FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE-- SUMMER BREAK (and fall) IS OVER

BROOKLYN, NEW YORK —

We’re so back. It’s been a while. Can’t believe I turned into one of those guys who said they were gonna start a newsletter, wrote like four, and then fell off the grid. I think I did say in my first edition though that may happen. Maybe I’m just meant to be a cold weather writer though.

Anyways it’s been a busy summer and fall but things are cooling down now. As a way to ease back into things I put up a Q&A IG story last week and we are gonna dig into what the people were wondering

By far the most requested questions were all around acquiring work - so I’m gonna bulk those all in here.

Most of the questions were about getting jobs — and unfortunately there’s not really a straightforward answer, but I can breakdown my strategy. Keep in mind this is all my opinion, and while it has worked for me plenty of people take a different approach. A lot of it seems kinda random a lot of the time. While being talented helps, a lot of it comes down to availability, relationships, and location. There are photographers that I personally think I’m ‘better’ than, or more suited for jobs that I will lose to, and I’m sure there are people who are much more talented than me or better suited for a job I have won over them. Just how it works. Now— back to my strategy.

Align yourself in circles where work is needed. Find a niche. These days, every business has a photo/video need. Find a group or community that has a need that you resonate with, and over deliver for them. For me, this was running. I started shooting at The Armory my freshman and sophomore year of college— would spend 10 hours every Friday and Saturday to be in the mix. Missed out on a lot of social outings, but worth it to me as I met many people that laid the groundwork for my career. This was all for free.

From there though, I knew basically everyone I needed to in order to launch a career in running. Now you don’t have to have do this in running, I frankly think our market is super over saturated now. But find a niche, and use it as a launch pad to meet people and develop portfolio.

Once your portfolio is developed it’s a lot easier to sell yourself and meet people. But the cool part is your portfolio is never actually done. As soon as I had good enough work in the running space to earn jobs, I was doing personal work in other spaces I want to get jobs in. I felt like I was only getting hired in running, so spent basically 2.5 years telling everyone I could meet I wanted to do and try anything else. People can’t read your mind, if all I was posting was running work, I was going to keep getting hired for only running work.

This leads me into the next point. Be intentional about the work you are showing and who is seeing it. Networking is huge. I utilize LinkedIn and IG a ton. Like a ton a ton. I have like 8000 Linkedin connections and have sent messages to connect to probably half of them. While hitting up 8k people might not seem intentional — it definitely is. All of these people either work in sports, advertising, or some other field I am interested in. While there is usually a work element mixed in, I usually just think something the person is doing is interesting, and want to learn more. I’ve cooled off a bit this year as I’ve just been a bit busier, but this is the first year of my career where most of my jobs have come from inbound messages rather than me doing cold outreach. I think it’s one of the strongest skills of a freelancer, and you’ll learn how to handle rejection reaaaallly quick.

I love meeting people- whether it's work related or not. A lot of these cold messages have turned into work relationships, and a bunch also true friendships which is even better. It’s pretty special that I would say 75% of my work is with true friends, and I think that makes the product much better as well. And there is nothing better than when you can introduce two people together and they hit it off.

All that to say - your network is super important and will be where most of your jobs come from. Who do you know, who are they thinking of top of mind when they need someone to hire for a certain job?

Coolest Moment from NYCM?

Seeing my GOAT Kipchoge run by. The final sendoff.

Are newsletters worth it?

Who knows. Have I gotten work directly from one of these yet? Not that anyone has told me. Do any of you get satisfaction or any value out of reading this dispatches? Hopefully.

How to strike a work fatigue balance

This has definitely hit me hard this year. My biggest hobby is taking photos, which is also my career which means I usually have a camera on me. There have been multiple 30 day + stretches of shooting this year, often times in a busy work season mixed in with personal projects. After those I’m usually pretty cooked. Working on developing some different non photo related hobbies so free time feels more like free time and that I am not always working. Being a workaholic is fun but a good break is needed.

What’s it like working with a team?

Working with a team is awesome, just takes more management and pre production. This is our fourth year of Footstep Creative existing, and our biggest project each year comes in the form of capturing live marathon content throughout the weekend. It’s been fun to focus on the team building aspect of shooting rather than the technical aspect, and it’s been fun to see how far we have come. This year at the NYCM we had 4 photographers, 4 videographers, 3 PAs, 1 remote stills editor, and 1 on site video editor on our team. Lot of people and coordination but drives our output quality and quantity much higher when everyone can focus on their role rather than jumping around to do a bunch of things.

How does you beard look so damn good all the time? (direct quote from the Q&A btw)

Gonna just chalk this one up to my Ashkenazi DNA.

What should running brands takeaway from Mamdani’s mayor campaign?

Make running shoes more expensive for billionaires? Idk bro I take pictures for a living not analyze the geopolitical landscape.

What piece of work are you most proud of?

I’m most proud of my Penn Relays work. It’s a blank canvas with so many athletes of different ages and backgrounds to make some really interesting photos. This will be year 5 of me at the Penn Relays and in a space where there is so much photography like running, it serves as a testing ground for me to try new ideas and concepts in shooting sports. I think in another few years I’ll put together a book from the body of work that has developed.

That’s all for today- thanks for the questions

One more thing!! A few months ago I was doing a lot of research on a Dropbox alternative, because DB is buns. Thanks to the team at Bandit, I got connected with Air. I got on the phone with them and explained how there’s a bunch of great solutions for enterprise level storage, but those are way too expensive for freelancers. They listened and cooked up a Creator plan— it’s gonna be $120 a year, but if you use code ‘JKH’ you can get your first year for just $20. $20!!

Shoot me a message if you have any questions about the software, I’ve been using it since USAs this year and has really improved my workflows. So much that when I first posted about it I got about 15 messages asking if it was an ad. God forbid a guy delivers shareholder value to both his homies and big corporations!