We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Alex Collins. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Alex below.
Alex, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Are you able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen?
So I am not full-time working freelance with my creative work as of right now. I am currently doing some part time work and filling the rest of my schedule with creative freelance work. Going full-time freelance is a very difficult task and I was nowhere near ready to do so, it was more or less the only option I had at the time.
In February 2023 I was laid-off of my full-time job working in a production studio for almost 2 years, creating social media ads and web content for a variety of big brands. I really loved the job and the co-workers I had and learned a lot from them, but it was time to move on. Although very sour and confused at first, the lay-off allowed me to re-evaluate and figure out what I personally wanted to do for work going forward. I first spent months and countless hours trying to find a full-time employment opportunity but since every-other company was laying off their employee’s as well and “restructuring” as they would call it, I was left wondering if full-time employment was really right for me. Being unemployed for 6-months made me realize how nice it was to have my own schedule and make my own hours. I ended up getting a part-time job somewhat related to photo/video production and decided to fill the rest of my schedule when I wasn’t working part time, with freelance work. From that point on, while still applying to jobs here and there, I mainly focused on putting my energy into working freelance as much as possible.
I definitely was not prepared to take the steps I did to work freelance and did not have my finances in order either, but having the part time work as a safety blanket was for sure the right move to get me started. I am still working on building up my network and filling my schedule here and there, but it takes time. So to be able to work freelance as much as I can but also work part time for some financial stability, it is a happy medium that works for me and my family as of right now.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
My name is Alex, I am a Cinematographer and Photographer based in North New Jersey and my journey started way back when I was around 8 years old. My mom had one of those flip-go cameras back in the mid 2000’s when youtube was born and slowly growing. Me and my friends would always do stunts and other dumb performances around the neighborhood and I thought about how cool it would be to record me and my friends doing these stunts and sharing it with the world. I started up a youtube channel and starting making very simple videos of me and my friends doing dumb stunts and hurting ourselves for others entertainment. Although we never got many views or got famous from doing so, making these videos scratched an itch for me I never knew I had. Since youtube was fairly new at this time, there wasn’t many tutorials online to be able to learn how to video edit and create amazing videos. So I went on amazon and ordered a copy of Sony Vegas and started to teach myself how to edit through experimentation. From there, I started learning how to edit better videos and made skits, commentary’s, and more! I took classes in high school and college as well as taught myself more through youtube and the internet as it grew and over time got better and polished my craft. By senior year of high school, I knew I wanted to work in video production and photography and be my own boss and work on projects I believed in.
Through my business, I provide visual story-telling to help a client/business to explain what they do, why they do it, etc. to help create a polished product that customers and individuals can see and learn all about that business through one video. Though it does depend as I do a lot of freelance work under others, I do work for businesses/individuals myself as much as I can as well. While I would mainly like to have my own production business and work with clients myself, it is not always the case and I end up receiving a lot of work from others. So as of right now I am a mix of a gig worker that is hired out for labor on productions, as well as managing and shooting photo/video productions for my own clients as well. It is a lot to juggle but has helped me learn a lot and meet a lot of great people.
Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?
A resource I feel I have missed out on is just networking and actually working in the field with people. I went to school hoping to gain more knowledge in the field and experience but through teaching myself at an early age and being hungry to learn more, I ended up being way ahead of everyone else in class all through school. So school ended up not being very helpful to me. I did what I could to try to get the most out of it, such as joining clubs and making friends, talking with professors and going to job fairs, but non of it really helped. I continued to teach myself as much as possible and do jobs hear and their to practice and get better, but it wasn’t until my first career job that I was able to meet that were much more experienced than me and took me under their wing to teach me a lot more about production than I ever knew before.
What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?
It’s rewarding to me when I am able to be creative and tell a story that resonates with others. Whether that is a full-blown production about a product, or doing my own photo-series in my spare time that I plan on making into a book. Photo and video as a visual medium is so open-ended and their is never-ending information that allows you to learn something new every day. I love learning and finding out new things, so being creative and in this industry allows me to stimulate my brain in this way. I’m able to experiment or try and replicate someones work just by looking at it to find out how they did it, it’s amazing how open ended it is to be able to create things for yourself and others, especially if they want to pay you for it!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.ajcphotographee.com/
- Instagram: @ajcphotographee
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexjamescollins/
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/@ajcphotographee?si=rboAPMZkPZxvYtju
Image Credits
Alex Collins