We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Shawn Gavlick. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Shawn below.

Shawn, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?

A lot of what I do daily comes from both a formal education as well as learning on my own, photography is a technical process as well as a creative one. I have a degree for Fine art photography and in that program there was a lot of time spent on the technical side of photography but the program also focused on content and essentially visual story telling. A lot of the things I have learned since then has been trying to do something new to push myself to create better or different images and working through failures or hardships until I find the answer.

Looking back I think I could have learned a lot faster if I didn’t hold myself back, for a while I was shy as a photographer because if I was not positive something would work out I would be hesitant to create in the first place. Stepping on to social media to share my work has been a major shift for me, getting feedback from many view points and seeing images by other creators has been motivating and helpful.

At this point one of the most useful skills a photographer can have is being able to break down an image, look at the technical elements and the steps taken to get to the final result.

One of the biggest obstacles for me was time, I was not putting in enough time to create, fail occasionally, and then learn. Now that I have realized that I see my work and skills improving much faster.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I tend to describe myself as a photo image maker or more casually a jack of all trades photographer. I am able to create images in and out of my studio, work with products, people, locations, and more. My goal as a photographer is to create high quality work that helps tell the story that fits a client’s needs. Often when producing images it is to showcase their work and effort into a product or service. I also feel like I’m a problem solver before the camera even comes out of the bag, over the past few years I have gained a lot of knowledge to make a project happen for a client. I have spent a lot of time going to different stores to find the right items for a shoot, finding the best looking ingredients if food is involved, how to build and shape the world inside of my garage studio. I have even gotten myself a little too deep sometimes, a client might say to me, “I don’t know if this is possible but…” This usually means I get to learn something new, whether its cultural, technical, a new style, new tools, etc. This can often be difficult but so rewarding, it is a great feeling to deliver on a concept and it is received well and then the flood of questions on how it was achieved.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

The most rewarding thing for me is seeing my images being used and shared, I get so excited to see my work anywhere. The great thing is that I have had the pleasure of working with so many different brands and companies I get to see my work in a huge range of ways. I find it very interesting to see which images get utilized, I usually I have a favorite image or two and sometimes those end up being heroes and used a lot or sometimes the client does not feel the same way. I don’t think I will ever get tired of seeing one of my images and being able to point it out to a friend or stranger, I have been lucky to see posters, menus, packaging, websites, storefronts, and more featuring an image that I created.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

I think as a freelancer there will never be a time when issues and roadblocks don’t come up, I have had my fair share of them and know that there will be more to come. I have had issues with venues breaking contracts by double booking my time, cameras falling and breaking while on location, a certain accounting/tax program deleting everything I had. The easy part is getting upset over those things, the hard part is working through it, moving on and still getting the job done. I went out with my client to find a new venue after being booked over for a dog show, we ended up in an abandoned railyard and came out with amazing photos, the smashed camera worked again after a few minutes of work. Some of those instances, and others, really made me question this decision to be a freelancer, but at the end of the day this is what I’ve always wanted to do so I keep pushing.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.shawngavlickphotography.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gavlickphoto/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/gavlickphoto