We recently connected with Luis Tarin and have shared our conversation below.

Luis, appreciate you joining 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?

As a full time photographer and cinematographer, it’s easy to get caught up on the belief that your equipment, social media following, or network is what makes you stand out from others. If the internet was shut down tomorrow, would you still be successful?

The reality is that finding your unique perspective of the world around you and learning how to incorporate that into your own visual style is that which sets you up for success.

The only way to grow as an artist is to create, from the time you wake up to fall asleep, and there is no way around it.

Those that invest many years of time and effort into really learning all aspects of the craft, educating themselves, creating their visual style and highlighting the perspective they want to show the world are those whose works are remembered and that are successful.

It can be done with something as little as an iPhone and someone walking down the street, the stars rarely will align for you, and those imperfections that may be in your work are things that give it its beauty.

Luis, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

My name is Luis Tarin and I’m 27 years old. I’ve had an interest in photography all my life, I loved the idea of getting an opportunity to view the world through someones eyes through a photo that they took, getting to appreciate their choices of lens, composition, and focus to capture a certain subject or detail to make a work of art as unique as a fingerprint.

It wasn’t until I was about 16 years old that I started really investing time and effort into my photos. For many years I couldn’t afford a camera and relied on my iPhone to take photos, during this time I was really able to establish my visual style shooting skateboarding, BMX, and street photography which made the eventual transition to shooting with a DSLR effortless.

Naturally, my self taught photography skills grew themselves into a pursuit of cinematography, I found myself with an interest in working in both mediums which are in many ways alike and I had the desire to learn more as more clients became interested in working with me while I balanced finishing high school.

Eventually as taking many hundreds of photos turned into thousands, I was fortunate enough to attend a university to pursue a B.A. in Film Production while working full-time. Getting to study the history, important figures, and technical aspect of the craft really illustrated to me that conveying certain emotions or provoking thoughts within your work combined with your perspective is what makes films and photos memorable for your audience. Getting to learn the history of your medium helps to establish a deeper appreciation of those who came before you, growing your analytical skills of visual media released presently, and helps to draw from larger sources of inspiration which you can incorporate in your own work.

By this time being enrolled in college I was fortunate enough to work for companies such as Redbull, Nike, DIOR, and Bank of America, record labels such as Atlantic Records, Def Jam, and G.O.O.D Music and directly for artists such as Kanye West, Desiigner, SMILEZ, Tash, and Melody Thornton.

Upon gradating from college I founded my production company ANGEL, which serves as a company which offers cinematography, photography, and marketing services for art, music and commercial clients. What sets us apart from the other companies is that we don’t make things just to look cool or flashy, but our mission is to create work branching across mediums that can serve as independent pieces of art with real longevity to them.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on NFTs. (Note: this is for education/entertainment purposes only, readers should not construe this as advice)

I have a strong for dislike for NFT’s that I’m vocal about. I think the world around us is slowly losing an appreciation for art as social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok have focused on photography and film as money making trends instead to meaningful things. NFT’s like Bored Apes selling themselves as “unique items” are another way for people to get rich off of something while it was a trend, and while we constantly heard about NFT’s as the “new future” in 2020/2021 its practically vanished now heading into 2024.

Physical works of art and you can see and hold are what people should be buying and investing in, its something that serves to inspire others or start a conversation. Its a item with real longevity that will always be around.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

On the other note the reach social media has is incredible, getting to meet people that love your work or use your photos for things like their phone background or for decoration in their homes is something that I feel is really rewarding to me. I love the idea that people may draw on my work for inspiration in their own lives.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://luisangeltarin.com
• Instagram: http://instagram.com/luisangeltarin
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/luisangeltarin

Image Credits
All photos are the sole intellectual property of Angel Productions Co. LLC