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

Evan , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you open up about a risk you’ve taken – what it was like taking that risk, why you took the risk and how it turned out?

My name is Evan Clark, I am a 17-year-old and have a photography business. I started the business when I was a freshman in High School, in May of 2019. I started because we had just all gotten out of school because of the coronavirus and they sent everyone home. I had a lot of free time and was starting to get bored, and wanted to try something new. So I went out and found my parent’s camera that they did not use, and went to car shows with it. Started combining my two favorite passions/hobbies of being creative as well as enjoying cars, and started just snapping some photos and posting them on an Instagram I had made. After doing that for a while, a few people started to notice me, and then I got an email. That email was a person asking if I did photoshoots. At first, I was like what is a photoshoot, and then after that, the rest is history, started this continuous cycle of doing photoshoots, posting the pictures online, and slowly and slowly gaining more attention and traction just through Instagram and a few other socials. Kept on doing that until where I am today, where I’ve done numerous Photoshoots and worked with some major companies, and even explored a few aspects of videography.

The risk I took was just jumping in head first, solely because I was bored and wanted to try something new, and has turned into something that I never thought it would’ve turned into, a business doing the two things that love doing. I originally when I started had no idea how a camera worked. I had done a few quick YouTube searches but nothing extensive. So when I went to that first car show I just basically knew how to turn on the camera and how to use the auto feature. And then slowly after a while I did more and more research mainly on YouTube and learned how to use the manual mode, what white balance is, how to correctly expose a photo, etc. But when I started I knew nothing about how a camera works, let alone how to run a business. When I did that first photoshoot I was just jumping in head first, with little to no prior knowledge of what I was doing. And I am glad to say that it all worked out. In fact, better than I could have ever thought it would’ve.

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

As I said earlier, I got into what I do by combining two of my favorite hobbies. And the business side came almost on accident. I provide photography services, what does that mean? Let’s say you have a car, you enjoy taking pictures of your car, or you need to sell your car, or you just want a cool picture to hang up in your garage or in your house. That’s where I come in I come in to provide all that but on a professional level. Professional level means everything, Gear, Locations, Experience, Networkings, etc. I have all of that and am able to combine all of that for your benefit. Something I think that sets me apart from others is my age. I am only 17, which in the area that I am in is pretty young. I have a lot of roads left for me to drive on and have done many things normal 17-year-olds haven’t. Something I am proud of is the fact that I am able to continually grow and continually learn from my mistakes. With me being so young, there are a lot of things I don’t know/aren’t able to do, so I really take pride in the fact that I can accept defeat, or can understand that I have made a mistake but I’m able to bounce back from that and learn and change those things for the future.

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

One of the most rewarding things about being creative is when you have uploaded and edited all the shots from that night or day and I like what I’ve created. But what’s even better than me just liking them, Is when you send them over to the client and they are happy or love how they turned out. And then you go and post them and then everyone who sees them enjoys them and loves how they came out. So one of my favorite things is seeing everyone react and just making people happy with something that I have created.

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

You always hear, ‘just look it up”. That doesn’t always work. But when I first started doing photography, I didn’t want to have to pay for all these expensive classes just to learn what I wanted to learn. So I “just looked it up” and sure enough the default answer for anyone not knowing something was one of the best things I’ve ever done with my business. I learned so many things about gear and even about how to stay organized and how to run a successful business just online, mainly on YouTube. I still even use the internet to learn new things or if I ever have a question about anything I just “look it up” and I wish I knew how helpful it is sooner.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://mittenproject.myportfolio.com/
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/mittenproject?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064026975691

Image Credits
@mittenporject, or Evan Clark