We were lucky to catch up with James Ferrell recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi James , thanks for joining us today. What do you think it takes to be successful?

I believe that being successful takes hard work and consistency. In the space of photography, getting your work out in the eye of the public is all through social media. Being consistent and posts content takes a lot hard work. Coming up with ideas and following trends in order to get your work seen by the masses is no easy job. That is why I say that in order to be successful in the photography world, you need to be consistent.

James , 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 James Ferrell, and I am a 22 year old surf photographer from Southern California. I got into surf photography during highschool where I was gifted a GoPro for Christmas by my grandma. All of my friends were surfing in the water so I thought I should start bringing my camera and filming them. From there, I upgraded to a real camera setup and got a waterhousing to protect my gear. I continued to pursue my passion of surf photography to many places in the world. I have been blessed to travel to bali, Tahiti, Mexico, Hawaii, and many more places to capture images of the beautiful waves and people. I love creating things and while surd photography is my passion, I love all things photo and video. Jamesferrellmedia is my business where I create photo and video work for all different types of clients. Being able to bring to life a brand’s vision and provide them with quality images and videos is my goal. Overall, surf photography and content creation has brought meaning into my life and has helped me meet so many awesome people.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

Building an audience is something that all creators in the content space must do. I started out building my audience on Instagram posting photos of my surf photography and engaging with the local community in Socal. This changed over the years as instagram geared mainly towards video content and I had to change my strategy. I utilized Instagram reels to post videos of my surf content paired with music and saw great success, as some of my videos amassed millions of views and has grown my account to nearly 50k followers today. Along with this, I utilized tiktok heavily with my brand Surftok. I have been posting daily surf content on my account called surftok which has grown to over 120k followers. Diversifying your content over multiple platforms like tiktok and Instagram is a great way to get people from all areas to view your work.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

The most rewarding part about being a creative is getting to see people’s reactions to your content. Watching them engage with your photos and videos, and see how much joy you can bring them is truly amazing. Showing people something as simple as the ocean, but from my perspective of being in the water, is an amazing feeling. The average person doesn’t know what it looks like being in these massive waves, and so getting to show them my vision of natures beauty is very rewarding.

Contact Info:

• Website: jamesferrellmedia.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jamesferrell_/?hl=en
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-ferrell-2808ba221
• Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@surftock?lang=en