We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Mike Jablonski a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Mike thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. It’s easy to look at a business or industry as an outsider and assume it’s super profitable – but we’ve seen over and over again in our conversation with folks that most industries have factors that make profitability a challenge. What’s biggest challenge to profitability in your industry?

Yea! For myself, this industry is tough to make a profit in. Like I’ve been doing photography for seven years now, and just after COVID, I actually started getting money from it, so about three years ago, around that time, I started doing video as well, so not even that long. Many people think that I’m making a lot of income from these shows or events that I’m at, but in reality, I’m probably barely making any profit. For example, a few years ago, I was working more with content creators, and the thing about creators and streamers doing these big level events, they tend to underpay us creatives 0r even just not pay us for the work that we are giving them as it’s the content for them, sometimes even promotion for them and for them to not even want to pay or let alone give credit so that we can make income after that. It’s a very cutthroat industry as a creative, and sometimes I struggle whether I should even continue doing this when there are so many people in it.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Yeah, my name is Mike, but most people know me as Mikey, but I do concert photos, video highlights for shows, even tour with artists and bands and even the odd bigger level event, from award shows and the odd creator event! The funny thing for, how I got into this was just growing up in the country of Canada, we had a lot of animals in our yard, so I got given a little Powershot camera for I think a Christmas or a birthday gift and started taking photos around the yard, like photos of owls, deer, coyotes, etc. So, maybe around 15-16 years old, I got to go to my first rock concert, and that was Nickelback, so I brought that camera to it and then started taking photos from my seat from the first song to the last song, and it was a blast! I think right around grade 11 or 12 I went to more concerts, got to see Skillet, Nickelback again and I think the first artist that shared my photo which was my cell phone at the time which was a moto g4 plus and that was Papa roach which was crazy to think and even them crediting just someone like me was crazy for such a large band at the time.

So after high school got a DSLR and ever since then got into the concert/event space and started to capture local artists/bands coming into the city withmy vision of what I see at these shows or events, and try my best to get as sharp photos as we can! Then I started finding out about these filters for the cameras off like Temu, eBay and that and built it into my photography that people think it’s Photoshop, but in reality, all my crazy stuff I do is out of the camera, as people think I’m the halo filter guy, but I’m really not haha. But that’s what sets me apart from a lot of creatives, people think I’m this wizard at photoshop, I tend to bring sharp photos, take a lot of photos and bring them to these clients than other creatives, and all these crazy effects I do from the halo filters/crazy effects are out of camera, I always feel you’ve got to capture photos as naturally as you can.

The main thing I’m proud of and grateful for is just being here on this earth and capturing what I love, and meeting all these people. Like getting to capture Norman Reedus/Keanu Reeves for an award show, getting to go on tour, getting to be on stage, and capturing a big rock band in my home arena. Like these things, I’m forever grateful that I got these opportunities and people trusting me to capture these things for you. Everyone can tell from my work on the things I can produce, bring to the table, and bring new things that no one has seen before for that event, show or even tour! I’m always learning new things, and that’s even for video, as we always want to try and get better at our craft!

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?

I think this also goes for creatives and non creatives as well, you are going to get a lot of people giving you flak for what you are doing. No one told me when I started, the number of people in the creative field who don’t want to see you make it and want to find ways to just bring you down is a lot. Like, if you’re in the rock/metal space, I’ll tell you, probably your favourite creatives you are following right now, are gatekeeping jobs to the new folks in the scene that I know are doing way better than my self that should be on tour, which is wild to me, you want others to thrive, then why are you not letting them have a shot, have chance. Any time I see a job or a post I see pop up in another city from someone posting on socials, I will tend to find creatives I know in that city and send it to them, or if I know I’m not based in this country and need someone for a tour, I will send it to them. For the non creatives, you don’t understand how much just a simple comment on a post of liking that show or event/sharing to a story or a feed can do to someone like myself or others. Like for me, when I see someone share my work, it means hey, I actually did great for this, I don’t see that anymore, then I just contradict myself thinking I didn’t do good. It can actually sometimes even get us jobs to places that we didn’t think we could get, cause possibly that person follows you and is like Oh this guy is great let me hire him or share him to that person who needs someone for that gig! Share and credit your creatives as much as you possibly can, as it’s a struggle for us to get seen in this digital space now.

Looking back, are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

I think the best place to learn any resource now for being a creative is YouTube. Sure, you can take a class or another creative workshop, which I’m all for supporting that but also a lot of the resources that people don’t realize you can all get on the internet now. Especially with the day of age with yes, ChatGPT and that to help you jump start something like this now. It’s not that great for the marketing side of things that I’ve seen. But for something to help on what camera to get, what to do for this photo, how to edit it like this, the internet is your friend!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://mikeyphotograph.mypixieset.com/
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/mikey.photograph
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mikeyphotographs
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-j-0a9747162/
• Twitter: https://x.com/jablonskimikey

Image Credits

The shot that was taken of me please credit: Dwayne Larson