Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Keena. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Keena, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s jump to the end – what do you want to be remembered for?
I hope I can leave a legacy of living a life of balance. Obviously that’s more idealistic than realistic, especialy as a entrepreneur, business owner, and father haha, but as a whole I hope reflecting on my life it shows I didn’t forget to balance out the hustle parts and the chill parts. I’m sure I could hustle harder and make more money, which is some people’s metric of success, but I try to stay conscious of letting off the gas pedal, spending time without my phone, giving time to my family, getting creative with friends, and getting grounded, spending time in nature. A legacy is something I strive for mostly in order to inspire my kids after I’m gone, to chase their ridiculous dreams and to enjoy the people close to them.
I’d also love to be remembered as an artist, rather than just a photographer. I’ve really looked up to some artists and musicians throughout my life as people who really LOVE what they create, and I hope that comes through in my work when I look back on it as a whole. When all the filler work falls away as just advertising during a certain time period, I hope I have a body of work that people would hang on their walls for 20 years, just staring at it and enjoying the moment and the vibes in it. I want to make a body of work that withstands the test of time.
Keena, 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?
I’m a photographer and director who started off in Boston, sharing a creative studio with my best friend and adventure partner, Stebs Schinnerer. I assisted a few photographers, volunteered for MRI research, cut rose bushes and painted houses for years in order to keep the studio lights on. We started a shared work space, Frineg Union, with 13 other young creatives, before the WeWork trend, and grew our reputation slowly based on being nice humans that love to connect with people and tell stories, and throwing legendary parties. After that chapter we moved to San Francisco and I connected with a rep in New York City to help grow my name on both coasts in the commercial advertising world. She helped me hone in my brand to really focus on my passion; youth lifestyle and telling stories of everyday adventures.
I’ve always loved connecting with people and trying to energize others, or at least make them feel comfortable to be themselves aroud me; from throwing dance parties in our skate house in college, to organizing roadtrips with friends, to shooting with celebrities, I’ve now realized that’s also a skill that can be harnessed and applied to help my career grow and thrive. It’s now an integral part of my brand, to be a real and curious person first, and not a business person first. If I want people to have fun and dance on set, I better be having fun and dancing first to gain their trust and set the mood.
I work in a world of advertising which can be high-stress and demanding at times, but if you surround yourself with good professional people, then it’s all good. I pride myself on helping clients go after the campaign goals they want to achieve, but also to be flexible, and have a flexible and fun crew, for all the curves balls we might encounter while on shoot days. I also try to constantly exercise my ability to both scale up my crews to handle very large or difficult projects, and to scale down to a skeleton crew and be able to work with minimal resources when needed.
After 5 years in San Francisco I moved to Golden, Colorado to chase the sun, to be more centered between all the major cities, and to establish a balanced home life where we can raise a family with more space play and four seasons.
My main focus in my career is to create and work with good people, and to never lose the youthful perspective on my dreams. My days can be crazy on set or on location; managing and directing 40 people at a time while trying to not show my stress to the talent, or working on 3 hours of sleep and waking up to torential rain on a shoot day where we expected full sunshine, but at the end of the day I LOVE what I do and the people I get to be around. This career choice also gives me freedom to use my time how I want. On any day I can choose chasing a high paying job, working for a brand name, or to shoot a non-paying portfolio project that fulfills the creative part of my brain, or just volunteer and go for a creek walk with one of my kids’ classes. And all three of those choices fill a different part of me that helps balance out my mind and body.
I also make sure to constantly create zines of the photos I shoot that make me the most excited. It’s a helpful reminder of why I still pick up a camera. In this day and age I think it’s soooo important to create something tangible. Make a zine, a book, a print; ANYTHING that would exist tomorrow, even if the entire internet ceased to exist. It’s also a cathardic exercise to sift through your archives and distill them down to a nice momento of that chapter in your life.
I’m most proud of creeting a portfolio that really reflects who I am, and showing the value in focusing on the small moments. I’ve gotten to go on so many adventures and made so many good friends along the way, and when I look through my images I’ve made, I’m proud of every image in there.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
I went to school for film photography and sort of learned the old school ways of commercial photography and expectations. I came out thinking I had to shoot for a newspaper, or corporate headshots, or weddings, or food for Applebee’s menus, and that I had to use a lot of lights! I remember shooting a job with my creative partner one time for a sneaker brand at their factory in Maine, where he was shooting the video and I was shooting photos, and when we got back to our studio where our computers where next to each other, I looked at my photos which I had used lots of flashes on, and then I saw a few snapshots he had gotten with natural window light, and I was so jealous of the vibe and emotion that he was able to capture. That was a major shift in my shooting where I had to un-learn so many years of commercial shooting with lots of lighting, and just keep it simple instead.
Alright – let’s talk about marketing or sales – do you have any fun stories about a risk you’ve taken or something else exciting on the sales and marketing side?
One of my first dream commercial jobs was shooting DJ’s in different cities around the world for Clark’s shoes. I remember being hit up by the creative director working on the shoot about possibly shooting it and he wanted to see some reference photos to prove I could do it. I had plenty of shots of DJ’s at parties but definitely didn’t have any photos of leather boots looking good, so I ended up having a friend meet me at midnight in the middle of Boston in his leather boots so I could shoot them that night, edit the shots, and send to the creative director in the morning. I didn’t get much sleep that night, but having those shots helped me win the job! I edned up getting to travel to 5 cities around the world over 10 days, shooting a day in the life with different DJ’s, and also checked off my life goal of flying one way around the world as well!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.keenaphoto.com
- Instagram: keenaphoto
- Facebook: keenaphoto
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/keenaphoto/
- Twitter: keenaphoto
- Other: https://vimeo.com/keenaphoto
Image Credits
Profile Photo of KEENA taken by Joe Friend