We were lucky to catch up with Deep Doshi recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Deep thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?

For me, I started out with just my android phone camera to shoot videos and had very little idea on how to use a camera or editing videos/photos. Most of my learning early on came from YouTube as most creatives might state. It was hours of tutorials on how to use premiere pro (I started out mainly making vlogs) but as I learned more photography after I bought my first camera, I began to watch videos of Lightroom tools and how color wheels and sliders worked. If I could go back and learn again from scratch, I don’t think I would do much different to be honest. It’s a field that takes a lot of trial and error and you won’t find your so called “style” right away. I think the skills that are most essential are dedication and patience. If you are truly dedicated to learning something, not just photography, you have to learn to be patient. Patience helps you in many aspects like learning from critiques/feedback and also take in more information overall from my experiences. To follow off of that ironically, time is always the biggest obstacle to learning more; however, I started this creative journey during peak Covid times and had plenty of free time, but you get the idea.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Hello everyone reading this,

My name is Deep Doshi (or some might better know me as ShotFromDeep) and I am a freelance sports photographer/digital artist from the Chicago suburbs. I went to college at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign where I first began my creative career. I started out with creating college day in the life vlogs where I decided to pick up a real camera for the first time. Soon after I started those vlogs, the pandemic was in full effect. I didn’t have much interesting content to film for my vlogs but I did enjoy getting outside and taking as many pictures as I could just to learn. Eventually I ended up back on campus my sophomore year of college (2020-21) where my cousin and friends began to ask me to take photos of them which ultimately lead to some of my first paid photoshoots; mainly graduation photos and senior photos.

Quickly, I started to pick up more traction from friends of friends and eventually ended up applying for a sports photography role for the college basketball team and got the job. That was the start to my sports photography journey which led to me getting more and more opportunities. So, that’s a super quick summary of how much photography journey began (forever thankful to everyone that has supported since then).

To go further in depth, I enjoy the sports creative world the most (though I still love other work too); I love the competitive gameday atmosphere and telling stories from a singular frame. I have had the opportunity to work with Chicago’s very own Ayo Dosumnu, Liam Hendriks of the Chicago White Sox (now on the Red Sox), the Windy City Bulls, and many big music artists as well. So many opportunities have come out of simply cold messaging/emailing people and I am super thankful to have been able to capture so many cool events.

I believe that one thing that sets me apart from other sports creatives and photographers in general is my interest in experimenting with the intersection of photography, story telling, and a little sprinkle of graphic design. It is so intriguing to me the number of potential outcomes of one photo and how one can add to the story by layering other visuals. Of course, I still love my clean frames, but adding a little bit more flavor to an instagram carousel is something I like to do to engage my followers a little more. I love to make people feel like they are in my shoes at the event and be able to live vicariously through the images.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

This answer for me has changed significantly since I began my creative journey.

As a kid I wanted to be a famous YouTuber or I guess just famous in general. I think this mainly rooted from my troubles socially as an introvert when I was a kid. So, that lead me to start pursuing that YouTube dream which quickly faded (super glad I recorded those early years of college though, always good to have).

But I think that aspect of being famous had a deeper meaning (pun fully intended). As I got more experience and started sharing more of my work, I began to realize that people actually liked seeing my work. Other creatives started to message me saying that they are inspired my work and that was the most rewarding thing I had ever heard from someone. From a young age I wanted to be able to have a positive impact on other people. Sharing my work and continuing to create new content for my friends, creatives, and other people that I have never met before to get inspired from or just simply enjoy viewing became something that kept me going when I wasn’t feeling motivated.

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

This question is one that touches a little close to home. When I started out, as I mentioned earlier, I used to record content on my little old android phone. Not the best quality as one can imagine. But it didn’t stop me from getting started, and that’s the biggest roadblock for some people; not having the “best/right” equipment to do something. It took me a while to be able to save up enough money to buy my first camera and actually pull that trigger to make the investment. Looking back at it, it was definitely the best decision ever but in that moment, I was so scared of failure. I was new to college and needed to figure out how I can continue to contribute to my college funds but also put money towards this new found hobby of mine. At the end of the day, I would say, if you really want to start something, just start with the capital you have available to spend; don’t try to save big for the nicest camera, just get something to get you started, it will be worth it in the long run to start earlier.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://shotfromdeep.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shotfromdeep/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/deep-doshi2023/