We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Nigel Aves a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Nigel, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. It’s easy to look at a business or industry as an outsider and assume it’s super profitable – but we’ve seen over and over again in our conversation with folks that most industries have factors that make profitability a challenge. What’s biggest challenge to profitability in your industry?

Photography is a democratic medium, in this modern day and age of digital photography and cell phones with cameras everyone can take photographs. They may not be great photographs but the process of taking pictures has become exceedingly easy. Why has it become easy, there is no need any longer to send away film for processing and printing. This is both good and bad.

It is good because it allows anyone with a creative mind to express her or his ideas without being bogged down with technique, like learning how to paint. This will present a great opportunity to those creative individuals. On the other hand, everyone snapping another picture, to clutter the closet, or more recently, the computer storage takes a little wind out of the photographic sail. This apparent ease of making pictures erroneously creates the impression that photographic art is easy.

Quite the contrary.

It’s never been about the equipment that you use, the one thing that you either have or do not have, is how the brain composes a photograph to make it stand out. Can you be trained to do get the brain in an artistic frame of mind? Probably not. According to a popular view, creativity is a product of the brain’s right hemisphere, you either have it turned “On” or you are born with it “Off”.

Nigel, 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 Nigel Aves. I’m an Englishman, but I live in Longmont, Colorado, USA. By way of Norway, Belgium, Holland and France, technically. Photography is my passion, and the thing that will undoubtedly drive me insane someday (though many would argue it already has).

I don’t photograph subjects. I photograph the way they make me feel. Admittedly, it’s a bit of a strange concept. But it’s honest – and it’s probably the best way to describe my approach to the craft and art. I wrestle with every image I shoot, I try to imagine what was possible when I was closeted in a darkroom and working with many a fine toxic chemical (this could of course help explain the insanity aspect!). I assume perfection is possible and I want to wring it out of every picture. If that’s all you ever know about me, it’s enough to say you know me very, very well indeed.

I believe in creating portraits that are prettier than the everyday life, but capture the essence of the person. But I also believe that capturing an image in a 1/120th of a second is the slightest slice of life that will exist forever.

Sometimes the realism of life never needs to be anything else.

There are three quotes that I have always believed every photographer should follow, one related to photography, one related to who you are and one related to the entire state of humanity.

“No man has the right to dictate what other men should perceive, create or produce, but all should be encouraged to reveal themselves, their perceptions and emotions, and to build confidence in the creative spirit.” – Ansel Adams

“The Edge… there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.” – Hunter S Thompson.

“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and then go and do that, because what the world needs are people who have come alive.” – Harold Whitman

Alright – so here’s a fun one. What do you think about NFTs?

What is a NFT? “Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) seem to be everywhere these days. From art and music to tacos and toilet paper, these digital assets are selling like 17th-century exotic Dutch tulips—some for millions of dollars.” (As described by Forbes).

NFT’s are a double edged sword, and if I am working on a commissioned shoot, you could easily say that the product I supply (digital copies of the work and / or prints) come under this heading, but it is not really the mainline that most people think of them.

Let’s suppose I take the best ever photograph! Let’s also suppose that a number of collectors are interested in purchasing the digital version or print of this one photograph. No matter how much it eventually sells for (in the thousands), I now have to be trusted to never use that photograph again, the one purchased must remain the only version in the public.

However, this might not always be the case.

Take digital artist Mike Winklemann, better known as “Beeple”. He created and crafted a composition of 5,000 daily drawings. Guess how much that sold for knowing that every picture used in the composition was actually findable and viewable on the internet? Cannot be worth much when you know that! Well believe it or not at the auction house Christie’s “EVERYDAYS: The First 5000 Days,” sold for nearly $70 million! I’m in the wrong game it seems!

Reason: Because an NFT allows the buyer to own the original item. It contains built-in authentication, this serves as proof of ownership. Collectors value those “digital bragging rights” almost more than the item itself.

Hence the expression, “More money than sense!”

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

I was given my first camera when I was 14. It was a Pentax with a couple of different lenses and a light meter. Any one remember what a light meter was for? Anyways, it was then that I knew I really loved photography and started to learn just what a camera was capable of achieving. And it was costly getting those rolls of film developed. Most of my pocket money!

So the next stage was learning how to develop the film, you try getting some film into a developing tank in pitch dark! That’s a real challenge in itself. From there of course it was a simple step (but expensive) to create a darkroom so I could develop and print.

And then of course the “art” was wide open because I could now try to see what “special effects” I could use in the printing process, and there are many ways you can alter the essence of the original developed film. From there of course we moved into digital age about 20 odd years ago, but with the software that is now available I can recreate exactly what I used to do in the darkroom.

So from 14 years old to now (58 years) I’m still going strong.

Is that resilient enough?

BTW – I don’t believe in the old adage, “Poor starving artist”. So I did have a full time job as well, which ended up being very beneficial as I travelled the world doing technical support. Many great photographic opportunities, and it cost me nothing.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://nigel-aves-photography.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nigelaves/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nigel.aves/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nigel-aves/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@citnetwork5407
• Other: https://hype.co/@nigelaves?fbclid=IwAR0_pOs_8Z209Ns2yRHh1pDSaYs0fWAJGSmu7_k5DA4ja2y_M7_cUAYYSSU

Image Credits
April Teaze Chelsea Marie Kalena Rodriguez – Desirae Blackburde – Genesis Gomez Kaetlyn Herider Dagney Simir Hales Julia Wagner Cobie Lenara Alhora