. Aim for the dartboard, not the bull's eye. Okay, so this is being more spontaneous and less structured. Doesn't have to be perfect. Another big one for me that I've struggled to overcome art of war. The thing that big take away from this was minimal gear. I've gotten rid of most of my photo beer. I have this and this That's it. I mean, have headed all I've had it by 10 cameras. I've had Hasselblad medium format digital. I've had almost every kind of brand a camera. There is, It's all gone. It's these two things because of what's referenced in here, which means get rid of that stuff. It's not gear. Get out. Tell your story. I got caught up in that. You have to have gear for certain looks. That's not sure that's fine, but nobody cares. Now it is unless you're in. Unless you really want to get in the museum or sell high end fine art. I don't recommend that to cameras, and this one gets 90 95% of the use. This one is just on me, but I don't even shoot that much. But it's nice to go through my office in my studio and look at empty closets because of nothing in there. Every time I walk past it and I'd see and feel guilty gone, consider every opportunity opportunity presented. Instagram asked me, found one to be suggested. User. Yes, Creativelive asked me if I want to be here today. Yes, take it, Sees it. Don't pass. Stop analyzing everything. Stop reasoning. Stop quantifying going to do it. I studied the works of Stephen Shore Walker, Average Evans and Larry Sultan. They have very carefree style, their classic American photographers. I'm fascinated by the way that they can find beauty in anything and take gorgeous photos, so I carry that with me. I'll be I'll be keeping those guys in mind today is I'm walking around New York. Um And then, of course, Instagram stories have been huge for me. I was never I never get in a Snapchat Andi, I understand the snap chatters don't throw tomatoes at me. I didn't have any leverage on that platform, so I never did anything with it. Instagram stories that a plug and play audience So they're getting to see the entire back end of like what I've been doing for five years because they didn't know Instagram stories has been huge and helping be helping me be spontaneous and actually now posting photos on instagram I would have never posted before. Um, I'm just about future. Um, this whole story is ancient news now it's just I'm just pulling experiences from it. That's it. I'm applying those toward our whatever I do next. The time to create a new story is now the time to create new stories from our morning wake up. So every day is a new blank page and I look at with with social media and limited attention spans. Now my only focus on every day is to go out and create and to get people when they're scrolling through their feed to pause on my photo. Just one extra second. That's my goal. Keep it simple. If I can create something and upload it and I can get skin instead of like, most people do this this, this this this also just, you know, you've seen you. You go back up. That's my goal. I keep it simple. So every time I upload, I keep that in mind, and I hope we'll get to the other end of that dip someday. That's have talked about That's all. Have questions way Do have time for a couple of questions. So go to our studio audience first. Grab a mic. Not I'll go to the folks at home. Yeah, we got one in the front row. Great eso Where's the most beautiful place that you've ever photographed from the sky? Um, Glacier National Park, Hands down on. And also I take it all. It's It's gorgeous, of course, but then the whole experience. So up at 11,000 feet and a Huey helicopter giant Huey helicopter with these doors that open up like garage doors and just me in there in the pilot. So he's got me square on with these glaciers and waterfalls. And it's just so that in quiet every time I go toe been too quiet three times every time I go there, helicopter ride over the golden fall. So quite. But to be honest with you, shooting cities is my favorite thing like that. L a shot I love because I like you can dive into the photo. You can look at how people live and how humans have built this massive infrastructure. So thank you so much. It's just it's so insightful to see your your journey and all of these tips in order to whether it's the books or the tools in order to allow us to probably get there faster. It seems as though you're very disciplined. Do you think it takes discipline to then be able to be spontaneous? No, I think I think to be spontaneous you you need Teoh, break this plant this point for me. I have, like, structure throughout the day. If I don't get, I do certain things that create structure for me, so running, making post on instagram, that kind of stuff create that's from discipline gives me structure, but then freeze me mentally like, OK, I know I've taken care of myself today. Now I can just go out new stuff. So does that make that make sense? It's the opposite, I would say less displaying more spontaneity. But maybe one more final question. If you were to look back at yourself back when you were that 18 year old, what would you tell yourself now? Giving everything that you've learned Maybe like one additional thing that you would tell yourself at that time? Uh, who? Good question. One extra thing. Um, I think, uh, I think being I wasn't very it sounds like I was spontaneous because I left that career to go. Something else. But I think just being a little bit more open minded and of course, patients, that's that's my answer. Patients? Yes. It was like airline. Okay, now I e I ran through my what I did know seven years Boom, boom, boom. I wasn't the impatient. I was just running through things now. Impatient. So that's my answer.

RELATED ARTICLES

RELATED ARTICLES