Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Sam Su. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Sam , appreciate you joining us today. What sort of legacy are you hoping to build. What do you think people will say about you after you are gone, what do you hope to be remembered for?

I hope that along with my work, people will remember me for who I was and what I inspired. I hope to inspire human connection, break down barriers, and inspire people to learn about each other’s cultures, stories, and lifestyles. I hope that my art inspires that for generations to come and that above all else, people remember me for living life to the fullest and are inspired not to take everything too seriously and enjoy everything they have instead of wishing for the things they wish they had.

Sam , before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

My name is Sam Su, and I’m a Chinese-born, NYC-raised creative passionate about the human experience and communicating it through art.

Cultural exchange, especially evident in sports, holds immense beauty and significance for me. My background in filmmaking and love for playful storytelling allows me to blend a cinematic style with lively documentary photography and films. I am inspired by the way humanity can break down borders and barriers to learn from each other, stemming from my experience of growing up American but being raised by Chinese parents in the diverse city of New York.

I always loved filmmaking because it connected me with my dad, as there exists a language barrier. But through art, there is a lot of shared emotion and stories because it is a medium that can be universal to all, regardless of language. I started making films of my own in high school, and while I was training for my 2019 cross-country season as a captain of my track team, I got injured to stay connected with the team and borrowed a camera from my cousin to start taking pictures of my team. When the pandemic hit in 2020, I took it upon myself to improve my photography and videography skills in all aspects. I started my photography page on Instagram in 2021 the summer before college and since then have been learning constantly. My username “theokphotos” is based on my philosophy of constant improvement, that I can be proud of how far I’ve come but still never stop learning. I’ll always therefore be OK because there’s always going to be something to learn and people to learn from. Since then, I have leaned more into developing my style and even this changes over months at a time.

Within my work, I specialize in getting personal with the athletes that I work with. How do I communicate their struggles, their work ethic, and their successes and failures without making art that feels “content-y” and mass-produced? Above all else, how do I show their personality and not just see athletes as a marketing tool, but rather as a catalyst to grow the sport meaningfully and help the athletes inspire future generations to come within the sport? I believe I take a lot of inspiration from films, pop culture, and music that help me direct my work.

I’m most proud of my ability to network and connect with people, a skill I have developed over time because I have always been a more reserved and shy person. I believe that networking and fostering that connection for clients, friends, and co-workers is one of, if not the most important skills to learn in this industry based on who I’ve worked with. I’d much rather work with someone who is willing to learn and fun to work with than someone who is incredibly skilled but not fun or great to work with.

Most recently, I got to fly down to the Cayman Islands in collaboration with Palm Heights Athletics to document a week of a 3-month long training camp held for elite athletes training for the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris. I got to know them as people, and while documenting, became a friend through this collaboration and fostered my skills as a visual storyteller.

Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?

Like I said in the question below, I network through the people I take photos of, and having good people skills will carry you through. Those people will vouch for you, and you’ll never know who knows who. Big brands will never notice a little Instagram post, but someone connected to the brand might. That’s how you get jobs with brands and grow your clientele. Emailing a lot, using Instagram or other social media as your online portfolio, etc. Pitch ideas, pitch yourself, and allow yourself to do the groundwork to get bigger and bigger jobs with more people who know even more people than you.

How did you build your audience on social media?

It was sort of strategic but I didn’t expect it to work. Like, at the time, I thought the mindset I had made sense but looking back I think there was kind of a miracle in work to help my dream come alive.

I used to have a personal account where I posted personal photos and creative work. But I still didn’t know whether I wanted to start flooding my feed with creative work because then my engagement would go down, and that was a time in high school when my impressionable young self was obsessed with numbers. So I decided to start from scratch and make an entirely new Instagram account starting from 0. My friends quickly jumped onto it so I had a sort of a base, but I was starting essentially from 0. I wanted to treat the photo account like a desert, somewhere where I could test my creativity and have low risk when I posted.

I started with taking sports photos, my friend Everson invited me to take photos of his road race, a 5k in Governor’s Island on July 4th, 2021. I took a multitude of photos and when posting, I would find the numbers on the bibs of the people I took photos of, find their names, and search them up on Instagram so I could tag them. 85 percent of the time, I would find them. And what I noticed is that people were responsive at the time and that they would follow and comment and share. So I decided to take this model further when I got to college in a few months. I would go to as many athletic events as I could, basketball games, soccer games, volleyball games, take photos, edit endlessly into the night, and then the next day I would post photos, tag the athletes, and start building that relationship with them. A lot of this was unpaid, and I think I needed to rep out those hours in practicing my craft, and additionally build my social media presence. I was the only sports photographer at my college who did this, and all the athletes who would share my photos knew who I was by the end of the first year.

This system kept building until I got my first big job at New Balance Nationals in 2022. I had a relatively small job and wasn’t being paid much, but I had the opportunity to shoot at a big event with some of the fastest high schoolers in the country. At the time I had 400 followers, and my posts that weekend went viral, and I shot up to 1k in less than a month. A lot of eyes were now on me. And the snowball effect came into place. More eyes noticing me, a lot more people who can vouch for me, share my photos, and a lot of people interested in what I do. I have kept up my creative work consistently until then so that when the day came when the one big opportunity came, I was ready and I delivered.

But over time, I have cared less about the numbers because what I’ve learned is that it’s much more about the connections I made that got me those jobs. It’s the photos that got me noticed, but the emails and networking that got me into those big events. And it’s the people skills that got those people to continue pitching me jobs and vouching for me as both a creator and a friend. Every once in a while I go viral, but I didn’t get big through participating in that rat race of creating videos and photos formulaically, I grew my audience by continuing to connect with people through the jobs I do. I show that my work is worth following through all the hours I put in, and I prove that I’m here to stay by talking and continuing to connect with people.

If there’s any advice I can give, in my opinion, don’t focus on going viral. Do the work now, and the people you want to be hired by will notice eventually. Do the work now, and connect with people, and that will go so much farther than a couple of viral reels. Meaningful engagement with your audience is so important, so don’t push reels and videos that follow the trends all the time and expect to attract an audience that you want to engage with. I have so many people I can now call friends who support my work constantly and that is what shows in my work ethic and the jobs I pick up. It shows in the way I interact with people in my videos and it shows in how engaged people are with my art. If you want to go viral and become super famous, do that. That’s your prerogative. I’m not the person to ask for advice on that perspective. But from what I learned in this industry, your network is still up to you. So don’t cry that the algorithm isn’t picking your art up. Nobody inherently deserves to have people look at their work. Show that your work is worth looking at, and prove that you’re worth hiring through networking and your people skills.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://xsamsu.com
• Instagram: @theokphotos
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/xsamsu/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqTdBxzla5G8o14UiLIM4ug

Image Credits
Andrew Wies Insta: @andrewjameswies (https://www.instagram.com/andrewjameswies)