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

Nicholas, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love for you to start by sharing your thoughts about the pros and cons of family businesses

By the nature of photography and videography, our business is well suited to be run as a family unit. MindOverMedia Studios first began as one person and a camera. Since then, myself and my girlfriend Jada have formed a partnership which extends from the business to our personal life. Both photo and video services are greatly impacted by the amount of people helping; the more we have helping, the more we can accomplish for our artistic vision. Our business is also highly affected by our family life and children involved. It is a way we can teach dedication, passion, and real world lessons to our kids. For us personally, we have seen the oldest child take an interest and he has shown us a lot of creativity and expression. We can use our business as a place to encourage and use all of our artistic insights.

While running MindOverMedia Studios as a partnership and family enterprise takes a great deal of hard work, dedication, communication and compromise, it has still been a rewarding journey that continues to grow from a strong foundation that was always already there, formed by our long term relationship and family unit. We are dedicated to our craft, our clients, and our family, and we are excited to see what the future holds.

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

My name is Nicholas Evanko. From a very young age my father had always encouraged and cultivated my love for music and film. Some of my earliest memories are that of listening to every Beatles album, and watching some of the greatest classic films. This instilled a love of cinema and other art forms such as music and photography very early on in my life, and it went beyond a simple interest, it became part of my identity. I have always felt very fortunate to have known exactly what I wanted to do with my life from that age on. I noticed later in my life, especially towards the end of high school, that most of the kids my age didn’t have that luxury. I had a direction, I was going to be a filmmaker and that would begin with getting into Robert Morris University.

This was where I learned my craft. From the aesthetics of film, the art of lighting and composition, to the history of early cinema. These were all areas of study. I even took an entire course dedicated to the James Bond Film Franchise and the effects it had on cinema and popular culture. This was also where I found a relatively new area of study, 35mm film photography which got me more interested in stills photography along with my videography studies. We even had our own dark room and film developement. By my senior year I had accomplished a multitude of projects including our senior project short film, “Downstream”. My friend and I were also both lucky to have been selected to work with outside clients who would be facilitated by the school, such as Kenny Ross Toyota, and the Pittsburgh Public Artist and Sculptor James Simon, who we did promotional videos for.

In 2020 I had graduated with a Bachelors of Fine Arts, a Television and Filmmaking degree. As I thought about what I wanted to do with my degree, I was keen on the idea of having the freedom to express myself as an artist, as well as having a certain degree of creative control with the types of projects we do. I also wanted to try my hand at entrepreneurship. So I set out to start my own enterprise in photo and video services. It started out with getting a camera and building up some equipment. My partner Jada was involved in the local art scene in Altoona, doing art shows with other local vendors. I began shooting the shows she was vending in and we started getting a following with the local art scene and continued to photograph the events. Along with the art shows we began doing weddings, first for some family, then for some friends, and then other client couples down the road. Jada and I formed our partnership business under the name MindOverMedia Studios. The acronym of M.O.M.S. was also intentional as my own mother had always been a major supporter of our work and helped get the business operational.

Since then we have mainly focussed our efforts on Weddings, Events, Music and Portrait work. It was through one of the art show events that we became familiar with the local band; The PennSoulvanians, and we started attending and shooting more of their shows as well. This lead to us shooting other local bands and events like Activate Altoona, Levity Summer Fest and so many more. This helped us move into the music scene, shooting music videos and music event promo videos.

We are grateful for the community that welcomed us and helped us gain a following. We try and stay involved and give back to the community that has helped us grow. We work with some of these community leaders and help them showcase all the amazing events and work they do by taking photos and video to help spread the word on social media. We work with organizations such as the African American Heritage group and Altoona Art Untied and their work with the mental health community. We value our friends in these communities as they have all shown a great deal of support. We try and extend that value to all of our clients. It’s really important to us that we don’t just provide a service, we stand behind the community and try and support them as they have supported us through our growth as a business.

Photography and videography are extremely important in this day and age. They are both quickly becoming some of the most used means of consuming information. They can help identify ethics and ethos, build brand awareness, show off culture and personality, the list goes on. People are far more likely to watch a video than to read ads or other content. Dynamic photography and videography can really help make those connections our clients are after, as they mediums of a universal language. The possibilities are endless. Both photo and video help preserve the best moments of our lives, this extends into our wedding photo and video services as well as our portrait work. There isn’t anything that can compare to capturing the happiest moments of peoples lives.

We believe in forming lasting relationships with our clients as well as providing professional services that are going to help them grow. This has always been our goal and part of our identity. No matter what kind of work we are involved in, we hold all of it in the highest regard. We believe in our work and stand behind it. We put everything we have into it, every time, and truly love what we do. It really is a very exciting time for these two art forms, and we truly believe in our art.

All in all this endevour has been one of the most exciting and rewarding times in our lives, building something from the ground up, staying involved with the community, making the connections and lasting impressions. We want all of our clients to know we will continue to push ourselves creatively and technically to create the best work we possibly can.

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

For me the most rewarding aspect of being a creative is helping my clients bring their creative vision to life, with projects such as music video’s where we get to work along side other very talented and creative individuals such as bands like The PennSoulvanians. We were able to represent their group and their brand by giving them a boost in overall visibility, and helping them reach a wider audience. This has been a highly rewarding on-going collaboration as we document their journey as a band, as we both grow our businesses and brands along side one another.

We have also had the opportunity to collaborate with the production cast and crew of 39 Tigers, and business owner Richard McGarvey of McGarvey’s Lounge to film our very first feature length live production of The Great American Trailer Park Musical, which is nearing completion. Capturing their artistic vision and working with other creatives has been a lot of fun, and with every major project, we learn a great deal which we can apply to our future projects.

We also find. helping our clients capture the most beautiful moments of their lives with our wedding and event photography and videography work. As we said before there is nothing quite like being able to capture those moments, it is highly rewarding and humbling at the same time to be trusted capturing such important life moments, and creating wedding films that they can keep forever to relive those memories.

And with our event projects, capturing community events such as The African American Heritage Festival, Activate Altoona Music Festival, Art Untied events, and working with other faces of the community like Jackie and Typhani Russo with their Bookworms Against Bullies Campaign. All these projects keep us closely involved with the local community that we respect and care for, while doing something we truly love and are passionate about. It really has been an amazing ride so far and we are excited to continue working with all of our client base.

Have you ever had to pivot?

When I first came to Altoona I began a part-time job working at the Altoona GetGo. This was supped to remain a part-time position while I worked on starting a business and quickly turned into a full-time management position that lasted three years. I realized that it was going to be an unbelievable amount of work to be able to build a portfolio and client base, and without dedicated a great deal of time to, planning, shooting, editing and communicating with clients, the business was never going to get off the ground. Running a photography and videography business is 30 % art, 70% business. And I had the art part down, the business part not so much. So there was a lot for us to learn, and Jada has proven to be indespensible on the business end of things, and helping work with and gain a larger clientele base, while I put in the hundreds of hours dedicated to post production and editing.

This was a very turbulent time as I did not have the client base to fully support myself, and yet if I didn’t take the chance and put in the work, it wasn’t ever going to get to that point. I made the decision to take the leap of faith and leave GetGo to dedicate 100% of my time to the business. This never could have happened without my Co-Owner Jada, as well as the support from my own family. My mom and dad played a big part in helping with the start-up costs, as it took thousands of dollars to invest in and acquire the equipment needed to do this type of work.

There are a lot of people who made MindOverMedia Studios a possibility, and I never could have done this on my own, and never could have scaled up the quality of our work as quickly as we did without them. We are unbelievably grateful and fortunate to have the support from our friends and family. This has been an absolute dream come true to be able to do what I love to do for a living.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://mindovermediastudios.passgallery.com/professional?#|client|clientgalleries
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Mindovermediastudios/photos_albums
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAPNB38K49E5JxKxPlu0b5A

Image Credits
Image Two: Nicholas Evanko Image three: Black Magic Burlesque & Circus Productions Image Four: Mother of Nicholas Evanko, Sarah Thrower Image Five: Jada Oswald Co-Owner Image 6 & 7 The PennSoulvanians & Lindsay Reilly of The PennSoulvanians