We recently connected with Jeff Lewis and have shared our conversation below.

Jeff, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you tell us the backstory behind how you came up with the idea?

For as long as I can remember, I’ve always loved to hike, bike, explore, and so many other things that involve spending time outside. With that comes the gift of getting to see so many amazing places, and experiencing nature at its best. When I would come back, everyone would ask me things like, “how was it?” and I would find myself struggling to answer. How DO I tell them in a sentence what I experienced? I quickly developed a love for taking pictures of these incredible things I’d experience in the wild. It became my language, my way of sharing my love for the things in my life.

This is a large part of the reason my work is unique. While we all draw inspiration from other artists, I don’t really follow in any particular person’s footsteps– I just explore the world and share what I find special.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Hi! I’m Jeff, and I’m a landscape photographer based in Marin County, California.
I think we are SO lucky to get to call this incredible place our home.

I mean, I can think of other places around the world that have beautiful beaches. I can think of other places that have lush forests with towering redwoods. I can think of other places where one can watch rivers of fog dancing through the hills and valleys. Other places where the twinkling lights of the houses turn on each night on the sides of dramatic mountains. Other places where dramatic bridges that lead to bustling cities. Other places where the sun shines the majority of the time, where the temperatures are comfortable year round, where the cool ocean breeze shields us from the inland heat. But, I challenge you to think of another place that has ALL of this. There just isn’t one. Marin is simply one-of-a-kind. And everyone who lives here, knows it, and feels that sense of local pride. This is what made me choose to be here, and to take the photos that remind us every day of how special of a place this is.

I feel a similar sense of wonder when I travel, whether I’m trekking under the northern lights in the remote mountains of Canada, or spending a few nights exploring an area that most travelers would write off as being nothing but a truck stop. There is ALWAYS something unique to explore and photograph, wherever we are. I hope my photos inspire all of us to get outside, wherever we are, and experience what nature has to offer. Because we all have something special waiting for us out there.

My partner, Tung, and I feel it’s important to be part of the entire process, from start to finish. A few years ago, we moved all of our printing in house, and opened up a print shop to serve other artists as well. We were getting tired of crossing our fingers for decent results from labs, dealing with mistakes, long waits, shipping damages, confusion… so we decided to eliminate that from our process. We now make our own fine art prints, build our own frames, and handcraft our own canvas gallery wraps on frames that we make ourselves by hand. It truly is a labor of love, and our love, passion, and years of experience and fine tuning is visible in the end products.

Oh! I should also mention, my degree is in meteorology. That’s right, I’m a weatherman! And Tung is an aerospace engineer. Weird that we ended up as photographers of all things, isn’t it? Actually, not really! I use my degree every day. You see, perfect light is one of the things makes a great landscape photo, and up until 10 years ago, finding the light was a guessing game. You’d have a location in mind, look at a weather forecast that wouldn’t really tell you what you needed, pray that you’d get some decent light, which wouldn’t usually happen. Photographers would often make the drive and hike to the same location upwards of a dozen times in search of the perfect light.

Well, about 11 years ago, Tung and I decided we were going to change that. That’s how Escaype was born. We use our own in-house patented model to tell us when and where the clouds and light are going to be the most photogenic, and we put ourselves in those places. Escaype is the original weather service and community for photographers, where we help guide you to the light. Most of our members are right here in California. We help them with their photos from start to finish, and provide them with a community so they can feel at home when they do what they love. We are the OG scenic meteorologists– we study and forecast the beauty in the weather!

You can learn more about Escaype at escaype.com, and view my photo work and order prints at landESCAPEvisuals.com.

What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?

Word of mouth referrals. We don’t ask for them — we just believe in treating people well, delivering a great product and service, backed by our honest work, experience, and craftsmanship. In our experience, happy people will bring more people who share their values, and our values.

What do I mean by treating people well? Let me walk you through what a client of our print lab can expect. Instead of blindly ordering and praying that you have the right configuration, Tung and I will inspect your files individually, make suggestions on the best sizing and medium for the space you have in mind and for the print to look its best. We’ll then apply custom sharpening and tonal adjustments to the photo to ensure it prints the best, and we’ll show you what it looks like as it comes out. Then, when you come by to pick up the print in person (if you choose to), you can let us know what you think! Most people love them on the first shot, but if we need to make any adjustments, we can hard proof with you and save the adjusted file for future print jobs, and consult with you to make sure future results are perfect. We’ll check for your dust spots, distractions, things that might need to be re-cropped if you’re framing, and we’ll make suggestions so when we greenlight the print, you can have the confidence that it will be great. Oh, also, we can turn around orders quickly, often even same-day if needed. But the pricing… this service sure sounds expensive, doesn’t it? Actually, nope! Our prices are in line with most major labs. This is because we don’t have as much overhead and we don’t have employees on payroll to manage the printers, it’s just the two of us, Most photographers have never experienced anything like printing with us. That’s the kind of experience that we believe earns us new clients. We just show up to work every day, work our butts off, try to learn something new and use it every day, and treat people with respect and love. Who wouldn’t want to tell their friends about that?

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

Remember Escaype, that weather service I was telling you about? Well, when we launched that, the idea of forecasting weather for photographers was brand new, and there was a lot of hype! We had several large social media influencers promoting us, and had a pretty large audience ourselves. We opened our pre-orders, expecting around 100 clients so we could start off strong and supporting our living. We figured that would happen in the first 24 hours, with so many people talking about us.

Well… that didn’t quite happen. After about two weeks, we had collected 11 signups. We couldn’t pay our rent with that income. We had a difficult decision to make… do we throw in the towel on our year of developing our service, and look for real jobs? Or do we just go for it with the handful of clients we have, and give them the best experience possible and hope they tell their friends?

We chose the latter. We would pick these clients up at their houses, take them to our favorite photo spots at the best times, we’d take them to dinner and help them edit their photos the next day, while we all waited for the next dramatic sunset together. And they did love it, and they did tell their friends. Escaype will be 10 years strong this year, and several of our original 11 are still with us. We’ve published two books, put on a full-fledged art show, and so much more together. Running Escaype has taught me the power of community, and the importance of giving things our all and never giving up on our dreams, even when things are difficult. Besides, if it were too easy, it wouldn’t be worth doing, right?

Contact Info:

• Website: landESCAPEvisuals.com and escaype.com
• Instagram: I left social media in 2016 because it didn’t align with my goals for my work, but Escaype’s community-run account is @ig_escaype
• Twitter: Eww, no.