We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Austin Coyer. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Austin below.

Austin, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Earning a full time living from one’s creative career can be incredibly difficult. Have you been able to do so and if so, can you share some of the key parts of your journey and any important advice or lessons that might help creatives who haven’t been able to yet?

I am officially a full time photographer, but for many years that wasn’t the case. I worked at a movie theatre, I did dishes, I delivered pizza. None of them were particularly enjoyable jobs, but I made it work. When I decided I wanted to pursue photography it started with friends and family. A friend of mine in college knew I was taking a photography class and asked if I could take some photos of him and his girlfriend. I think I did that one for free. I just needed experience so I didn’t mind. It was slow at first. I did maybe two or three shoots my first year. I didn’t think I would ever be making real money. I was just having fun with it.

Then my wife connected me with her work place and things started to change. I did some headshots for the employees and ended up doing work for them for over a year. I was still delivering pizza on the side and picking up one or two photo gigs every month. It was a decent side hustle. Slowly but surely the business grew through word of mouth and social media.

Nowadays I tend to do 4-5 jobs a month for my business while also working for a local real estate photography company. I’ve done shoots for big companies like New Holland Brewing and Home Depot. I’m doing a job I actually enjoy and I’m happier than I’ve ever been. That friend from college who started it all is now married to his girlfriend, and I’m currently in the process of editing a photoshoot I did with them and their two children. Writing it all out now, it’s crazy to see how much things can change in 7 years. I’m incredibly grateful for the life I’ve been given and for all of the people who have supported me along the way.

I’m not the worlds most successful photographer. Heck, I’m not even the most successful photographer in Grand Rapids. Part of me thinks I could have been more motivated. The people who spend the most time working on the thing they love are those who turn out the most successful. So if you are truly passionate about something, just go for it. Put as much energy as you can into that thing. There will always be people who have a higher capacity for passion and motivation, but you can’t compare yourself to them. Just do the best you can with what you have and enjoy the process. It’s going to take a long time to get where you want to go, but it’s worth it.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

My name is Austin Coyer, and I’m a photographer and artist. Getting into this my goal was never to make a business taking photos. It was about the art. I love taking a photo and somehow pulling emotion out of the world simply by looking at it from a new angle. It’s magic. It’s the thing that really matters to me – the thing that makes me mad if I see someone else not taking it seriously. It’s what I’m doing with my life and what I want to keep doing until the day I die. But that part of my art isn’t the most successful right now. That’s partly because social media algorithms don’t focus on photography anymore and partly because I’m ignorant of other avenues I can take to promote my art. I have ideas. I could submit my work to competitions or magazines. I could rent a gallery and host an event. I could do a more public display of my art to get people talking. But the truth is I’ve spent so much time over the past few years just trying to get by financially that I haven’t had the time or energy to make a name for myself in the creative photography world.

So for now I pay the bills and hone my craft through a different kind of photographic art – client work. My business is called Coyer Photography and Media (yes, I have openings available). I love what I do. I find deep joy and satisfaction in making people, products, or pets look as good as they can. Who would complain about taking photos instead of working a 9-5? I feel like I have a really unique style, and people hire me for that reason. I treat a headshot or a wedding as seriously as I would treat any piece of art I work on. I like to focus on the details. That means I don’t just throw a filter on a shot and call it a day. I take time removing lint, smoothing skin, and painting in light and shadow. I want every shot I deliver to my clients to feel like a work of art.

When I find a minute of free time, I spend it on my personal work. Right now, and probably for the foreseeable future, my big project is something I’m calling The Photodex. I put a subject on a dark background and shoot it in as high of detail as possible. It’s like I’m collecting assets of the natural world. So far I have shots of spiders, leaves, mushrooms, and insects. But the goal is to expand it as far as I can. Hopefully in a few years I’ll have enough to open an exhibit.

But it doesn’t end there. I have a billion hobbies I’m working on at any given time. Right now I’m learning piano in hopes of releasing an album at some point. I’m eventually going to open an online shop to sell photo prints, clothes, stickers, and anything else I can imagine. There’s an overabundance of projects I can work on. You can go to www.coyerco.com to see what I’m working on. Currently it’s just a place to show off my client work, but I want to make it a hub for all of my art within the next few months.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.

I think a lot of people, including fellow photographers, think that art is just about creating something beautiful and that’s it. But for me it’s really about pushing the boundaries of emotion. If you create something because you saw someone else create something similar and you were inspired by it, I don’t necessarily think that’s art. It can be beautiful, it can create emotion, but it’s still missing something deeply important. I think the best art created out of a void. It doesn’t come from trying to create something you think people will want to see. It comes from somewhere else. Call it a muse, call it the present moment, call it whatever you like. But it’s not a forceful act. It’s the byproduct of merging oneself with their craft, not knowing what’s coming out on the other side. Reading this now I sound extremely pretentious, but it’s true. Art is the difference between a song that makes you cry and a song you’ve heard a million times on pop radio. Exploring that boundary between emotional expectation and emotional surprise is what I live for.

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

I think we need new avenues for sharing art. Social media has done a great job in the past, but lately it’s been failing. Art needs a curious and passionate community to thrive. Years ago the internet did a great job at that, but greed and profit has gotten in the way. The executives at Instagram or Facebook or even Tik-Tok have one thing in mind – how much time users spend on their app. The more we scroll, the more ads we see and the more money they make. To best facilitate this goal, they create algorithms that push certain types of content and hide others. For example, Instagram used to be an app for photos, and it worked great at harboring a supportive community of creatives. Then Instagram saw that Tik-Tok was more successful than them and decided they needed to compete. So they shifted the focus of their app to video. They created Instagram Reels and pushed them into everyone’s feed whether we wanted it or not. Before long everyone was tailoring their content to what would perform best on the algorithm rather than what truly inspired them.

To truly create a supportive community for artists, it needs to go back to being about the artist and their art. I could spend a week taking and editing the most perfect photo, but if you’re just looking at it for five seconds on a tiny screen before you scroll past a million other photos and ads, it doesn’t make much of an impact. We need art-centric events, business, city planners, schools, and media. Art can’t be limited to a phone screen. It has to be around us everywhere we go.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.coyerco.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/coyerco
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/coyerco
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/austincoyer/
• Twitter: www.twitter.com/coyerco