We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Darren Smith a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Darren, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

I’m fascinated by radical self-expression and its often unique beauty. Over the 8 last eight years, I’ve traveled to events around the world across Europe and North & South America, including Burning Man in Nevada, Day of the Dead in Oaxaca and countless other places in search of remarkable people to photograph. The journey made during this period is a story now told through a collection of photography to be published as a coffee table photo book called Mayflies (and through exhibitions starting in 2025).Mayflies are tiny insects that, for one brief but consequential moment, they hatch, meet, mate, and then they’re gone. They embrace a lifetime within a single day. It seems an appropriate euphemism for the sort of people I was looking for. The places I’ve visited are truly community driven events, often requiring a year (if not years) of preparation and rehearsal. People make their own costumes, build and decorate floats, rehearse, and perform together. After that, they’re gone back to their daily lives, and come together again the next year. I find it utterly fascinating the sheer amount of diversity and individual creativity that exists in the world, that people can find their chosen family and co-create together. It mesmerizes me, because I grew up in a small town in America’s Bible Belt in the early 90s, where my fantasy books and video games were seen as an occult tool that opened young people up to satanic influence. Maybe you’ve seen Stranger Things? That sort of small town was where I grew up. I always wanted to belong to a community where you can come together and express yourself without judgement or ridicule. I hope the work I’ve created helps reminds people how fantastically real people can be and that we can create a world where everyone is welcome to share their unique gifts.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I’m currently based in Amsterdam (NL) with my wife and our one-year-old daughter. While being a lifelong photographer, I was born and raised in Virginia. For nearly the past decade, I’ve dedicated my time to capturing portraits and advertising photography in Amsterdam. My speciality lies in creating high impact, personality-driven imagery with my bold, iconic, and colourful style. Throughout my career, I’ve had the opportunity to travel the world, producing award-winning commercial photography for brands, advertising agencies, and production companies.My creative journey began at university, as I pursued my education as an international student at Edith Cowan University in Perth, Australia. I chose to go there entirely out of a desire to adventure. It was as far away from home as I could get. I remember seeing a marketing brochure with turquoise-coloured ocean and beautiful beaches. I was instantly sold. Almost immediately after graduating, I embarked on photographic career by assisting the fashion industry icon, Stan Shaffer in New York. Following that, I transitioned into a photographer role via Acorn Photo Agency, and since 2016, I’ve been developing my own studio and freelance practice.In recent years, I’ve shifted my focus to personal projects. With a love for music and adventure, I’ve become known for my iconic imagery of people at festivals, as I express my passion through portraiture. As I continue to photograph during my frequent travels, I’ve developed a deep appreciation for the imaginative beauty so apparent with human creative self expression.  I love seeing everyday people explore and reveal their inner selves and values, in often deeply personal and creative ways. And above all that each individual’s act of personal expression represents something intangible from within made into real, living culture. Truth isn’t just stranger than fiction; it’s often infinitely more beautiful as well.

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

Always seek a sublime result. As a creative professional, at some point it became easier to deliver something that is good. My challenge has become to deliver something that is ‘better than good’. I want to create work that amazes and captures the imagination. I’m forever asking myself how I can create work that connects with people that they will love and contributes to their life in a meaningful way. We’re forever being bombarded by fake imagery. A lot of it looks good. It’s visually appealing. As society further blurs the lines of what’s true/real and what’s artificial, I want to share things that are fantastically real. I look for projects with a real human connection and story behind it, whether that is through my personal work, or advertising photography. I think more brands can use big ideas to inspire culture and technology through humans creating art.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?

Being creative is also like being an entrepreneur. There was no guide book or training that has truly prepared me for the challenges I’ve faced. Everything I’ve created has been built from scratch. Everyone has heard you need to make mistakes to continue to grow. Well, I’ve made a ton of mistakes. My personal and professional lives are also blurred. I am a photographer. It’s my craft and how I make money, but it’s also part of my life. Photography is one of the few mediums where you physically have to be there to see, and then do a thing. Everyone else gets the photographs, and I get to cherish the memories of the journey it took to get there. It’s neither positive or negative, it’s just ingrained into the process. A lot of people ask why I don’t say more than I often do, but to me, my thoughts exist inside the photographs. Henri Cartier Bresson coined the term of the ‘decisive moment’: the idea there’s this split second where all the elements in a scene come together in perfect harmony to create a powerful and meaningful photograph. The part of difference in a creative project, I find is that you’re there the whole journey of an idea, moving it forward it every point. The only handover is when you’re finished, you’re already moving on to the next one. I feel very lucky that my craft has taken me around the world, but my own curiosity is the engine that drives that every step of the way. If I learn about a cool place or event with an amazing community, it starts a whole process of finding ways to go there, securing the finance, and then conceptualizing the photography I want to capture. It’s a process and requires a mix of both disciplined planning and an ability to improvise in tandem! I also want to acknowledge that I don’t work inside a vacuum. Having a small team around me has been the key to my success and I’m immensely grateful for my partner in crime and producer, Walter Paice, at MONSOLO agency. We dream up ideas over his dinner table and bring them to life.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://darrensmith.nl
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dsmithstudio
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darren-smith-9b066349/
• Other: Threads: https://www.threads.net/@dsmithstudio