We were lucky to catch up with Nathan Hong recently and have shared our conversation below.

Nathan, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What do you think matters most in terms of achieving success?

Sacrifice is necessary. Whether it be monetary sacrifice or a sacrifice of time, you can’t be successful without it. For me, being a creative as well a college student, it wasn’t easy balancing academics and social life with client work and travel.

On the student side, I never really went out to parties, never really went to student events, never went out to get drinks with friends, and on the creator side, I’ve had to say no to a lot of opportunities because I had classes, I had to operate within a small window of time (only working on client projects on weekends), and overall didn’t have much time to really create my own content.

In the monetary sense, I always tell people this, but money always comes back, the experience and opportunities won’t. Not meaning that you should just splurge on everything, but if I get an opportunity to work with and artist or creative and it means I need to pay $200-300 to travel out just to work on a single project, I am going to do it. What’s $200 in the grand scheme of things compared to the relationship I have the chance to build and the things I’m able to learn from that experience.

All in all, know your priorities, make some sacrifices, and invest in yourself. It will pay off if you really want it to.

Nathan, 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?

My name is Nathan Hong and I’m a freelance creative primarily focused on photography. The primary styles of work that I do is tour/concert photography, sports photography and portrait photography.

I originally picked up a camera in my junior year of high school, not really touching it much until my sophomore year of college (my first year on campus after covid). I would take my camera everywhere, photographing my friends, my local school sports teams, and I would go around to local businesses and ask to take free photos for them. After about a year, my friends who happened to be musicians invited me to shoot their show where they were opening for a large KRNB artist. Immediately I fell in love with the show industry and my career just snowballed from there, getting to work with a number of different artists. I also got referred and recruited by one of my friends who worked for the Big Ten Network, thus, pulling me into the sports realm a bit more.

Fast forward about a year, I went from being a hobbyist photographer to having been able to work with so many talented individuals on some incredible projects. I feel like I’m just starting as it’s barely been a year and half since I really started my photography journey and I’m so stoked to see where it goes from here.

I want to create things that make people feel.

Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?

In my experience, especially working in such network-based industries, reaching out.

To be honest, a lot of people I’ve spoken to don’t necessarily like this idea, but especially when you’re starting out, reaching out through social media DM’s or cold emailing people can prove to be a very effective method.

Sure, you may get no’s or just no responses from a lot of people, but I can guarantee you that someone is bound to say yes, and once your foot is in the door, maximize that opportunity. Build relationships and really foster them and it will come back to you in the form of more opportunities.

Once you really get the ball rolling, trust that if you are continuously doing good work, your name will get passed around and clients will be coming to you. That’s when you can really start naming your own price.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.

It’s not all fun and games.

I think people think that content creators and artists are just “doing what they love”. Yes, that’s true, I love what I do, but at the end of the day, work is work. Think about how you may love to read, but the moment reading becomes a class requirement, you dread the idea of it.

Creating content can be fun and can lead you to some incredible experiences, but at the end of the day, you need to meet deadlines like anyone else. In fact, I probably find myself working even more than my peers who work more traditional jobs, and I am probably making less than them monetarily. But for most creatives, the money isn’t what drives them to the career, its the intrinsic fulfillment that creative work provides them.

So don’t expect all sunshine and rainbows, you better be ready to lock in and grind.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.hongimagery.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nathan_hongk/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathanhong2002/

Image Credits
Nathan Hong