Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Kris Crews. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Kris, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Earning a full time living from one’s creative career can be incredibly difficult. Have you been able to do so and if so, can you share some of the key parts of your journey and any important advice or lessons that might help creatives who haven’t been able to yet?

On the road to being fully independent as a photographer and video producer, I’ve worked both full or part-time using my skills for a regular paycheck. The benefits to this have been multifaceted. Yes, the regular paycheck was a primary factor, but there are a few others worth considering. Access to gear is a huge one. In my earliest roles as an in-house video producer for a local marketing agency and later for a production team at Microsoft, I had the opportunity to order the gear that I wanted to learn to use. I was also able to use a lot of that gear for personal side projects where I was free to develop my skills on my own. Also, working my way up the corporate ladder of a production team definitely sharpened my skills in my craft, but also in navigating group dynamics with co-workers and clients. Those “people skills” are invaluable when running your own business and relying on networking to build a client base, and often working along side other creatives on projects. One other opportunity I’ll mention from my journey to self-reliance, is teaching. When I left my full-time role as a director of a small crew of photographers and video producers at Microsoft, I taught part-time at a technical college and a private high school for 3 years. I again had the opportunity to buy and experiment with new photo, video, and audio production gear. Plus, I was given a laptop computer for editing. By having these basic fundamental needs met, I was able to develop my craft while working on a variety of projects that would prepare me for being independent.

Kris, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Growing up skateboarding, a videocamera was an essential component of daily exploits. By Christmas of my 8th-grade year (1991) , I had convinced my parents to drop the small financial investment in unlocking my creative potential. Soon, with two VCR’s connected to our television, and a Radio Shack audio mixer, I had unlocked the power to create hours of skate videos replete with an endless supply of ridiculous teen antics and artistic exploration. I loved putting music to the images I had captured. I explored the broad range of emotion that various types of music added to content like church youth group retreats and the high school drama department’s field trips. This vocational obsession continued primarily in an amateur capacity until the advent of streaming video and the birth of my first daughter in 2005. Conveniently, via Apple’s iLife suite, my home movies were now streaming for family and anyone else in the world via the power of the internet. My mother, who owned a real estate company at the time, offered me the opportunity to leave my prestigious position at the community thrift shop and start creating photo and video content of real estate listings. That’s how it started. Soon there would be youtube and eventually video on every website that wanted to tell their story. I have had the opportunity to work with small crews, but for the most part, I shoot alone. That is something that has set me apart from the big budget production companies, and I feel I have capitalized on this approach. In the past 2 decades we have seen the evolution of the camcorder to the DSLR, merging photography and video production equipment into easily accessible units available to any creative with a laptop and the will to succeed.

Have you ever had to pivot?

In late 2017, government funding for the arts was taking a hit. My primary clients at that time were local nonprofits relying on government grants which fueled their marketing budgets, event programming, and daily operations. Their ability to pay for my independently contracted services ceased, as did many of their full-time positions. I had noticed that several local real estate professionals who were starting to make a name for themselves via social media did not seem at all phased by the changing of the political guard. As I was contemplating my next move, and grocery shopping, a thought came to me that there may be a local real estate agency hiring for a full-time marketing position. I looked on Craigslist and found exactly that. “Full-time marketing specialist, video experience a plus”. The next day I had a call back and an interview, which I nailed, and I started the following Monday. Taking the full-time position was a relief. I had a few contracts that my new employer agreed to allow me the liberty to complete, one being a promotional video series for a competing real estate firm, and I settled into the comfort of my almost adequate, but way better than struggling with barely any clients, salary. That said, I make a better independent contractor than an employee. I enjoyed playing marketing director for a while, but as soon as I hired a friend to shoot 4 real estate listings in one week, and he made more than me, it was time to pivot back to self-reliance. This time, a year and a half later, I had a ton of experience and a plethora of real estate agents to work with.

We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.

The other half of the Crews Creative team is my wife, and super talented website developer, Bridgett Nicol. Bridgett and I met while I was working full-time on a video production team at Microsoft that occasionally needed additional videographers for large events. Bridgett, a designer, and former toy store owner, had recently graduated from a film program at Seattle Central Community College. In addition to being instantly infatuated with each other, we shared a common vision for creative conquest and instantly started planning to forge our powers into one media production end. We experimented with a few iterations along the way, often involving a rag-tag gang of musicians and artists we flocked with. I continued to work at Microsoft for a few years and often had the opportunity to create low budget video projects using friends as actors and crew members. Bridgett, being a natural at analyzing and re-envisioning businesses’ existing branding, brought her storytelling vision to the web, helping businesses rebrand and utilize their web presence both for marketing and e-commerce. Several existing video and photo clients of mine needed new websites and were interested in incorporating embedded video into their site and also beginning to sell products online. And that’s how the partnership of media gatherer and content arranger was forged.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://crews-creative.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/crewscreative/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/crewscreative
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/crewsvideo

Image Credits
Steven Biles (Kris_RockSkate_G0170783.jpg, Kris_Square_D26A6761, Kris_D26A7020e_Med (Skating towards camera), SkateJazz_D26A6900 Jeremy Gregory – KrisWithCamera_Mural.jpg The others don’t need a credit.