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What I learned Making My First Mini-Doc

If you hadn’t seen the video yet, two weeks ago I dropped my very first mini-documentary which I’m titling The Storyteller Series. The series is meant to be a bit of a challenge for me but also a way for me to further flex some creative muscles I haven’t been using.

My instagram bio may read “Storyteller” but the truth is that I’ve been primarily using that phrase in the form of still images. As recently as a year ago I repeatedly said on my podcast that I had little to no interest in moving over to film or documentary style video shoots. I guess things change.

It took me a long time from conception of the idea, to shooting it, editing it, and to finally sharing it, but the process absolutely made me fall in love with creating short films. It’s funny that something I bemoaned and was adamant I would never do, has become something I’m dying to do more of. Life is funny in that way.

We’re getting close to the 4-year anniversary of my career in photography and in a lot of ways it has me constantly trying to revise my approach when it comes to creating art. Part of me struggles with the social media hype train of video and short form content but another part of me is enjoying the challenge of growing a following and expanding my creative skills in an area I’m relatively new at.

In that regard, the process of shooting this short form doc was a huge challenge. Taking something I’d never done before and in a lot of ways I’m super happy with how it turned out. It’s one of those things where if you don’t try to do new shit you’re going to be stuck in the same place over and over again.

It’s funny as I get older I constantly find myself trying new things and having varying degrees of success and failure. And that’s the point right? I often get asked how I found my way into photography, or starting my podcast, or now shooting this mini doc and the answer is always the same, because I tried.

Life is about choices and challenges and you can take them as they come and run from them or you can take them head on and learn from them. I’ve always gotten the most growth of my life through failure, trial and error. In a lot of ways you learn best when your back is up against a wall.