FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE--

BROOKLYN, NY—

Welcome, I have decided to start a newsletter.

How often will I write? No clue. Will I give up after 3 issues? No clue. What will be in this newsletter? I plan to write about things I am working on, weird business operations things I like to obsess over, maybe a link to a video or book or cool t shirt I like. I am inspired to start this newsletter today because my friend Pat Spychalski started his, I like to motivate myself by putting up one sided challenges against my friends. Now we must have a competition who can get to 1000 subscribers first. Also, I tossed the idea by Drew (a critically acclaimed newsletter author, it got picked up by Forbes this week) and he said I should write one as well. So here we are.

Some general housekeeping — these will probably be filled with typos as I don’t like to edit that much. I take pictures for a living, there’s a reason I’m not an English teacher. I also will not let someone else waste their time proofreading this.

I think the direction of the newsletter will end up being determined off who ends up subscribing. If it’s my mom, I’ll talk about how I am saving money to hopefully buy a NYC apartment. If it is the youth looking for secrets on how to create a photography career I have some good tidbits I can share. If it is general consumers and enjoyers of my work, thanks for being here and I hope to share with you pictures you will enjoy. If it ends up being people who want to hire me, hopefully I do not scare them off. All of this will be more clear in due time.

Last in this section, don’t judge the design of this. I pride myself on being pretty good at dissecting software and websites to make a good product but this is my first time using beehiiv and I’m learning as I go. Lots of menus I’m discovering. If a font doesn’t match, give it a week and hopefully it will next time.

So anyways — for anyone who stumbles upon these words we should probably get into it. Here’s a bit about me. My government name is Joseph Kuper Hale (jkh). Born in July of 2000. That makes me 24 years young these days. Grew up in Upstate New York. East Glenville to be precise. Lived there until I was 18. Moved to the Bronx to attend Manhattan College. Spent a year and some months being the worst guy on my D1 Cross Country team. Worked at the Armory. Had professional runners asking for me to take photos of them but couldn’t because I was too busy being bad at my own running. Quit collegiate athletics. Took a bunch more photos. Got sent home from college due to the COVID19 pandemic. Moved to Boulder for a summer internship with Tinman Elite. Ended up overstaying my welcome and didn’t leave for basically a year and a half. Moved back to NY in 2021. Graduated college in 2022. Could make money by taking pictures at this point. Moved to Harlem. Moved to Alphabet City. Then I moved to Williamsburg. That’s where I live now. Hopefully I don’t move for a little bit. Nowadays I don’t run very often but the sport as a whole consumes quite a bit of my life. I recently picked up cycling as a hobby and now that is my exercise form of choice.

2025 has been off to a busy start. Traveling more than usual and a lot of it has been for fun, not work which is nice. I have been working a little bit, just spent the weekend in Miami for the LIFETIME Miami Marathon. The weather was nice but confirmed the fact I will never live in Florida. The pictures came out quite nice and I had some good Peruvian food.

In other work news I finally started a lease on my new creative space. I’ll be sharing it with four other individuals and I’m quite excited to build it out. As someone who grew up watching Casey Neistat videos it has always been a goal to have an office or studio of some sort so cool I can make that a reality. I’ve been working on a couple more back end projects - hopefully will be rolled out in a few weeks. Real exciting stuff.

Long winded intro but hopefully that knocks out a lot of potential FAQ someone reading this newsletter may have. I think I answered the what, why, how, who, and where.

oh- newsletter is called FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE— because hopefully it tricks people into opening my note. I did actually go to college for communications with a concentration in advertising and PR but I am not sure I learned a whole lot. I have always wanted to write press releases so I guess this is me being able to do that.

Anyways I think that wraps up this week — if you enjoy the first edition of FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE— please reply what you want to hear about or learn about in future editions. Should I be serious and try to share some value in my learnings as a young entrepreneur in the creative space or just give dumb entries about the things I see on my travels? Maybe help with home decor and recommend a product for the office. Rereading this now and hopefully people don’t think I’m an asshole. Hopefully you made it this far and got to that disclaimer. Until next time 🫡