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

Sean , thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What do you think Corporate America gets wrong in your industry?

Corporate can be all about “efficiencies.” While there are certainly valid market forces behind some of this pressure, doing more with less is great strategy when ordering office supplies, but it’s not with creativity. Photographers, and all creatives succeed by making connections through our work. We are skilled observers and when at our best, curious about everything and everyone around us. When given extra bandwidth from clients, our images capture feeling and can bring people back to a specific moment in time.

Cutting time and extensive “nuts and bolts” shot lists to satisfy clients and sponsors deprive creatives of the time they need to create connection, to get a level deeper than a “pretty picture.”

I see this often when I deliver images. The “must haves” on shot lists are not the images that wow my clients. Don’t get me wrong, they are very nice images, but they are one of thousands moving past our eyes everyday. They’re not the images born from observation and curiosity and they’re not the ones that make people stop scrolling.

Whether it’s chatting with the new editor of Bon Appetit and learning she likes to juggle, or watching inner city kids amazed by science in the BioBus because their school doesn’t have lab space, being given the space as a creative to feel their joy and share it is imperative and ultimately, what will create imagery that sets these events apart.

Sean , 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?

Photography is not something I fell into. I knew at age 8 I wanted to be a photographer. I used to cut out my favorite stories from old National Geographics and make “super issues.” At age 10 I asked for a camera for Christmas and by my senior year of high school, I was assisting my photo teacher with intro to photography classes. It wasn’t really a question of what I would be, just where in photo I would wind up.

I wanted to learn everything and all types of photography. Even while pursuing my master’s degree in Photojournalism and Documentary Photography at the International Center for Photography (ICP) I was working for studio photographers in NYC learning the ins and outs of strobe lighting and large format cameras—not to mention how to (and how not to) run a business.

While I thought I would have to decide what kind of photography I would specialize in, I didn’t. I’ve kept my curiosity alive and well and my clients range across all areas of the economy in corporate, editorial and non-profit. I’ve been around long enough to say I’ve had stories published in Life Magazine and The New York Times Sunday Magazine among many others.

I’m able to move easily between these areas because I firmly believe photography is a service industry. I believe the diversity of my work and clients allows me to anticipate needs and find solutions before lowercase “p” problems become uppercase “P” problems. Working extensively in the magazine industry on the event side with amazing teams at Conde Nast and Hearst publications for 15+ years has also taught me an incredible amount about the marketing side of the industry and what deliverables clients and sponsors are looking for from event photography.

As a person who isn’t the most comfortable self-promoting, what makes me feel best, when I think about my career, is that my clients stay. I have been serving the majority of my clients for over a decade. Some of those pushing two! I try my best to approach each shoot with a goal of not only creating impactful images, but to also minimize extra work for my clients. I want them to know that if I’m there, they don’t need to worry about photography.

Can you share one of your favorite marketing or sales stories?

I’d like to flip this one on its head. I think the most valuable marketing story I could share was one that didn’t work. When my career was in its early stages and I was trying to gain traction in the events space I hired a designer who created a beautiful tri-fold mailer, paid for an industry mailing list and sent huge numbers out—at a cost of thousands of dollars. I didn’t land a single client from it. I won’t lie. There was a pity party. The work was some of my best and it was tough to swallow putting it out to the world and hearing crickets. It also brought about a watershed moment for me. My partner reminded me my clients love me. “Call them and ask if they have any colleagues they think you would be a good fit for.” Every client I called did not hesitate. They had suggestions, made personal connections and in each instance I gained a client. At multiple points in my career I have done this with near 100% success.

The lesson being, whether it’s a life partner, professional colleagues, or friends. Communicate what you are going through to those around you. The support I received was genuinely overwhelming.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

Pandemic pivot!

When it became clear things were going to shut down in NYC there was a lot of communication back and forth with my clients. Mostly, of the “everyone ok over there” type. What became clear through those conversations was that all foreseeable jobs were going to be cancelled and that my event clients weren’t even going to consider future events for 6 months.

Working across multiple sectors of the economy always acted as a safety net for me. If one sector was down it never hurt too badly because another sector was up. This was different though, and thoughts of a family of four cooped up in a small Brooklyn apartment as the pandemic raged seemed a crushing prospect.

One night my partner and I were talking, and she said, “If we could be anywhere right now where would you want to be?”

My nonsensical answer to questions like this is typically Barbados. I’ve never been, but I love the sound of it. This didn’t seem theoretical though. I said Costa Rica. There was no laughing reply. We just looked at each other and wondered out loud if it was possible.

A tremendous amount of research and legwork later, a pallet of our things was on a container ship and we were heading to San Jose. We spent 3 weeks near the capitol and eventually settled on the Pacific coast in Herradura for the remainder of our 9 months there.

This was by far the boldest decision we ever made as a family and while there was a pandemic there as well, there was still plenty to do and see. It felt like paradise. To have that kind of time in a setting as beautiful as Costa Rica with my family was incredible. It also allowed me to reconnect with my love for nature photography, which is what sparked my interest in the career as a little boy.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.seansime.com
• Instagram: @seansime
• Linkedin: Sean Sime
• Other: https://www.etsy.com/shop/SeanSimePhotography

Image Credits
All images ©Sean Sime