Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Brian Nolte. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Alright, Brian thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Are you happy as a creative professional? Do you sometimes wonder what it would be like to work for someone else?

So I picked this question because I have a regular job and it’s been a big change in my approach to creative work in the past few years.

For the longest time I was trying to figure out how to make money with my photography and had little success. In college I just imagined that I would find my way into the gallery scene and be able to make work and people would just buy it and that was it. That wasn’t really working so I started thinking about who actually paid for photography and how I could connect what I wanted to make with people who wanted it, and I saw that people pay for pictures of people they know be it family pictures or promotional pictures. So I started photographing people as much as I could. But this was hard for me because I can have large swings in my extroversion. I find a lot of self satisfaction from making a good portrait but a lot of that comes from the pride in simply overcoming my self-doubt and anxiety around approaching someone for a photo.

I’ve made a lot of photos of people that I like but I can probably count on one hand the amount of times i’ve been paid to make photographs of people that I was actually happy with. Self promotion is not easy for me and I think I do what a lot of people do, is that if I like the project I haggle with myself until I’m essentially working for free.

Having a regular job is nice in that I don’t question what it’s worth. I demand that I get paid for all of the work that I do and won’t do the work if i’m not getting paid. I think this mentality is crucial to being a professional in whatever your field but it took me to have a regular job to learn it.

I have less time for photography but I don’t need to make money from photography and I don’t do anything that I don’t want to do. My role models in photography seem to be able to make money doing what they want, and I might make it there in the future, but for now I have had to pick between making money and doing what I want, which is fine with me.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I’m a photographer that got into it by way of skateboarding as a kid. I don’t really know what kept me doing it other than it never stops being a challenge. Photography is incredibly easy in it’s current era which I think makes good photography incredibly hard.

I’m a project photographer in that I think of the work that i’m making to exist as a body of work, typically destined for a book or a show. I like making work that tells a story or explains something. I’m currently working on making images of Los Angeles, where I live, and trying to talk about water in the city. I spend a lot of time reading about the history of the city and then go hunting for images that inspire me. I get excited about the Los Angeles aqueduct and all of the reservoirs throughout the city. I get excited about William Mulholland and the numerous dam failures throughout the city’s history. And then I start looking at the LA river and learn about its history and learn how it was made concrete after one too many floods and how it used to change path every hundred years or so but now never again.

So I like learning about this kind of thing and then I try to make a picture of an idea that I now have. And of course the idea that I have doesn’t ever exactly exist in the world, and even if it does, fitting it into a photograph is a tricky thing. I’ll use maps and try to pre-visualize an image based on what I can see on a map, and then when I actually get there, I have to figure it out all over again.

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

I think the only thing that has ever kept me doing anything for a long time is that it’s fun. It’s not all fun all of the time but making pictures is generally fun. One of my favorite things about photography is that it’s an excuse to be places that you aren’t invited and for some reason, as long as you act innocent enough, people don’t seem to mind. When I was a kid skateboarding we used to trespass a lot. I always really liked hoping fences and going into empty schools or whatever. There aren’t a lot of ways to get away with trespassing as an adult but art is one of them.

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

I think that the most rewarding part of being a creative is that it’s something to do. There’s a lot of things to do out there but making things always seems to be the best use of time. A lot of people seem to spend a lot of time consuming other people’s things, which I guess is good for the people who made the thing, but I always feel best at the end of the day when I came up with an idea and did a thing myself.

Contact Info:

• Website: bnolte.com
• Instagram: @brianolte

Image Credits
They’re all mine.