YOUTUBE CHANNEL TRAILER 2023 - GET TO KNOW ME
Welcome to my YouTube channel traitor. This YouTube experience has been so much fun so far and I look forward to keeping that ball rolling. My YouTube channel is all about sharing my 19 years of experience as a photographer with all of you through my gear reviews, tutorials and other content. My channel focuses more on information than entertainment but hopefully you find the content entertaining too. I create a blog post to go along with every YouTube video with bonus content and photos. So if you want to learn more about me check out the blog post for this video.
Welcome to the blog. I always make a blog post to go along with every video. Blog posts usually have some additional info or photos to go along with the YouTube video to give you a better experience.
I’ve been into photography for a long time. I remember going for walks in the park with my father when I was 15 or so and he would let me shoot pictures with his camera. Afterwards we would sit together and analyze our shots and he would teach me the photography fundamentals like exposure and composition. My father was an architect by trade but painting and photography where his side hustles. With that strong architectural influence it’s no wonder that my style of composition leans heavily on strong leading lines. I really enjoy leading the eye to a particular place in my photos. My father used to take me with him to photography gigs when I was a kid. Admittedly I was too young to appreciate it. Who knew back then that one day I would develop such a passion for photography.
In high school I became really interested in how photos influence people. I was always fascinated by the photos in National Geographic and how they could evoke a feeling of the place or the person they were characterizing. Advertising photography was my favorite. I could look through ads for hours. I was so interested in how the photos created a feeling of desire for the product in the ad. Each ad was its own little story. I was so into advertising that I wanted a career in advertising.
In University I studied advertising but in the end I realized it was not for me. I don’t think I would be fulfilled as a creative or a human knowing that I spent my life tricking people into buying crap they didn’t need. There was something so inauthentic about the advertising world that drove me away. I wanted to be creative in my own way. After University I got involved with iStockPhoto and started producing tons of photos for them. My photos back then were absolute trash but I was in at the right time. The microstock community was tiny compared to what it is now and the appetite for cheap stock photos was high. It wasn’t long before I was earning $5000 a month. I haven’t shot stock photos seriously since 2009 but I’m still making a small passive income from work I shot 14 years ago.
I stopped shooting stock when I started hanging out with playboy photographers. In hindsight I should have stuck to developing my skills as a commercial photographer but the allure of shooting glamor with some of the most beautiful women in the world was something that my 27 year old self could not resist. Unknowingly I aimed my career squarely at an industry that was about to be completely obliterated by something called “social media” It was 2007, three years before Instagram would come along and completely undermine the glamor magazine industry. Let’s be honest, people bought glam mags to see pictures of the women but if you could get all the pictures you wanted directly from the model’s Instagram/Twitter then what incentive did people have to buy the magazines? Magazine sales dried up and the quality of photos produced by the industry followed. I remember when magazines would give a photographer a budget of 10K to produce a pictorial. Photographers would hire hair and makeup talent, and stylists, locations, props, assistants etc. Money would be spread around the industry. Now magazines take submissions in exchange for a photo credit on instagram. But anyway I digress this has nothing to do with YouTube.
Getting back on track now, I’ve been working in the photography industry for 19 years and accumulated a lot of experience working in a variety of fields from stock, to commercial product photography, to glamor, weddings, architectures and portraits. I’ve had the pleasure of learning a lot from a variety of different places which has really given me an appreciation for all the different photographers out there and what they have to do to earn a living. Currently I focus on shooting weddings, and portraits. I shot my first wedding in 2005 and fell in love with it from the get go but that’s a story for another time. Circling back to YouTube, I try to use my experience in the industry when reviewing products or sharing my knowledge so that my viewers get value in the information I share. I’m working hard to grow the YouTube channel and provide value to my fellow creators out there. Ultimately, I would love to make more teachable continent for all of you and turn YouTube into a proper business. I’m still a small channel at 9k subscribers but I’m committed to the process and the sky's the limit as far as i’m concerned. Thank you to all of you who have read this far. I appreciate you taking the time to get to know me a little. Maybe one day when I do in person workshops we can share some more stories. Cheers and thank you for being a part of this YouTube journey.
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