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

Alright, Darren thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

Photography was always something I was interested in as far back as High School. I joined the yearbook staff and that really set off my passion for photography. From there, I attended an advertising school called The Creative Circus, formerly located in Atlanta, GA, where I really dove into learning photography.

It’s hard to say if there’s anything I could’ve done to speed up the learning process more. With photography, especially Automotive, there’s no better teacher than being out on a shoot and trying (and sometimes failing) with different techniques.
I got very lucky with landing an internship at MotorTrend right out of school, and without that, it would’ve been pretty tricky to get into the niche that is car photography. Having a regular stream of brand new cars coming in definitely helped hone my skills.

Darren, 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?

My name is Darren Martin and I am an Automotive Photographer. For the past few years I have been on staff at MotorTrend shooting many hundreds of vehicles for feature stories and reviews. I’ve been a car nut since I was a kid so it’s a dream come true working in automotive journalism.

I’m always trying to create images that show the feelings that come with driving each particular car. Weather it’s a supercar going fast through the twisties, or even a regular commuter car running errands. There’s always a shot to make it special, and I’m always looking for it.

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

The most rewarding thing of being a creative is that no two jobs/photoshoots are the same. It’s truly a pleasure to be able to share so many different experiences and not get stuck in the day to day that maybe a regular desk job may bring. Sometimes it’s tons of fun, other times super stressful, but I wouldn’t change what I do.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

There was one year when I was the lead photographer for MotorTrend’s Car Of The Year program. We usually spend 3-4 days out in the blistering heat shooting as much of the interiors and exteriors of the 30 some odd cars before the judging panel comes to evaluate them. Unfortunately for me, I had made a mistake when uploading images to my drive and lost about two days worth of photos since even my memory cards were formatted for space. Thank goodness I noticed early enough, and thank god the rest of my team was awesome, because we were able to re-capture all of my lost shots AND the remaining many all before judges came…barely. But we did it. The point is, even when situations look bleak, there’s almost always a solution to sort things out. It’s also important to have a team that you can trust will have your back.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.darrenmartinphoto.com
• Instagram: @darrenmartinphoto
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darren-martin/
• Other: https://www.behance.net/darrenmartinphoto

Image Credits

all images shot by me