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

Jackson , looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?

I am 17. I got my first camera in 5th grade and used it once and never touched it again until I turned 16. I began by going to car shows and shooting in auto mode, then I began to make friends at these shows who taught me the basics of the exposure triangle. From here I am almost completely self taught, all of my knowledge about photography, angles, photo editing, and lighting has been from practice and reading. However, I would like to credit my freshman year creative arts teacher for encouraging me back into photography and my dad for teaching me how to network and gain connections in a community. He also taught me how to operate my small business and maintain my niche in order to grow quickly and efficiently. I think some of the most essential skills to my craft are networking and a personal style. Over time I have learned that a personal style is more important than most people think because as a photographer you want your shots to be different from the rest, unique in a good way that allows people to recognize your work. Some of the the biggest obstacles in my learning were time management and learning to edit. Time management is a problem for me because school takes up most of my time and I have had to learn to be more diligent as a student in order to have time outside of school that is not filled with homework so I can organize shoots and go to car meets. In terms of editing I have had to learn a ton about the equipment I use, how it affects my pictures, compression, color grading, and every other aspect of photography.

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 am an automotive photographer specifically. I am 17 and have been taking photos for around a year and a half now. An advantage I bring over some of my older counterparts is my knowledge of what people are looking for in the world of modern car photography. I also only have to worry about school so I can focus immense amounts of time to my craft and I spend every day practicing in some way, shape or form so I bring my clients the best work possible. I was gifted my camera in 5th grade and never touched it until 10th grade when my creative arts teacher encouraged me to find some way to use it again. I have always loved cars and enjoyed going to car shows so one day I brought my camera with me. While I was there I discovered a niche, but large group of photographers that shared similar passions with me. After this I began to bring my camera every time I knew there would be interesting cars and just practiced until someone gave me an opportunity to do a photoshoot. I am most proud of the skills I have developed in such a short amount of time and the quality of my work, all the time I look back at my progress through the last year or so and I’m always astounded at how far I’ve come in every aspect of the trade.

Alright – so here’s a fun one. What do you think about NFTs?

I find NFTs incredibly interesting. In my free-time I enjoy taking the pictures I have taken and photoshopping them into radicalized art pieces that represent different parts of culture and different emotions using different tools and adjusting colors. I have always wanted to sell these because they are 100% original and I feel they are genuine art. I think that NFTs are an interesting avenue I could take in order to sell them, but I feel that most true artists are under-represented and that for most it doesn’t provide a reliable avenue of income. All of the big NFTs I see are based off code that randomizes certain aspects of an ‘art piece’ that has no true meaning and would not be valuable if it were a print or statue. In an experiment, I spent a few days working on individual pieces that could be combined through code in order to make NFT assets and in 3 short days I had 15,000 randomized art pieces I could’ve listed to be sold as NFTs. I did not end up doing this because in my heart as an artist I felt they had no true worth, and I did not want people to pay for something I myself did not value.

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

Thankfully, I am currently a one man show and require very little capital. The camera I began photography with was a gift for my birthday. I practiced with this camera until I had perfected my craft with it, and then I began to hunt for clients. I have never once taken money out of my business and I don’t plan to for a long time. My rule of thumb regarding this business is that I can put money from other jobs I do as a mechanic or manual labor can be put in, but no money may be taken out. Using this rule I have been able to save up enough to purchase a new camera and I am currently beginning to acquire equipment to move into videography, a new service I hope to be able to provide to my clients in the coming months.

Contact Info:

• Website: N/A
• Instagram: @jstanphotography
• Facebook: N/A
• Linkedin: N/A
• Twitter: N/A
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCA2KQstTra5GXFRtmzVF8dA
• Yelp: N/A
• Other: email: [email protected]

Image Credits
Its all me @jstanphotography