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

Daniel, appreciate you joining us today. One deeply underappreciated facet of being an entrepreneur or creative is the kind of crazy stuff that happens from time to time. It could be anything from a disgruntled client attacking an employee or waking up to find out a celebrity gave you a shoutout on TikTok – the sudden, unexpected hits (both positive and negative) make the profession both exhilarating and exhausting. Can you share one of your craziest stories?

Approximately a year ago, I went on my first ever diving expedition in the Truk Lagoon, Micronesia to document the life of the crew and the diving team preparing for WWII shipwreck exploration. It was an awesome month full of hard work but also adventurous moments I had never experienced before. In fact, the expedition was full of “my first” events, one of them being shooting with RED cinema cameras, which was an amazing experience. Another fact was that I was the only Czech on the boat, so I felt a little bit exotic in certain situations. On the other hand, it was not an issue at all. I even managed to pick up a few phrases in Chuukese. That got me to the first crazy. but at the same time funny, situation. Every Sunday we went to the port, otherwise we were staying in the lagoon. And as I had left my cap back home, I decided to go and buy one in one of the few shops on the island. On my way back, a small group of local boys started shouting swear words at me, considering it funny. However, we had a great local crew that had already taught me some of the local slang by then, so I was able to reply. The boys were apparently shocked, started laughing and ran away. I came to the boat and I simply had to tell my friend Aron, who was the expedition leader, about my “little victory”. He started laughing but in a second he stopped and told me I was actually pretty lucky because the port area was basically a ghetto and if this had happened in the evening, I might not have come back to the boat at all. Well, lesson learned.
The situation I felt down the most was probably at the end of the expedition. I was supposed to leave a couple of days earlier than other group members, so the boat wasn’t able to go to the port, as they were diving to one of the ship wrecks. The crew prepared a skiff that was meant to get me to the small local airport, which should have taken about 30-40 minutes. Less than 5 minutes after we left the boat, a huge rainstorm came and I was super worried about all my camera gear ending up on the bottom of the Pacific ocean as the waves were throwing our skiff around like a small toy. Luckily, we got safely to the airport, but I was soaking wet. I got changed and when I came to check-in, I was informed that my flight was cancelled. My first question was when the next flight was, but the answer was definitely not what I was expecting. The next flight was in two days! That was very unpleasant news for me as I had clients waiting for me in Czechia. Well, I ended up stranded in the middle of the Pacific, with no way to call my team members on the boat because of the poor signal, 12 408 km from home and less than two weeks to Christmas. I got super anxious because I was going to miss all my connecting flights back to Prague, CZ. Normally it’s around two days of flying the “Asian way” to get there from Truk Lagoon with stopovers in Guam, Japan, Taiwan and Austria. However, it was just a crappy coincidence that these flights were not possible at all until the next week. I ended up spending hours with a landline in my hand in the airlines office trying to contact their customer support. Later, I found out the only possibility to get home by Christmas was the “American way” with stopovers in Guam, Japan, Houston and Germany, which took me around 11 more hours of flying. The two days completely alone on the island, in the middle of nowhere, in 86 degrees Fahrenheit, knowing Christmas was just at the door and this was not what it should look like, were super hard mentally, but the hotel staff were very helpful and when I got to the plane all the stress started to slowly go away. In three days, I got home safely, apologized to my clients and spent Christmas just the way I am used to.

Daniel, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

While studying journalism at college in Prague, Czech Republic, I got a part-time job with Divesoft, a company producing hi-tech diving equipment. From turning the product manual into a video form at the beginning, I ended up being in charge of the whole photo/video content and this is where my passion for visual marketing started. While working on my final thesis, I got a job offer from the most famous Czech music TV company. Gradually, I got a wide range of clients, like Deloitte, Natuzzi Italia, HC Sparta Prague (Czech top tier hockey club), The Dirty Dozen Expeditions and Rock for People (music festival agency). I’m really grateful I’ve had an opportunity to take photos/videos for bands like Green Day, Bring Me The Horizon, Sum 41, Machine Gun Kelly, The 1975, Fall Out Boy or Simple Plan.
Through working with Divesoft, I started getting more and more into the diving community which led to filming in Micronesia, Marshall Islands or participating on e-learning audio visual project with TDI/SDI (training agency based in Florida).
My range of working is quite wide tho. Nowadays, I’m in charge of the social media content of a coffee company in Prague, film/edit with North Carolina-based youtuber and entrepreneur Mike Balint or produce TV commercials in the Czech Republic.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

For me, the most rewarding aspect or maybe a feeling is when I see my photos living their own lives. When I took up music/concert photography, the best feeling was when Deryck Whibley of Sum 41 used my photo as his social media profile picture, because I am their huge fan. Or when I started seeing my photos around the city and on the Internet because Sparta Prague hockey club used them for their official promotion. If I should focus on the video, I would probably say the most important for me are the emotions they arouse – if it makes people happy or if it makes them think about the topic of the video at least a bit. Watching them being broadcast on TV is an awesome feeling too!

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

I would say that this kind of industry can basically never stop evolving, so the biggest motivation is to stay relevant to new trends. Even though I have already been in this industry for a couple of years, I don’t feel I have reached the level of creators that inspire me, like Peter McKinnon or Sam Kolder, and, to be honest, I might never be able to do so, but it’s great motivation to keep working on myself.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.danielvalek.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/feeldvision/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-v%C3%A1lek-60683a245/

Image Credits
All photos are taken by me, Daniel Valek.