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

Caleb, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.

When I was a little kid, I pretty much lived off a diet of National Geographic and PBS nature documentaries. I would sit and watch recorded episodes of Wild America on old VHS tapes over and over again until I knew them by heart. That little kid sitting in the living room didn’t have big dreams of fame or and fortune, which is good, because I still don’t have either. More simply, that kid just wanted to walk around outside and act like he was the second coming of Daniel Boone. That was the simplicity of being young. Not having the pressure of life bearing down on you. As you grow older, you slowly start to realize that real life is not just watching nature documentaries and running around the woods with a stick smacking trees. There are these things called jobs and money that are apparently extremely handy to have.

Life has a weird way of winding you back and forth from new and old places. That little kid with the stick and coonskin cap grew up. The dream of wandering around the woods had been safely packed away, replaced with the generic life goal of getting a college degree and finding a generic business job. For some ungodly reason, I thought that was what you were supposed to do in life. It wasn’t until I actually graduated and went into a corporate job that I realized I had the right idea all those years ago sitting on the floor watching David Attenbourough. At that point, I was taking some truly horrendous photos. I’m talking about maxing out those saturation sliders, upping the exposure to look like a nuclear explosion was happening in the distance, and cranking that clarity filter like I was trying to see how far it could go before god himself admitted he had made a mistake. I then proceeded to call those abominations that I created art, and it haunts me to this day.

Even then, I knew that if I could figure out this whole photography thing, I could just maybe get back to walking around the woods, occasionally smacking a tree with a stick, and living that younger me’s dream. So I did.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Howdy, I’m Caleb Johnson, a photographer based out of the great state of North Dakota. I’m not sure if I would go as far as calling myself an artist, but I do point my camera at some pretty neat stuff in nature occasionally. I’ve been taking photos pretty much off and on since I was a wee lad, but it wasn’t until about 8 years ago that I actually started taking photos that I’d say didn’t belong tossed straight into a burning abyss. Since then I mostly just wander around aimlessly outdoors with a camera and my dogs. Really living the midwestern dream one prairie at a time.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

Life has a way of pressuring you through to these designated places where you think the normal person would go, and what the typical job should be. For me that was going to college, getting a degree, and working in one of those good ole cubicle jobs with everyone else. At the time, it seemed like the safe and easy path. The one where you stay in your comfort zone, and slide monotonously through this weird little journey of life. As it turns out, that wasn’t a great fit. You get this sense of just barely treading water, every day turns into the day before it and there isn’t a whole lot you can do about it. So like any sensible person, I decided that I should become “creative” with absolutely no experience or education. Through the power of sheer bone headedness and a mild case of desperation, I was able to switch career paths, and with an ungodly amount of luck move into jobs where I mostly play around with cameras all day and occasionally make pretty pictures on a computer.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

There is no real goal or mission honestly. I guess in a sense, the closest it ever becomes to a mission is to do something that the small kid sitting on the floor 25 years ago, binge watching nature documentaries, would be proud of. It’s an easy way to look at life, but it works. There was never any goal of doing this to become something special or to create something that other people like, It’s just a simple pursuit of happiness.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.straightouttafargo.com
• Instagram: @straight.outta.fargo
• Other: Vero: vero.co/straightouttafargo

Image Credits
Caleb Johnson