We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Stephen Payne. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Stephen below.
Stephen, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today It’s always helpful to hear about times when someone’s had to take a risk – how did they think through the decision, why did they take the risk, and what ended up happening. We’d love to hear about a risk you’ve taken.
Some people will tell you “Never give up.” They are wrong. The trick is to know when to give up. And I’m not saying you should give up easily, you shouldn’t. But not every one of your projects is going to get completed, but some of them will and hopefully they will be amazing.
Another trick is to do something creative every day. I don’t mean just take a photograph with the cell phone. I mean do something that’s actually creative. Maybe go to a friends party and take a bunch of portraits of people. Or doodle a sketch. Write some lyrics to a song. Anything, but do it once a day for the rest of your life.
Stephen, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I first got into photography when I was in my late teens. I really enjoyed it and then one day I realised that you could actually get paid for taking photographs. Bingo. And that’s what I’ve done all my life. I’ve worked for all sorts of magazines and newspapers …. and it’s been a blast so far.
I am getting into filmmaking more and more. I’ve made, many many shorts and now I’m trying to make a long. :)
I’m in the process of writing a film and through an odd chain of circumstances, there’s a reasonable chance we’re going to be able to make it.
I live on a boat in Malta. I used to live in London, then I spent 27 years in Los Angeles California. And now I find myself on a boat in Malta ….. full-time. I was not expecting this, but it’s given me a lot of time to be creative and come up with new ideas.
We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?
I have a YouTube channel, “Jaywalking the World.” if you are reading this, please go to it and send me a message. Please tell me how you find the channel.
I started the channel just because I wanted to show my friends back in LA, what I was up to and it has slowly grown. I think it’s just under 5000 subscribers now, which by YouTube standards is almost nothing, but it keeps me amused.
I also have a website. www.paynie.net
My advice would be to create quality content. Don’t post all your photographs, only post the good ones. Be quite hard on yourself if you make a short film, if it’s not good enough, go back and edit it until it is good enough.
Is there mission driving your creative journey?
I lived in Los Angeles California. I never made a feature film. That’s not good. I’m quite a good filmmaker. So I’ve written a comedy about a bank heist gone wrong. The log line is “Two bank robbers rob a bank. If only they had spoken to each other before committing the crime.” The working title is “Wait, what?” Maybe one day you’ll be sitting in a cinema watching it and remember where you first heard about it. :)
I’m not a natural writer. Sometimes it feels like sitting on a toilet with the desire to poo and nothing comes out. But once I do put my mind to it, I can actually write some quite funny stuff.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.paynie.net
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jaywalking.the.world/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/paynie
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephen-payne-ba72654/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@JaywalkingTheWorld
- Other: https://www.youtube.com/@StephenJPayneGo to Burning Man.
Image Credits
Stephen J Payne