We were lucky to catch up with Kaz Canning recently and have shared our conversation below.

Kaz, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Let’s kick things off with a hypothetical question – if it were up to you, what would you change about the school or education system to better prepare students for a more fulfilling life and career?

I grew up in Southern California and went to high school in San Diego. A constant theme year after year was budget cuts for the schools, and the first programs to always get hit were the electives like art, woodshop, cooking, etc. While I was lucky enough to be at a school that was able to keep these programs around longer than others, after I graduated, I did see a lot of these programs slowly get cut as their budgets got cut further. I completely understand that the emphasis in school is put on some of the more rigorous academic courses like Math, English, and Science, it was always a shame to see the other classes being cut. These were the classes that made the students excited to go to school everyday and often times teach them a skill they could use regularly outside of school. This hits especially close to home for me, because my high school photography class is what started me on my journey that I’m on now, shooting photos and video for a living. To think that if I had missed that opportunity as a student, I wouldn’t have the fulfilling career that I have now. Another aspect I consistently think about is that the job I have now didn’t really exist when I was in high school, at least not in the form it does now. Sure, there were videographers and video editors back then, but with the increasing importance of social media, and visual media playing a bigger role at many many companies, the sheer number of people in these roles has exploded in the last decade. I have to give a lot of credit to the schools that recognize this field as something that is going to be relevant for a long time, and the ones that have stuck with it as they continue to have to make hard choices with their budgets, because it really does affect the path their students will take down the road.

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.

My junior year of high school I took my first photography class, and became absolutely addicted to taking photos as much as I possibly could. I consumed as much photography information I could, even getting excited to read camera manuals to learn everything I could about cameras. My first break was when I was 16, I’m not sure if it was over confidence, or just my eagerness to learn more, but I approached a sports photographer shooting photos at a baseball tournament my brother was playing and told them I liked photography and wanted to know if they needed help. Shockingly they said yes, and trusted me with the top of the line sports photography gear at the time, exactly the same equipment you’d see on the sidelines of NFL games. For a couple years, I put in time as an assistant with that photographer, learning sports photography, setting up studio shoots, and getting sent out on assignments. It was an incredible learning experience, and taught me about composition, lighting, and the long hours you’d have to put up with in unfavorable conditions. When I graduated high school, I had eventually saved up enough money as a photography assistant to purchase my own gear. I bought several cameras, among the bunch was an entry level camera, a canon t2i, that was capable of shooting HD video. At the time, this was a new concept and I wanted to try to dip my toe into what was possible with these new cameras. I tried applying what I had learned from photography to this unfamiliar field of video. When a set of unlikely events aligned, again my over confidence and eagerness to learn more, brought me to offer to be an assistant for a weekend and a video shoot up in LA. I had no promises of pay, they hadn’t even clarified if I would have a room to stay in while I was up there, but I still took the offer. The weekend went well, and they could tell I knew my way around a camera. A couple weeks later, they offered me a full time position in Texas. I took a risk as a 19 year old, dropped out of college and moved by myself from San Diego to San Antonio, with only enough money to pay for my gas to get out there, and the clothes that fit in the back seat of my car.

Eleven years later, I’m still on that path I set out on back then. Now I work for a large event company traveling the country shooting footage of massive arena filling events we put on. I’m responsible for capturing beautiful footage of these multi-million dollar events to give to our clients, or to show to prospective clients. So while sometimes to an outsider, it might not seem like there are high stakes, sometimes getting the shot or not might be the difference between landing a show or not. The time I put in all those years ago to learn the self-criticism in your work, the proper use of the equipment you have, and the hours you need to put in all to put out a product you’re proud to show others has all been worth it

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

Your biggest and best resource for your creative journey is yourself. As cliché as it might sound, you need to be your own biggest driver, because you aren’t going to be rewarded immediately. If you want to be a photographer, your first photos are going to suck. If you want to be a videographer, your first videos are going to suck. You need to have the passion and the drive to not be discouraged by where you think you should be right at the start, look at what you need to improve, and learn how to do that. We’re lucky to live in a time where you can go on YouTube and have a plethora of people that can teach you anything you want to learn. You just need to get out there and do it.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

I think the core of being a creative is self-improvement. It’s one of the few careers where there is hardly ever a “right answer” to a project. It’s a pure representation of your skills, and what you’ve experienced over your journey in the arts. As counter intuitive as it sounds, I love going back through old photos I’ve taken, or old videos I’ve made, and being absolutely embarrassed I showed them to people, Don’t get me wrong, I can still be proud of the things I’ve made in the past, but seeing the flaws and what you’ve improved in that time shows the growth you’ve had over the years. The progress and improvement should be both improvement in technical ability, evolution of your style, and the learning of new tools, which is a constant in the world of videography. I love looking back and seeing how far I’ve come.

Contact Info:

• Website: Kazcanning.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kazcanning

Image Credits
All images are my own