We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Caleb Lessel. 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 how you got your first non-friend, non-family client. Paint the picture for us so we can feel the same excitement you felt on that day.
My first client was actually a huge surprise to me. I had just started my photography business and I had no idea how to get clients. Everything I found online was about ads and networking, but honestly I did not know how to do that. I have a friend named Ricardo who makes a full time income off of his media work and I asked him how he got started. He told me that it’s all about reaching out to people. I was just starting my business so there was no possible way people could find me organically. The only option was to find them and reach out. So I started DMing artists whose work I was interested in that were performing in Arkansas. To my surprise after my first round of messages, a folk band from Australia called The Heart Collectors responded to me and expressed interest in my work. They were super nice and told me they loved working with local people at the places they stopped for their shows. I was honestly surprised that they had responded to me so quickly and that it actually worked. I only had two photoshoots of friends under my belt before this, and now this band from across the world wanted to pay me to take their photos. It just goes to show how many opportunities you can get just by asking. Since then I have sent out hundreds of DMs and emails to tons of artists and have gotten to work with multiple GRAMMY winning artists and met so many amazing people through my photography.
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 started taking pictures at a very young age, my parents gave me a digital camera and I was obsessed with it. Honestly my pictures were awful but I loved taking them. I got a few books on photography around that time and learned some things about composition. Once I hit middle school I kind of gave up on photography until my senior year of high school where I would take pictures of my friends with my phone. One of my friends mom had run a photography business in the past and she saw my photos and told me they my work was good and that I could make some money taking pictures for people. I used my graduation money to buy a camera and a lens and started taking pictures with it. I haven’t looked back since. I knew that I wanted to do something with my photos that was creative and unique, I didn’t want to just take photos of families or seniors, so naturally I looked to the creative industry. I love music and I love photos so I thought why not combine the two. And that is how my business started. Since then I have worked with a ton of artists, some of them with GRAMMY’s, I’ve worked for some small clothing brands, done media for a historic surf shop, and in general just met so many cool people.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
I think the most important thing for me is networking on social media and over email. I reach out so so many people online about jobs and just doing cold sales to try to get the word out about my business. It can be very discouraging when it’s been a week or two without any serious responses or when I am consistently getting rejections, but I just have to remind myself all the amazing opportunities I have gotten by reaching out to people and where it has gotten me. I would say the biggest thing I’ve learned is to just keep trying no matter how many people reject you.
Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?
For me I am doing photography purely for the love of it. I could get a job that paid more and took less work, but it wouldn’t be something I loved. My goal is to meet people, have fun, and really capture the moment and the emotion of people and their stories. I would have burned out or given up by now if it wasn’t for the fact that I legitimately enjoy creating art.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.caleblesselphotography.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/caleblessel?igsh=ZXV1Ynl0MGFlN2ox&utm_source=qr
