We were lucky to catch up with Eli Meir Kaplan recently and have shared our conversation below.
Eli Meir, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We love asking folks what they would do differently if they were starting today – how they would speed up the process, etc. We’d love to hear how you would set everything up if you were to start from step 1 today.
I was just talking about this with a colleague the other day. If I were to start over I would go for it sooner. I spent a lot of time delaying pursuing photography and directing because I was too scared and lacked the confidence. Knowing what I know now I would have gone straight for my dream job sooner and worked extremely hard earlier event though success wasn’t a guarantee. Life moves fast.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I originally got into documentary photography/photojournalism as a way to meet people from different backgrounds than myself, which had long been something I was passionate about. After photographing portraits and reportage for magazines for several years and working on personal projects, I began to be hired to photograph stills on commercial sets. From there I learned how productions were run and I started photographing and directing my own productions, acting as both an artist and a production company.
I focus exclusively on telling emotionally compelling stories about people, primarily on location. It’s not something I purposefully set out to do, but it seemed to happen organically and I decided to focus on that aspect of image-making and storytelling.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
This industry comes with ups and downs–incredibly busy times and dreadfully slow times. During the slow times, when email was dead with nothing else coming up, I used to think about throwing in the towel. The pandemic was certainly one of those times. Truth be told, there is absolutely nothing I’d rather be doing than telling visual stories so throwing in the towel was never an option. Instead I focus on constantly learning and growing.
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
I originally started out photographing black and white film documentary work. Over the years, I became interested in commercial photography and now I’m very interested in advertising, directing, and filming video.
Contact Info:
- Website: elimeirkaplan.com
- Instagram: elimeirkaplan
- Facebook: elimeirkaplanphotography
- Linkedin: elimeirkaplan
- Other: Behance: https://www.behance.net/elimeirkaplan?locale=en_US Threads: https://www.threads.net/@elimeirkaplan
Image Credits
© Eli Meir Kaplan