We were lucky to catch up with Jeff Sudmeier recently and have shared our conversation below.

Jeff, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?

I dove into photography when I was 15 and watched a TON of YouTube videos (specifically Mark Wallace on Adorama) to get started. I would watch a video, then go and try to replicate the video’s content. It could have been messing with settings on my camera, or shooting outdoors. I then continued to just shoot as many things as I could, things that really caught my eye. I grew up skateboarding as well, so that’s the first subject I started with. From there I got into shooting cars, animals, products, events, and people, and have basically just taught myself through trial and error. I feel that that was the best thing I could have done for myself… really just spend the time failing in order to burn the mistakes in my head in order to not make them in the future.

Knowing what I know now, I could have sped up my learning process by shooting more consistently throughout my earlier years. There’s a lot to learn, and if I had shot every day, I would have learned more early on.

I think the most essential skill that helped me in photography is simply knowing my camera – on full manual mode. Knowing how to adjust all of my settings according to what was in front of my lens was a huge factor in the learning process. Another major necessary skill was being able to get the best quality result straight out of my camera, and not having to do much post-production, if any at all.

The only obstacle that I kept running into (and still run into) was not having enough money to get good quality gear. However, that didn’t stop me from learning overall. It just slowed the process a bit. Whenever I got a new piece of gear, it would solve an issue I had before, or provide me with another lesson to learn. As far as learning goes, we’re very lucky these days to have access to so much information online, so there aren’t too many obstacles in the way if one simply just wants to learn more about the industry or learn new techniques.

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

I’m a commercial photographer specialising in the following fields: Automotive, Portrait, Skateboarding, Event, Product, and Animal. I also make digital cinemagraphs (moving photos), and physical 3-D photo prints. So far, I have been featured in several online blogs, Instagram accounts, and one book.

I got into photography by shooting skateboarding with friends in high school. We were out almost every day, so I always had subject matter. My subject matter shifted to cars a few years later when we all got our licenses, and I’ve been shooting them ever since. Over the years I got more comfortable shooting the other fields I mentioned, and most recently I’ve developed a technique with shooting cars called “light painting”, where I wave a light around while my camera is taking a long exposure photo. I’ve only been doing this technique for about a year now, and have already gotten some awesome results. I’ll be pushing myself to do more of them in the near future.

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

For me, the most rewarding aspect of being an artist is the joy I get after taking a successful photograph. For example, I’ve tried to photograph lightning many times in the past 6 years, and it is extremely difficult. I spent hours sitting and waiting for lightning bolts to appear, only to have them flash when my camera is processing the last image I took. Sometimes it truly feels that mother nature is messing with me because of how ironically-timed the bolts appear. So when I do happen to time it right, I see the lightning bolt appear in the sky, I wait for my camera to end its exposure, then rejoice at the awesome result on the screen.

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

NFTs are an interesting medium. So far, I don’t know everything there is to know about them, but I’m a little hesitant to make them myself. I don’t understand how someone can’t just take a screenshot of one of my pieces of work after I make it into an NFT. On the other hand, I think they might be a perfect way to present certain types of art like video or GIFs, and I’m considering looking into making my cinemagraphs into NFTs because of that.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.jeffsuds.com
• Instagram: @jeffsuds
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jsudsphotography
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeff-sudmeier-46202171/

Image Credits
Jeff Sudmeier