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

Sam, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. If you could go back in time do you wish you had started your creative career sooner or later?

I have always had a million different ideas about what I would be when I grew up. A writer, a painter, a politician, a musician, an office worker, a chef… the list was limitless. For this reason, it was difficult for me to ever stick to just one idea. While I learned how to stretch my fingers to different chords on the guitar, I memorized vocabulary in foreign languages in case someday I wanted to be a foreign correspondent. Despite this obvious draw towards creativity, I never viewed myself as an artistic person. Creativity was so intrinsically tied to my being, I didn’t even realize it was there.

I took photos constantly and I wrote tirelessly; I filled my walls with art of my own creation, all while studying for a highly academic degree and planning on beginning an entirely academic career. It took a couple months of university for the people around me to start to notice that maybe, just maybe, I was destined for something different. I recall a close friend of mine inviting me for a walk one night. In the crisp October air, they told me they thought that someday I would be a real photographer. They thought that one day I’d leave school for it, too. They just had this feeling. They wanted to share their confidence in me. Eight months later, I realized they were right.

My photographic success was not the reason I left school, and it is not that success waited to appear the minute I was no longer enrolled — more so, once photography was the only subject I had to think about, had to work on, had to pour my time into, the success followed naturally. Before every night shift, you would catch me taking photos. During work, too. Photography was my lifeline; every relationship I had was tied to the craft, every time I looked outside, I imagined the world in pictures.

This moment was by no means the moment I started taking photos. That was maybe ten years ago, when I was given my first phone, when the most interesting photographic subject I had was the telephone poles on the way to and from school. This moment, instead, was the moment I became a photographer. This was the moment I believed in my art enough to identify myself by it. I was no longer someone who took photos, I was someone whose purpose was to create photos.

This moment was, also, the absolute perfect time for me to start. For the first time in my life, I was able to pour everything I had into one project: being a photographer.

In retrospect, I understand that all along, even when I was fourteen years old leaving the country for the first time with a cracked iPhone camera and a dream, I was always a photographer. I wouldn’t trade that for the world.

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 Sam and I am a photographer. If you love blue skies, sweeping landscapes, or nostalgic renderings of your favorite childhood memory, you’ll find solace and joy in my work. I specialize in film photography and am an advocate for breaking down any and all barriers to photographic creativity. I shoot on broken down (and often, duct-taped) cameras that I find in thrift stores and, most notably, my phone, to help inspire people to use what is most accessible to them to create. Photography has long been one of the driving forces of my life. It has helped me slow down, appreciate the world around me, and pinpoint the parts of my community that I can help improve.

How did you build your audience on social media?

As an avid disliker of social media, I understand how vital a successful social media presence is as a creative. In my experience, there are only three things that will help you gain success on social media: authenticity, consistency, and time.
For example, at the time of writing this, I have twenty-five thousand followers on Instagram — I have had this account for ten years, and for the first nine years, it had only two thousand followers. The other twenty-three thousand were gained on a total of three posts that happened to get more views than usual, after I’d posted daily videos for three months.

One piece of advice I’d give to those starting to build their social media presence is to reflect on what the specific goal of your social media is. Do you want to have meaningful connections with a community? A smaller account will be more conducive to communicating with a number of people on a deep level. Do you want to move product? Do you just want a lot of views?

Everyone’s journey is different, and algorithms rule social media. Don’t think that a lack of views inherently means a lack of quality on your end.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

The most rewarding part of being a creative is knowing that even when I may not love a project I have made, there is someone in the world who will. I have, for many years, fallen victim to perfectionism. I wouldn’t post a photo if I was not madly in love with the colors, I wouldn’t dare share lines of prose if their composition wasn’t perfect. This was, until I received a message from someone in a city I’d never heard of. They wanted to let me know that a line in a poem I posted years beforehand had meant the world to them — they’d written it on a note, put it on their wall, and read it every day for years. They wanted permission to share the line in a post they were making to share their recovery journey. It was a poem I didn’t like. It was a poem I had taken down from the internet because I thought it wasn’t good enough. In that moment, I realized, that no work would ever be good enough for a perfectionist, but if I let myself hide away hundreds of unfinished projects, they would never reach the people they were meant for. To me, the most rewarding aspect of creating is knowing that my art isn’t for me. It’s meant for someone out there, in a city I may have never heard of, that I’ll likely never even have the pleasure of knowing, and that’s pretty cool.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://lumosnightlock.square.site/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lumosnightlock/

Image Credits

Sam Duda