We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Nesrin Danan. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Nesrin below.
Nesrin, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Have you been able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen? Was it like that from day one? If not, what were some of the major steps and milestones and do you think you could have sped up the process somehow knowing what you know now?
I always feel so lucky and grateful to have fallen into the creative path that I did – I’ve never really had another job! I started photography in high school, where I learned more technical aspects of digital and film. I continued to teach myself, shoot with friends, shoot concerts and events and pick up small paid gigs wherever I could all throughout college (definitely not making a ton of money at that time) but by the time I graduated college I was touring full time and able to scale my business to a point where I became financially stable. I think my hunger and passion to be a full time photographer just wasn’t going to allow it to not work out. I was constantly hustling and networking and getting into every space I wanted to be in! I don’t think there’s any way I could have sped up the process, and I also think the “starving artist” period of our lives is a necessary character building exercise haha.
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 name is Nesrin – I’m a professional photographer originally from Oregon, now based in Los Angeles, CA. I primarily work in entertainment – for years I was exclusively a music/tour photographer, but in recent years I’ve pivoted and expanded a bit to everything from elegant portraits, travel content, lifestyle campaigns and celebrity personal photography to runway shows at fashion weeks and high profile brand events. I love capturing people I find interesting, relevant pop culture moments, and overall just being able to create really beautiful, dreamy photos that my audience will remember. I feel super fortunate to have access to a lot of people and places that most people don’t get to see, and I love to be able to share glimpses of that in my work :)
I definitely have a very telltale style to my work that sets it apart – everything is extremely symmetrical, clean, vibrant, and usually edited in a style that’s reminiscent of film. I think having this unique style is a huge part of my success – no matter the project, I’m always able to inject a little bit of my flair into anything I work on!
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
YES! The pandemic was a huge turning point in my career. Up until then I had been touring full time (about 6-7 months out of the year) and the rest of the time, working on events for major tech clients (YouTube, Facebook and Twitter). This was a very comfortable routine for me and kept y booked and busy. However, come 2020, there were no tours, no events, nothing. Like most creatives, I spent a lot of the beginning of the pandemic not working and really wondering what was going to happen for me. I had still been living in Portland at the time, so when my lease was up I moved to LA (where I had still been getting many job offers) and just started taking any and all photo opportunities that came my way, even if they weren’t things I would normally say yes to. Through that, I began to get into a rhythm of working with more private clients (celebrities attending events, influencers who needed help shooting sponsored content, brand campaigns and commercials, shooting BTS on music videos, documentaries and TV shows, etc). As the pandemic waned, I had an entire new roster of clients and entered a totally different era of my business – which I honestly LOVE. My Instagram shows this shift pretty heavily!
Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?
For full transparency, a huge majority of my audience comes from my work with celebrities, or some of my photos that have gone super viral. A lot of it really is luck or right place, right time – if your work is good, people who resonate with that will follow! I think these days the algorithm makes it difficult to reach new audiences, but my advice would be to do as much networking as you can. Reach out to people who’s content you enjoy and foster genuine relationships. Collaborate with other artists when possible, and engage with your online community whenever you can! Finding a creative niche or community where you can thrive on social is always so helpful in finding your people.
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