We were lucky to catch up with Thomas Ross recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Thomas thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. 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?

Learning, in my opinion, is a lifelong pursuit. I’ve always been fascinated with how things work, and photography was no exception. Most of what I learned in the beginning was trial and error, since Google was barely a thing and there was no such thing as YouTube.

I found my first mentor while I was looking for a part time job in college. I ended up working events for a high volume photographer, and he showed me some of the basics for framing and getting the attention fo my subjects. I put the pursuit for my passion away after graduating, trading it for a real job in the corporate world as a Financial Advisor for a few years.

Eventually, I went on to chase the dream of becoming a full time photographer and went took several workshops my first year in business. I gained the most knowledge with a week long retreat in Oregon run by a nationally recognized portrait photographer. Not just in the realm of creativity, but in the areas of how to run a profitable business.

Knowing what I know NOW, I don’t know that there was much I would have changed with regard to learning the craft. I think I would have worked more to try and find allies in the photography industry and made more friends in the field in the very beginning. It was a very fickle industry to find buddies to go on hangouts, and sometimes it still is. While it’s not true for everyone, most new photographers start out with an overwhelming amount of confidence. Whether that’s youth or actual warranted confidence in their skills, I find the most skilled photographers tend to remain behind the scenes.

The two most important skills for any photographer, if you want to be great at the craft, is learning lighting and composition. Color theory is followed VERY closely behind them, but is inherently learned after about 10,000 good photos. Then, everything else tends to fall in place behind those skills and this is where creativity can roam free. If you want to be great with making money, it becomes more about business and marketing. I’ve seen decent photographers kill it in the market place and phenomenal photographers quit because they couldn’t make a dime. Take to YouTube and audio books. Ingest as much information as you can and apply it. Put in a Gladwellian amount of hours into your craft and you can become great.

As with most pursuits, the obstacles that tend to hold you back are hidden ones. Typically, time. However, with the new softwares, especially AI culling and editing ones, we’ve been given a fantastic advantage in taking back our time. On the flip side these new advances, in my opinion, can lead to the watering down and rubber stamping of good imagery. If you, as a photographer, want to really stretch yourself beyond your capabilities, pick up a good film rangefinder and take to the streets. Learn the old processes, because I think that’s where most growth can be found nowadays.

Thomas, 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?

For the better part of 16 years, I’ve captured people on the happiest day of their life. I fell into photography and more specifically weddings purely by chance. I’d spent the first part of my professional career in finance as a Financial Advisor for some of the big houses on Wall Street. When 2008 upended the housing market and created a massive financial crunch, I decided to pursue a career in photography because I would be the one to be responsible for my own employment, per se.

I eventually branched out into commercial work for small businesses, even spending some time capturing content for a major media and website company in the US for several years. I’ve spent the last couple of years bouncing back and forth between working with wedding couples on their big day, to designing websites for multimillion dollar companies and even running digital marketing campaigns for others, under a separate brand name, so I don’t confuse my core clientele.

My photography company has been able to provide my couples a true representation of their day and photograph them in the best light. Capturing memories that will live with them for a lifetime. Really, my passion in business and in life has always been to give my clients an overwhelming amount of WOW!

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

Being consistent and delivering quality over quantity. My brand has always been about giving the best quality to my clients and ensuring they’re pleased with the final product.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?

As a creative, our deliverables are very subjective. It’s hard to really get an apples to apples comparison of what one creative provides and what a true value of that product or service.

A gallon of milk at one store will be approximately the same at another. A service, such as portraits are difficult to judge based on a website or photo. It becomes more about branding, whether you’re the artist that does one of pieces or a high volume studio that does the same pose and lighting for everyone that comes in to sit down for a session.

The intangibles are hard to quantify.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://thomasrossphoto.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thomasrossphotography/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ThomasRossPhotography/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomasrossphotography/

Image Credits
Thomas Ross Photography