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

Hi Brett , thanks for joining us today. The first dollar you earn is always exciting – it’s like the start of a new chapter and so we’d love to hear about the first time you sold or generated revenue from your creative work?

The first piece of art I ever sold was in high school. I was taking college-level art classes at the time and had just finished a chalk pastel piece that grabbed the attention of my friend’s parents and they offered me $100 for it. To say I was shocked would be an understatement. I had no idea that anyone could be so interested in my work, much less offer to pay what seemed like so much for it at the time. I was beyond grateful and honored.

Brett , before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Not having much as a kid growing up in a very rural farming community, I spent my very early years outside exploring the land around my home, taking photos with my uncle’s Polaroid camera, and drawing/ painting on my plastic Fischer Price easel in my room. Looking back I find it so incredible that all of those things had such a profound and lasting impact on my life. I eventually moved to a larger public school system, played multiple sports, and continued exploring multiple art mediums such as charcoal drawings, oil painting, and dark room film development. I spent a portion of my senior summer with some of my graduating classmates, teachers, and chaperones on a foreign language trip to Italy and Greece where I was gifted my first real DSLR digital camera to take with me and returned with almost 1,000 photos that I quickly turned into Koch Select Imagery. More so than any other medium, photography has always stuck with me and I truly enjoy capturing all of the beauty our world has to offer in order to share that with others. My photography specialty is black and white with a focus on landscapes with my heroes being Clyde Butcher and Ansel Adams, but I have enjoyed over the years branching out and exploring many other formats and subjects as well.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

By far the most rewarding aspect of being a photographer is giving people visual access to things they may have never seen before, or may not ever have a chance to see. There are few things I appreciate more in photography than seeing that wow moment on peoples face when they see a photo they like for the first time.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

My goal in photography is to inspire. I hope that I am able to capture and create images that invoke a sense of wonder and excitement in someone so that they are invigorated to find their own places or passions that give them that feeling as well. We get so easily lost in the day-to-day and often negative state of the world, it’s easy to forget how much beauty is all around us.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.KochSelectImagery.com
• Instagram: @bkranging
• Facebook: Koch Select Imagery