We were lucky to catch up with Jaron Cass recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Jaron thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Looking back, do you think you started your business at the right time? Do you wish you had started sooner or later?

If I could go back I would have started my business a lot sooner. I think that a lot of business owners in the creative field start out doing free work while ironing out the expertise of their given craft. However, even today, I find myself adjusting and learning as I go and still feeling humbled, nervous, and as excited as I was as a novice. In hindsight, it would have been nice to be confident in my skill level a lot earlier to be able to establish my business sooner.

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 a 25-year-old photographer. and I work for Loud Agency with an incredible creative team where we help small businesses succeed in their social media goals. I got into photography while in my freshman year of college. I picked up a camera and took creative portraits of anyone who would let me. As a broke college student, I often traded small businesses’ photos of their restaurants for free lunches! I learned quickly that nurturing this skill could help me stretch my creative muscles and become an essential part of my lifestyle and career. Since the moment I took my first photo, I am rarely seen without a camera in my hand.

Today, I have honed in on the type of photography I like doing most, while still being able to work in a wide variety of photographic fields. I offer portrait, product, concert, and landscape photography. I think I solve the common problem of a client having a vision of where they want to take a creative concept and reforming that vision into actionable steps through a well-crafted process. Often I am not only taking photos but organizing and executing many steps on the back end of a given project as well.

I am most proud of the photographic concepts that are my own, I have a creative boudoir series titled “Le Feminine” and have been developing an ongoing nostalgia series that helps me tie photography back into my childhood and early memories.

I want potential clients to be excited to work with me and be as passionate as I am about the artistic message they are trying to send through the lens of a camera. Photography is so much more than capturing a photo, and the power of imagery today couldn’t be stronger. If a client is excited about an idea, I am right there with them, and I pride myself on the ability to transcend their ideas from the conceptual stages to an exciting and powerful reality.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

The most rewarding part of being a creative for me is that your work can have unlimited dimensions. You can apply as much meaning and severity to your work as you allow for. This is especially true for creative endeavors with clients that see their vision, product, or motivation as something that is elevated beyond the idea of just selling a product. Often in the creative field, you get to work with people and projects that have more artistic purposes in mind, and that element for me is crucial in continuing to be passionate about my craft and enjoying my life in general. Not only do I get to pick up my camera and make money, but I get to capture life in a way many people might not have thought of before.

Feedback is another incredibly rewarding element of art. When I finish a creative project and have someone reach out to me on the brink of tears and describe the very feeling I was trying to capture, nothing could be more rewarding. There is something powerful about opening a door to people’s creativity and guiding them to the vision you had in mind.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.

I think non-creatives might struggle with the idea that work doesn’t always have to be about dollars and cents and can easily become a vessel for the ideas, characteristics, and emotions they want to foster in the world. My hope is that for everyone, their work becomes an embodiment of their spirit, and although I don’t think you should go broke doing it, I think you should give your best effort into fostering your message to the world through your work.

There have been times when I have worked 7 days a week and 100-hour work weeks to make sure I can support my creative endeavors and many people often questioned my reasoning.

For example, I worked multiple jobs to be able to travel throughout Europe last summer for 3 months, along the way I took photos of my entire trip and because of that, so many avenues of my photography career opened up. Many of my friends working in non-creative fields often reached out and made remarks like “I wish I could do that too.” I think my main message to everyone is that “you can.” You can do anything you want to do, Your work doesn’t have to be conventional, it doesn’t have to make you a millionaire, it just needs to be a representation of how you see the world.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.jaronccass.com
• Instagram: @jaronccass
• Facebook: jaronccass
• Linkedin: Jaron Cass

Image Credits
Madison Truscan