Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Luke McKinney. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Hi Luke, thanks for joining us today. It’s always helpful to hear about times when someone’s had to take a risk – how did they think through the decision, why did they take the risk, and what ended up happening. We’d love to hear about a risk you’ve taken.
A risk you’re willing to take is an opportunity. I’ve been both privileged enough to receive opportunity and risky enough to take them. I believe it’s in my willingness to say yes first, and figure out the how later, that has led my life down a unique path that has created a story a younger me couldn’t dream up.
Luke, 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?
I’ve been a freelance creative (video, photo, animation, graphic design, event production, live video mixing…) since 2008, getting my start with confounding a media collective during my undergraduate studies. While working as a PA on my first music video, Daniel Myers, another PA pitched me on the idea for Gnarly Enterprises (GE) that he and Sergio Acosta were dreaming up. Loving the idea, I started pulling in my network of young creatives. Within just a few months we had 50 members and were producing music videos and live events supporting the music, art, and food scenes in Kansas City. A year later one of the members of GE got a PA gig for a discovery channel show, and let me know during a shoot the night before his gig that he wasn’t going to be able to make it. The next morning I got a ride across the city to be dropped off in his place. After wandering through the hotel the production was based in, I found the point of contact, let him know that a position was opening up and that I was there to fill it. I got that job, was elevated to lead PA and camera assistant, and was able to help the production fill more positions as needed with my collective members.
Through my final year of undergrad the production company from the discovery channel job returned a few times to Kansas City, offering me spots as production coordinator and camera operator, and the day after graduating college called (during another music video shoot) to offer me a travel job in remote Alaska. Two months later I was living in a native village on the west coast of AK working on another show.
During that first time in Alaska, I spent my free time working on my own art, which drew the attention of the producers who hired me to make the 3D logos for the start of the show. During this shoot, I also snuck into the gear room one night to figure out a robotic camera system they had rented but no one could get to work. I was fascinated and realized it worked on a similar key point interface as the animations I was working on. Showing the camera crew the next morning a working robot, I was quickly made the camera assistant to the timelapse photographer on the crew beginning a new phase to my career and work.
I spent the next five years traveling three continents shooting timelapses and specialty cameras footage across three continents for some of the world’s largest brands. It became such a way of life that I gave away most of my belongings and moved into a 2 person backpacking tent in the remote wilderness of Alaska in 2015. Still being there when the snow started falling, I was offered the chance to caretaker a remote lodge for the winter. Now, I call that area home, but split my time between there and work.
I currently am finishing my MFA at UMaine where I have been active with the Climate Change Institute and establishing Artistic Research collaborations with the sciences.
Through my story I’ve learned that a willingness to say yes first and worry later can put you in some tricky positions, but also leaves you standing in places that most living creatures will never get to experience, I’ve done things I never dreamt possible, and I’ve learned useful skills I never had considered. The body is programmed to survive, and as long as it’s still moving there’s still opportunity for risk, and the risk of not seeing opportunity.
I’m bad at business because that is not the marker I use to gauge success. My clients come to me because they are either looking for a unique solution to a difficult problem (location, budget, lacking concept…) or because they hadn’t even considered needing me until meeting me. What I offer is a way of finding a process that meet the specific situation I am in, rather than working to achieve predetermined outcomes, because where’s the ethic and creativity in that? I teach what I know as a way to help others find their place in the world, as I did with my tent in AK, and to find more ways to approach communicating to groups who don’t speak the same language (or jargon).
In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?
Creativity is not the output, it is the process that generates the output. Every form of problem solving is creative and full of human choices. Being a creative means interrupting the patterns of expectation and prediction to find nuanced and specialized solutions for specific and unique issues clients have. Following step by step rules and predetermining what is to be made removes creativity from making. Mess up as much as you can and find what’s new, interesting, and good with each mistake, then try again while intentionally recreating that mistake.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
I’m currently unlearning that what artists do is unique. Everyone who is working to survive, maintain, and improve life is in a constant act of discovery. Discovery is the unexpected that breaks the current model for knowing and producing objects and symbols that communicate, support, and serve. It is the willingness to move the boundaries in new ethical ways that set most artists apart, intentionally breaking the tradition to redefine the conventional moral value.
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Image Credits
Johnny Aguirre