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

Justin, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us 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 started out as a student in the filmmaking program at Villanova University. I learned the camera basics and editing fundamentals there. I attended YouTube university to really figure out the technical aspects of retouching, color and creating a workflow. The creative aspect of my art comes from life all around me; the music I listen to, the movies and shows I watch, the people I interact with, how the environment looks around me. There’s endless source material to create from and that’s the best part of doing what I do.

Experience is the best teacher. If I could go back knowing what I know now, I would spend way more time reaching out to different people to just shoot. Just going out and shooting is 100% the best way to speed up your learning. Youtube and books and diagrams are GREAT supplementary materials but the essence of your art, the soul, will come from real life shooting.

For my photography, the most essential technical skills are composition and retouching for sure. That is what makes up my personal style. The most essential skills overall is people skills. You NEED people to be successful at this. No way around it.

Easily the biggest obstacle standing in my way of learning more was myself and imposter syndrome. Also getting caught up in the consumerism of it all; thinking “if only I had this camera or this lens, I would be on the next level.” or “I’m not ready for this opportunity because I don’t think I have the equipment to achieve this look.” I still cringe when I think about those times because that is the EXACT point when you need to go and do what you’re nervous about because that’s where all the real growth is.

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’m Justin Bullock: photographer, videographer, creative director & owner of Unspoken Photography. I’m a Philadelphia native and media production graduate of Villanova University. Sometime after graduating I took take a leap of faith and purchased my first DSLR camera to start taking photos and videos of friends and family. I knew this was something I could figure out along the way if I just got started and something that could take me all over the world as far I wanted to go. After sticking with it for long enough, I was able to establish my own business/brand focused on portrait, fashion and editorial photography along with creative videography. My style really emphasizes the use of dramatic lighting, contrast and form to convey the emotion I want people to feel when they’re looking at my work. I’m proud of how far I’ve come in my journey, but I’m more excited for what lies ahead for Unspoken in the future.

Are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

For photographers and videographers, Eyecandy.com and Shotdeck.com is literally a Godsend. They are both visual libraries of effects and scene setups, respectively, that will take your knowledge and creativity to the next level! Sometimes as an artist, you have an idea of what you want and the WORST thing is when you don’t know how to go about translating it into a final product. These resources are for that exact issue. It helps streamline the creativity by providing the technical knowledge and instruction for anything you can think of.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

My goal is to use my art to convey my thoughts and ideas to the world. Anyone who knows me might say I’m not a huge talker (which is where the name Unspoken comes from) but I’m an empath and I know I have a lot of strong emotions and ideas that people resonate with and this is my way of expressing myself for my sanity. I know that this can take me all over the world and more and that drives me as well, but it is very much a therapeutic practice for me so I would be doing this regardless of the external result.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.unspoken.photography
• Instagram: @_j.bullock