19. Adam Blasberg | Photographer

In this episode, Marshal speaks with photographer, Adam Blasberg. Throughout this conversation, Adam generously shares his tips on building an impressive portfolio, nurturing client relationships, and discovering one's unique style. He also emphasizes the importance of personal projects, highlighting why they hold as much weight as the paid projects, and revealing how he successfully juggles his career with family commitments.

So, if you are struggling to balance your career, passion, and family, then you will definitely gain valuable insights from this conversation. Let’s dive in!

Episode Highlights

1:57 Getting to know Adam Blasberg

5:31 Growing as a Photographer by Doing instead of Studying

12:30 Managing and Developing Client Relationships

20:27 The Transition from Assisting to Paid Work

26:44 Building Relationships with Agencies

37:30 The Importance of Personal Projects

42:45 Balancing a Creative Career and a Family

59:23 Connect with Adam and Checkout his Work

🔗 CONNECT WITH ADAM BLASBERG

📸Instagram | @adamblasberg 💻Website | www.adamblasberg.com

🔗 CONNECT WITH MARSHAL

📸Instagram | www.instagram.com/marshalchupa 💻Website | www.marshalchupa.com 👥 Linkedin | www.linkedin.com/in/marshal-chupa-99a7921a8

📄 SHOW NOTES & TRANSCRIPT

Visit the website for the transcript and highlights from the conversation - www.shotlistpodcast.com

🎙 ABOUT THE PODCAST

This podcast is all about helping emerging cinematographers, photographers, and directors navigate the challenges of making a life and a living behind the lens. From workflow to personal growth, creative vision to marketing, finances to production—every episode is packed with a wide range of topics to support visual storytellers in their pursuit of building a business and growing a career they are proud of.

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📱 GET IN TOUCH

You can also drop me a DM instagram @marshalchupa or email marshal@marshalchupa.com

TRANSCRIPT

Episode Preview

Adam Blasberg: It does work if you care about it all enough, like I care about my business. I care about my photography an incredible amount. I also care about my family in immeasurable amount. Given that I have two things, I have two entities, two extremely different. Entities on either side of my life that are incredibly important to me, like paramount are the most important things to me in my life, our family and my business.

And so when you have those things, when you have anything that's that important, you give it the energy that it needs. Does it mean that I have less energy for myself? Yes. And do I need to find nourishment and. sustenance from those things. I do. Otherwise I would be, I would probably feel quite lost.

Marshal Chupa: Hello and welcome to another episode of Shot List where we talk about how to make a life and a living behind the lens. I'm cinematographer Marshall Chupa and today I am speaking with photographer Adam Blasberg. In this episode, Adam and I dive into whether taking the time to go to school for a creative career is the right choice.

What actually propelled a successful career as a photographer. Why he sees personal work as so important, and how he was able to find his through line, and what it takes to be a dad and a family man while still riding the wild roller coaster of a creative freelance career. Adam is not only a really great photographer professionally, but a really kind and caring human that I see continually showing up with a calm and collected energy on set and in life, leaving a good impression on everyone around him.

If you're a creative freelancer who is questioning having kids one day, hold on to the end of the conversation where we go into depth about whether having a family and working at a high level as a creative is possible. I'm excited to share this conversation with you. Let's dive in. Adam, thanks so much for coming on the show today.

Getting to Know Adam Blasberg

Marshal Chupa: Appreciate you being here. My pleasure. I was just thinking back, like, how did we even meet in the first place? And racking my brain, I think it was six or seven years ago that our mutual friend and creative consultant, Corin Hebert, introduced us also on episode seven. If you want to check them out we entered your studio and I was filming a small little video for this marketing company.

And we were getting B roll of you as a photographer. Like I remember just asking you to Take your lens on and off the DSLR and look like you're taking a picture.

Adam Blasberg: I remember that. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. I had no context of what that was for. I'm looking back at it. I had no idea what that was for, but I do remember.

Yeah.

Marshal Chupa: And then even last year, I think we Landed a big project together with our mutual friend director, friend, Morgan English. And we ended up traveling across Canada together all summer on, I don't even know how many plane rides we took together.

Adam Blasberg: Yeah. I don't know either, but I know I spent more time with you than I did my own life.

Marshal Chupa: Yeah. That's saying something. And I strictly remember the amount of time I've spent in security lineups, especially getting interrogated for the long Pelican cases that look like guns. But they were pretty disappointed when it turned out to be light stands and lighting gear. They were always just

Adam Blasberg: Oh, geez.

Okay. Yeah. Move

Marshal Chupa: along, but classic, we spent a lot of time in airports together this past year. So got to know each other.

Adam Blasberg: Indeed. Absolutely. So I'd love to

Marshal Chupa: start out just by diving into a little bit of your journey story. Give the audience a little bit of an idea of like, how things began for you as a photographer.

Adam Blasberg: Yeah, actually, they started when I was about 19, while I was traveling, I can trace it back to even when I was in high school, taking what was called graphics at the time, which ended up being like photography class for, 16, 15, 16 year olds. And I've fell in love with it at that point.

And when I went traveling right after high school I took my bicycle to Newfoundland and rode home back to the West coast. And when I got back, it was quite clear that photography or taking pictures was my favorite part of the trip. And so that kind of started it. What the day I got home, the day I realized I had nothing else to do.

It was actually my mother who suggested maybe I pursue a career in photography. That's the earliest that I can remember when I was like almost 20 years old that I. Started embarked on my career as a photographer. I went to school and I assisted. I started assisting pretty quickly out of school and was very fortunate to enter the assisting market right as film photography was being phased out and digital photography was being phased in.

Growing as a Photographer by Doing Instead of Studying

Adam Blasberg: And I remember a lot of photographers requesting help guiding them through that process as I had just gotten out of school as digital photography was being introduced. So I had a bit of understanding of what it was and what the process entailed and was able to help a little bit in that transition for photographers.

I was doing a lot of assisting right out of school and I got to a point in assisting where. Was assisting more out of town than I was in town, traveling a lot with assisting, assisting a wide range of photographers and assisting international photographers that were coming to Vancouver for a variety of reasons and got to assist some of the top photographers in the world and got to see how they did things when they had big jobs.

Marshal Chupa: So what school did you end up going to?

Adam Blasberg: I went to Langara College their professional full time program. And that's a two year photo diploma? That was a two year photo diploma program, yeah. And it was great, like it, I think I, in hindsight, I probably didn't... Bring with me too many skills because the majority, probably 90 percent of what we did was film related and specifically like dark room calibrating, extremely technical, very mathematical and not too applicable once I graduated because digital photography kind of just wiped all that information out of any kind of necessary part of my brain.

Like it just didn't wasn't relevant anymore. Yeah, that makes sense. Almost immediately after I graduated. Yeah. And

I also ironically started, as I say started that program as well and did the whole lasted one semester and dropped out just because I thought, for me, this, the learning from a chalkboard just really didn't resonate with me.

And it's interesting to hear all of your assisting stuff going on because it was literally like one day where we had to assist another, go out and work with someone. And I remember I learned. Way more in one day assisting someone that I did in the whole semester of school. And that's what this kind of shifted my brain into being like, okay, this there's another way to actually learn and grow and still figure this stuff out.

And perhaps it's not school. So I'm not pushing against that.

Totally. And I am involved or have been involved in education. And my view of it has changed quite a lot over the years. And actually Funny enough, my recommendation or suggestion is less school than more. And I, when I graduated from Langara, I was already accepted into the there's a school in Santa Barbara.

I'm trying to remember what it was called. I was supposed to go down to Santa Barbara to do a degree in photography another two years, another two year program. And it was going to cost me like another 100, 000. But my mentor at the time looked at me and was just like, why are you doing that?

Like he... Genuinely was curious why I wanted to do it. And I think I was just doing it because I was delaying the inevitable or I was afraid to put my skills to the test and get out there and start a business and try and make a go at it. It's safer and it's easier to just stay in school and just do assignments that you're given without the pressure of having to earn any money for sure.

Yeah. So now I say, get the basic amount of training in school or online or whatever. But as soon as you can just start doing instead of studying.

Marshal Chupa: And how much would you say that your assisting some of these big people really led to a lot of the puzzle pieces falling into place? Because I know when I was able to get on set and actually witness the professionals working at a professional level, seeing how they communicate with clients, seeing like what they're like, even though the lighting setups look like, or how they work with their assistants.

That was super helpful for me. Do you, did you find that was a big puzzle piece to? Oh,

Adam Blasberg: 100%. I think what school allowed me to do was actually what it did was introduce me to some of the people, some of the players, but it didn't, I didn't learn what I needed to learn from school. What I needed to learn was from the people.

Doing the photography, doing the jobs that I got to assist. I learned 100 percent of what I needed to learn from assisting. And I think school gave me some sort of a foundation or the framing. Provided me with an opportunity to meet the people, like it didn't, it wasn't the information I got from school that was so valuable.

It was just being in school. It was just being surrounded by people, a community of people that were also passionate about it and meeting a few friends that I could develop a community with. It was really like, it really was a more of a community feature than it was like a learning. Feature.

I didn't learn what I needed to in school. It just. Brought me closer to the people I needed to learn from. Yeah. That

Marshal Chupa: makes sense. If you're trying to get into something and it's just, you're lone wolfing it by yourself and you're just trying to like, I have no idea where to go from here. Thank you.

Just being around other people who are inspired, who are drawn to the same things, constantly talking about them together. I think there's just, there is a ton of value in that for sure. And something that I'm constantly seeking out.

Adam Blasberg: That's it. But you don't need to be doing that for four years. Yes. You need a hit of that.

And that is the catalyst, but it doesn't need to be a hundred percent of your propulsion. Yeah.

Marshal Chupa: I think a piece of that is also in school. Like they don't actually teach you the hard skills that are required in real life. Like how to push through that anxiety of Reaching out to the client or all those actual real life things of bookkeeping and figuring out how to charge what you're worth and yeah, I think just by staying in school, don't get me wrong, I actually really wish I could just go back to school, because that would be fun.

Yeah. and relaxing and you can just let all that go. It could be easy, but instead here, instead it's the real knock, real knocks of our life to, go through and just continually pound the pavement and figure it out as you go, which is. Actually, what needs to happen, I think, to make this successful.

Adam Blasberg: Totally. I compare it often to, being at the edge of a jungle and you have a machete and all the people that you went to school with are also at the edge of that jungle. And you're just basically trying to hack your way through. Once you graduate school, you are, there's no clear path. Through the jungle, you are hacking and sometimes you're going in circles and sometimes you're going backwards, but you are hacking your way through to the other side, which there's never any other side of the jungle where the jungle just stops and all of a sudden you're in some sort of easy street, but it's just it does get thinner and.

Your way does become easier to find the longer you are in the industry or the longer you are doing what you're doing, but everybody is just hacking their way through trying to find those easier paths, but not many people make it. Yeah, that makes sense.

Marshal Chupa: Ultimately, I guess your blade gets sharper, but the vines and the weeds still exist.

I think I can relate to that. Something that I've, admired about you is your energy that you bring to the table. We've worked on 25 plus projects together over the years and no matter the chaos I've seen. Happen on set or the problems that may arise, you're usually calm as a cucumber.

Managing and Developing Client Relationships

Marshal Chupa: And yeah, it's been interesting to watch you in and around client conversations and keeping them cool and problem solving in real time. And I'm just curious to that, that's something that something comes naturally to you, or is that something that you developed

Adam Blasberg: over time? A combination of both.

I think naturally I am, I'm a person that is eased under pressure. Like I'm fine with a lot of pressure. I'm fine with a lot of chaos. I think I've always been that way since I was a kid, but I think I also, I got into meditation at a, like in my late twenties and when things were really chaotic in my life.

And I think that kind of created a higher level of. Calmness to my day to day from day to day and also under pressure on a photo shoot. I think it became easier to be calm because I have meditation training that has really helped me. But also I, it also comes from assisting when I was an assistant, I saw.

Photographers fly off the hook when things weren't going well. I saw photographers throw things and call people names and get very anxious and just unpleasant to be around under pressure. And then I saw photographers that were when things were falling apart at the seams. Nothing was going well, they still remain very calm and got through it without a problem.

And I think I just, I made a conscious decision to model myself after those photographers as opposed to the photographers that were high anxiety photographers.

Marshal Chupa: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Ultimately I've witnessed both as well. And your next phone call is the result of your last job.

So I think being able to hold that space, hold that that calm energy, it is a skill is something that developed and I've continually and working to develop it myself, but it's definitely something I've noticed you really have attuned to. So it's very cool to see. Yeah.

Adam Blasberg: I, the other part of it is I have two young kids.

So home is chaos. Home is wild and nobody's listening to you. And there's constantly, there's a hundred things that need to be done at the same time. There's a high emotions and it's a really wild experience. So going to work is chill for me. Like doing a big photo shoot is actually way more calm and relaxing than being at home.

And I think part of it is you're, they're your own kids. So they know how to push your buttons. Whereas, on a shoot, everybody's working together. It doesn't always feel like that at home.

Marshal Chupa: Fair. And then coming back to the calm energy thing, you've told me that's a little bit of. A through line in your work.

And I know correct me if I'm wrong, but that might have come from working with Christina force and some of her processes. She's in episode 18. If anyone wants to check that out, tell me a little bit about how you found that through line in your work.

Adam Blasberg: Yeah, that was a turning point in my career, for sure, where I was at a point where I didn't, this constantly happens in one's career.

And in mine, I can, it's very clear when the chapter changes, right? When things change, I think, five years ago, I would have classified myself as a portrait photographer doing these very studied, very set up, very lit portraits, cinematic portraits. And I just, something was not resonating. I didn't feel like it was the right thing for me at the time.

It always had felt really great and I really loved it, but things were changing. I was getting older. My life circumstances were changing. The industry was changing. I think I changed. I was looking for something. Christina Forrest at the same time entered my life and I started working with her and through conversations with her, looking at my own self and my own life and my own life path.

We came to realize that calm energy was, as you say, the through line or the why of my work, this was why I was a photographer, why I was photographing and what I was bringing to my clients was a calm energy and it resonated right to my core where I just was. felt so right to call my work calm energy, because that's exactly how I feel.

I have this, an intense amount of energy within myself, but I am able to calm it. I'm able to be calm. But that energy transpires into my work. My sets are very calm, generally, like I am very calm on set. But I do love when there is an energy that comes through to the work and you can see it, but you can also feel that it's calm.

Marshal Chupa: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I've witnessed that calm energy on set and the people you're interacting with your subjects that you're actually photographing. And of course, that's a whole skill set in itself is how to get the reaction or the involvement out of your subject, which I've seen you do really well when it comes to that being an anchor.

How important is that piece? Do you think to your work or how important is that for other people to discover?

Adam Blasberg: I think it's ultimately very important. Does it come right away? No, I came over 20 years after I started down this path. It's not something you're going to find in school, right? If you are at the beginning level of your career, it's not that you have a way of a lot of development to go through before you can really figure out your why that's how I see it.

I often think of art or in this case, photography. It's a language. It is. It's a language. And just a newborn can just make certain sounds and infants can cry and they can babble, and the toddlers can learn words. They slowly develop their language. Photography is no different.

Photographers are the same. When you start, you pick up your camera and you can take pictures that are not very good. And then slowly, as you take more pictures, you develop your language and you get better. You get better and better until you become proficient with the language. And then you become an expert and a master with the language.

And then you can start, you have your own way of speaking that is very unique to yourself. And that's at the point where I was able to define my calm energy. Yeah. That makes a lot of

Marshal Chupa: sense. And maybe that's just a good point to throw out there is don't feel that you need to find that right away because that is just the, of the evolution of doing the work that we find the Y versus finding the Y and then doing the work.

It would be great if we could figure it out right away. Yes. In fact, if you do, that's awesome magically, but I can see how doing the reps practicing the language, as you said, is what actually guides you into that anchor when, what you found, which is super cool.

Adam Blasberg: Yeah, I can't stress enough to I try and tell students the odd time I go into a classroom and talk about photography.

I can't stress enough that this is a very long project. This is a lifelong project. This is the project requires an enormous amount of maturity and enormous amount of development and evolution. And it's not something that happens in a year or two years or five years or 10 years. It's a very long term project, and one of the most important things or values that you can incorporate into your work is patience.

Marshal Chupa: I resonate with that a lot. And when it came to breaking into the industry, that seems daunting for a lot of people. And I'm curious, what were some of maybe the first steps that you took? It sounded like assisting was a good is how things kicked off. But then how did you transition from assisting into actually getting being the photographer and getting paid work?

Adam Blasberg: That was a harder transition. To make then the assisting thing happened pretty quickly, I think. And it might have just been the time in history that I was trying to be an assistant where it was like, it wasn't really seen as a viable source of income. It was just something you did if you had extra time.

So when I started assisting I hit the ground running and was able to contact a lot of photographers and get on their list, so to speak. Quickly and start working with them quickly. So that wasn't as challenging. I was making enough money as an assistant to support myself within, five or six months of deciding to be an assistant.

The Transition from Assisting to Paid Work

Adam Blasberg: The transition from assistant to photographer was years in the making. And what it really boiled down to was portfolio development, which again is just practicing your language. And practicing your craft and refining your craft and getting a portfolio that is in any way, shape or form competitive in the industry that you're trying to tackle.

So I, I saw a photographer do this. This was probably one of the most eye opening things that I ever saw was a photographer in one year do so many creative shoots that they went from not having a portfolio to having a portfolio that was earning them the biggest jobs in Vancouver. One year later, now he came from the film industry and had a great understanding of lighting and composition.

So it wasn't like he was a novice by any means but he didn't have, he wasn't part of the photography industry. And he, from day one, when he decided I'm going to be a photographer, he started Putting his book together through creative shoots and within one year how to had a book finished and he started taking that to the agencies like advertising agencies and that got him work immediately and paid back time and time over. Like he did very well as a photographer in the end.

Marshal Chupa: Yeah. That's pretty cool to hear that's what it took or can take. And how long did it take you to build your first portfolio and were you walking into agencies? Like how did that process begin once you

Adam Blasberg: had the body of work?

Yeah. I had a portfolio coming out of school and it was pretty clear to me right out of school that it was not competitive. I wasn't gonna lie to myself and say, Oh, this is great. I'm going to get all sorts of work. It was pretty it was very obvious that it was a student portfolio.

So I think it was right away, as soon as I graduated school, I started ripping pages out of my portfolio and marking them up and putting new pictures in, going out and shooting pictures that I felt. Would be better than the worst pictures in there. And it slowly evolved I did that with the actual housing of my portfolio for a year.

Then I got a new housing and then I did that again. I switched the pictures to my new housing and I took out the worst pictures. I went out and did some shoots and paid for shoots and put on small productions that I could afford and replace the worst pictures. Like it's just an evolution. The portfolio itself is an evolution.

So I have friends that I went to school with that had this idea of the perfect portfolio and never took any steps. To accomplishing that they, they just had the idea of what their perfect portfolio would look like with all the images that were competitive and, but they never took the steps to evolve their portfolio that they graduated with.

So they just never went anywhere. They never took any steps. It really. Does come down to baby steps.

Marshal Chupa: What I'm hearing there is maybe that, perfectionism can kill the process and that you just just are saying, do it, go shoot by shoot. You're going to learn something each time and you're going to get maybe 1 more portfolio or a picture in your portfolio and just be okay with that baby step.

Adam Blasberg: Yeah, you can't take big steps in this to begin with. It's very hard to take big steps. It really, you just have to take small steps and you have to one step at a time and change your portfolio to make it a little bit better. Otherwise it's just, it's too frustrating. It can defeat you. It has the power to defeat you.

If all you want is to get to the end, because it's just not that type of career. It really is no different than being. A high profile lawyer or a brain surgeon, like these are all like I'm not that I'm comparing photography with brain surgery, but they all require a lot of time. A brain surgeon goes to school for, I don't know how many years while photographer can call himself a photographer after deciding that there are, it's not like they have to qualify.

A photographer. can be a photographer from day one. A brain surgeon has to go through years and years of school. The photographer that decides them themselves, they are a photographer. They have to look at the next 10 years as schooling. It's just not structured the same way as brain surgery.

Marshal Chupa: For sure. Yeah, that's really good way to look at it. Yeah. It is so interesting. That's the evolution of the DSLR and how quickly people become quote unquote photographers. These days, I think back in the day when film was a thing that separated people a little bit more because there was a bit more technical knowledge needed before you, you couldn't just grab a camera, put it on auto and call it a day.

So now with the advent of things getting easier and easier as we move forward, I think that, yeah, that piece maybe is being forgotten. And then the reps really do count.

Adam Blasberg: Totally. I think we were also fed that information when digital photography came out that I think, camera manufacturers were like, shoot like a pro, right?

We were being fed that through marketing and advertising that you just needed a digital camera and then you could also be professional. And so I think a lot of people forgot wait this actually, this is also a career that it's an artistic endeavor that does require. A certain level of maturity before you can really express yourself as a photographer.

Yeah, that's I

Marshal Chupa: resonate a lot with that. And okay, so you got a portfolio. How do you begin to shop that around? Are you walking into agencies? Like, how did you begin to like, build relationships in

Building Relationships with Agencies

Adam Blasberg: the beginning? It was, again, through assisting, I heard stories of how people would do it. And I heard one, this one photographer that I knew or still do know, but he literally went through the yellow pages and just contacted places one after the other, cause he, he needed to get his name out there.

And that was the same idea that I took with ad agencies. You just, you start going down the list of ad agencies in Vancouver and there's, it's not too hard to find a solid list of agencies in Vancouver and you just call them. You find the name of the creative director or art directors. And at the time I was more interested in contacting junior art directors just because I was.

I was a little intimidated by the creative directors, so I would contact the junior art directors and that just gave me a good practicing ground. I wasn't expecting to walk into an ad agency to a junior designer or a junior art director and land any kind of job. Partly because I knew that junior art directors were rarely the ones making the decision about which photographers to hire.

But I just needed some experience to practice taking my book in. It wasn't about taking my book in and, okay, so are you going to give me a job or not? It was, okay that was great great practice for me. Let's do it again in six months. And then I just went, I went down the list and just started making meetings with art directors.

It was never easy, like they don't often want to give time, their time is very precious. And they don't often want to give time to a photographer that's that they don't know that they can hire right away. But it was still a matter of just practicing.

Marshal Chupa: And okay, you have your first meeting with our creative director, our director, how do you begin to build that relationship?

Are you staying in touch? Hey, here's some new work. Are you going out for coffee and beer? What like, how does that relationship evolve?

Adam Blasberg: Ideally... Any kind of communication that you have with them is an attempt to develop the relationship. I think I, I had the idea of, okay, I'll take my book in, I'll send them an email, send them a mailer, and then I'll go for beers with them and I'll keep in touch with them and then I'll get work for them.

Cause that's how you're told that. Could work, right? That's how I was told to develop relationships. I liked that idea. That was great. But there was just like, it's just, you can't force that. Like I wasn't going to be friendly with every art director or creative director that I took my book to.

Some of them, it was just, there was just no chemistry. Even if they liked my work, there might not have been enough chemistry for them to want to develop any kind of relationship. I developed a relationship with a few people that gave me work. At the beginning that gave me some work here and there. And that slowly turned into a little bit more work here and there.

And then it eventually turned into consistent work. And it was only through that consistent work that I was able to stop assisting. Because this whole time, while I was taking my portfolio to art directors, I would still be assisting because I wasn't making enough money off shooting to Just stop assisting altogether.

I did have to be a little bit careful who I was assisting because I didn't want to land. And I didn't want to be an assistant on a job where a creative director was going to be. And I was actively marketing to them, my photography skills. So I had to be careful who I was assisting. And I remember. A couple of times, and it was unfortunate, I had to cancel late, almost last minute when I asked them like, who's this client for?

And I was, they were telling me that it was for somebody that I was literally trying to have a meeting with. So it was tricky. You're trying, you're riding a fine line between assistant and photographer. You, it's a dance for sure. Eventually I think some people gave me enough work that I could scrape by without going further into that.

I was getting enough work as a stop gap to increasing my debt. And that's really all I was trying to do was trying to stop going more into debt. And then I could stop assisting. Yeah, it's

Marshal Chupa: a funny dance that transition, I think period you're talking about, because ultimately the people, yeah, you are meeting.

You want to have that first impression and I guess, obviously if you're showing up, they see you as an assistant and then you're trying to show up and land like a six figure campaign with him that probably doesn't compute in their mind that you're the right person. So that's like a funny thing, but ultimately in reality, you're the same guy and you could have, you can do both, but it's, framing maybe is the word of like how you frame or position your self to a person.

I don't know. Do you have any thoughts

Adam Blasberg: around that? Yeah, again, hindsight is always 20, 20, I look back at who I was at that time when I was assisting and also trying to get jobs and I was trying to get jobs that, maybe they weren't six figure, maybe they were 20, jobs were some, maybe some of the bigger ones at the time that I was trying to get.

But I look back and I could have probably done the jobs, but I'm, why wouldn't a creative director hire have hired me when they could have hired somebody that was like, tried, tested and true. It was it's so much easier for them to hire somebody that they know. And have worked with before and can trust.

I totally now I get it. I see the pressure they're under to come to their clients with a job well done is it's a lot of pressure. So why would they take the risk on somebody that they don't know could do the job? And I couldn't have done the job as well as I could do it now. So why would they hire now?

They're going to hire me instead of somebody that's trying to be a photographer and that is still assisting. That's, it's often how it goes.

Marshal Chupa: It really goes down to trust, I think. And I also see that now too, because if you just reverse it one layer down, the person or the first AC that I'm hiring or the grip or the gaff, like if I don't get the right people and my first AC is not hitting focus.

All of a sudden I'm looking like I'm doing a terrible job on set and it comes back and falls on me. So again, the same move up the ladder, the creative director hired you if you're not delivering and they couldn't, on what you said you could like they're on the line. So I think it's just realizing that it's probably not all personal when it comes to like them saying no to you or if you're not ready, but ultimately it is.

Somehow, and it's, that's that funny chicken before the egg snare is like, how do you build the trust? How do you have the, give them just enough confidence to bring you on for the first one? Because if you do the first one and you do it well, then there's that trust piece for the next one because wow, you delivered their client was happy and made them look good.

Of course, they're going to come back to you.

Adam Blasberg: Why wouldn't they? Totally. That's a tricky one. The chicken or the egg thing. And at the time, I think my, the only way that I could figure that one out was to try and offer my photography for creative projects. You want to try and win an award that is not it's not about how great the photography is.

It's about the concept that you guys have developed, but you just need somebody to shoot it. Can I help you shoot that? Can I do that with you? I'll put my blood, sweat and tears into it more than like an experienced photographer, somebody with like at my stage, like I don't want to do those kinds of things so much because it's not making me money and not that I'm entirely motivated by money, but it does need to be a strong consideration.

Because I have a family and because I have limited time, whereas when you're younger, you have way more time and way less money. So you're willing to weigh less need for money. So you're willing to do those creative shoots that where there, there might not be a client. They just want to, maybe they want to Pitch to a client and they just need some photography for the pitch.

I did a fair bit of that at the beginning just to develop a relationship with the entire agency. You get to work with all sorts of people at that point, your name gets tossed around as Oh, can you just come in and do a headshot of our creative director? We have a pitch to do. Can we, can you want to come in and take a picture of this?

Or can you go take a picture of that or whatever, and that was a great way to just, that literally is just a foot in the door. It wasn't guaranteed to be future work, but it was. At the time that I needed to get my foot in the door, it was exactly that. Yeah. No,

I think that's a really good point because ultimately what you're doing is you're slowly building a relationship.

You're building trust. If you look at it from a, like a dating perspective, you don't just go and marry someone, you have to constantly warm up to each other. You got to go on the first day, then you got to show your value here. And that's what you're doing is saying Hey, look, I'm, I have value.

I can provide it to you. It's a matter of here's some no stakes opportunity for me to show you. If I screw this up, whatever on their part, because they'll just never show it or use it and nothing, no pressure. So I think that's a really good point for people starting out to just think about how can you add value without having them to have to risk or have the pressure of anything and just constantly just show up and see how you can help.

I think that's that sounds like a really good way to do it.

Exactly. And like you were saying, it goes up and down the chain, like for assistance that are coming to me and want to get on my list of assistance. I'm not going to hire somebody I don't know or is not, doesn't have a very strong reputation for a big job.

Not as my first, especially, but if you tell me that you want to work on jobs like a creative shoot, like I do creative shoots, I definitely do a fair number of things that are for my own purpose whether it's for my like imagery that I need for marketing, or I have some clients that are charities and that I do a very reduced rate or free work for them for charities and stuff.

And I would love to have an assistant. That would just volunteer their time as well for good charities. Not charities so that I can go on vacation or something, but a proper charity. So that's what, when I was an assistant, I would always offer that the same thing. I would say, Hey, if you have a creative shoot and I can help you out with, please let me know.

The same thing. If you have a charity that you're doing a shoot for, I'd be happy to lend a hand. That's a good

The Importance of Personal Projects

Marshal Chupa: point, and I think it's also a good segue into how much personal work are you shooting and how do you see that affecting your, the business side of your career as well? Is it important?

Adam Blasberg: Yeah, it's probably the most important thing for me is to shoot creative work as important to shoot creative work as it is to shoot paid work.

And in the sense that, okay, obviously I need to shoot paid work. Because I need, I have bills to pay and a family to support, but if I want to continue to get the level of work that I'm getting, I can't just rest on my laurels. I can't just sit back and expect that work is going to continue to come for the rest of my career.

I have to be developing. I have to be pushing myself to get better. I have to be developing my own craft and I have to be evolving and I have to be very in tune. with my own personal, my why, I have to be more clear on that. I have to constantly be figuring, making sure that's exactly where I want to be positioned.

And all this to say, the only way that I can do all those things is through personal work, paid work. Is wonderful and it's paid and it's the reason why I'm still a photographer. If I don't do any of the personal work, I will cease to be relevant. Work will not come if I don't shoot my own personal work because I will lose touch with who I am.

I will stop developing. I will stop evolving. I will literally just stop. My business will no longer be cutting edge, and it needs to be if you want to have a career in this industry, your business needs to be cutting edge. And for me, that means shooting personal work so I can continue to develop my craft and I can continue to evolve personally and professionally.

So I do. I shoot a lot of personal work, and I try and always have something personal on the go, whether it's something that I'm actively shooting. That's a long term project or just like a model test or a concept that I just want to shoot, do a one day shoot, whatever, there's always got to be something that I'm striving towards that as personal work.

Yeah,

Marshal Chupa: that definitely speaks to my soul a lot and it's a challenge cause you, it's easy to sit back and just. Expect the phone to ring and the emails to come in and when they do, you just get comfortable. And I definitely see it's easy to fall into that myself and to, but to constantly have that piece of work that you are striving for and pushing towards, like from what I've experienced myself, if you're not talking and showing cool things or the things that you're passionate about or the things that motivate you consistently, then I think that energy just gets lost.

Like you're just not excited to talk about your, the client work that didn't fire you up. Totally.

Adam Blasberg: If I look back in my career and I, I was talking about those chapters, there's always a new chapter in my career, like every, I don't know, every however many years, it's not always consistent.

But if I look back at the times where I turned a chapter, the period before was a period of stagnation. A period where I wasn't developing. I wasn't evolving. My vision was a bit cloudy. I wasn't exactly sure what the next step would be, was going to be. The chapter turning was not only like in recognition of that period of stagnation.

It was also a time where I started shooting more personal work because it is inspiring. It is motivating, right? So when you do shoot your own personal work, you become motivated to take your business to the next level, to take your art to the next level, to to be more clear on what you're shooting.

You get clarity when you shoot your own work. Everything starts to align. When you shoot your own work, and those are the times where my business has made the greatest leaps. And the biggest evolution has been when I've started shooting personal work again after a period of not shooting it because it does happen.

I'm shooting lots of personal work right now. I'm going to go through a phase at some point. Where I am less in touch with my personal work for whatever reason, maybe I get really busy with my own, with paid work. Maybe my family needs me more now than it did six months ago. There's all sorts of reasons in life that you just get a little sidetracked, you get pulled off the track a tiny bit, or you're in a rut, but those things do happen.

And they will happen and it's important to find ways to get out of those ruts or to change direction or to turn the page, change the chapter, whatever you want to call it. And most of the time for me, it's about personal work. Yeah, that makes a

Marshal Chupa: lot of sense. Ultimately, it's a ball of energy that you were trying to constantly keep.

A fire, it feels and when you get down to the ashes and the, just a few little flames, it's, yeah, it becomes a struggle to, yeah, you have to stoke it for sure. And I think what you're saying is personal work is that stoke is this that's the wind, that oxygen, that. Energy back and lifting that up.

And you said something in there about family. And I think I'd love to chat a little bit about the mindset it takes around being a freelance creative and a father. That's something that I've been toying with and exploring the idea of. And I think one of my personally biggest fears in and around starting a family or having children is.

To do with the loss of freedom and creative energy to do what we do, because ultimately I feel as creative freelancers, we need that space to constantly grow and evolve like we just talked about. But if you have a family that is, demanding energetically and from your time, how have you managed to do both?

Balancing a Creative Career and a Family

Adam Blasberg: Yeah. The struggle is real. It's very challenging. To be as involved as I am. Like I'm not I'm very hands on. I'm right there in the family dynamic. A very important role. I think I'm a very important role in the family dynamic. And so it's a real balancing act. And it doesn't, I don't expect to ever hit the balance.

Like I don't ever expect to find that balance. I think that generally goes for life. I think I always strive to find the balance, but I don't think that balance necessarily is realistic. It's not, it's something you can strive for, but never actually hope for. You can try and develop tools to find more balance, but you never actually find the balance.

So that's been a real challenge for me is to have a family and keep my business thriving. It doesn't always work out so well. And but it does happen. It does. It does work if you care about it all enough. Like I care about my business. I care about my photography an incredible amount. I also care about my family in immeasurable amount.

So given that I have two things, I have two entities, two extremely different. Entities on either side of my life that are incredibly important to me, like paramount are the most important things to me in my life, our family and my business. And so when you have those things, when you have anything that's that important, you give it the energy that it needs.

Does it mean that I have less energy for myself? Yes. And do I need to find nourishment and. Sustenance from those things I do, otherwise I would be, I would probably feel quite lost. My business needs to feed me like emotionally, spiritually, creatively, all those things. But my family does too. They also need to do those things.

And I think that's like. That happens in my family. I'm very nourished by my family. My family is incredibly loving and my kids are fantastic. They require a hundred percent of me and I give them a hundred percent, but I also give my business a hundred percent. The 200 percent man here. You have twice as much energy when you have a family, you have to have twice as much energy.

You have to have so much more energy than you ever had before. And you just have to, and it's not. It's not, you sleep less, you focus more, you don't waste a minute of time. If you ever find yourself wasting time, it, you are quickly reminded, there's something in me that's ah, alarm goes off and I have to be more productive.

So it just happens where you do make ends meet. You do have enough time for your business. And you do have enough time for your family. Would I like more time for my business? Yes. I will. I get it. Yes. This is a, my family is quite young. My, I have an eight year old and a three year old, almost four little girls, right?

Both girls. Yeah. They're pretty young and they, that will change, like that, whether I like it or not, that will change. I love their ages right now. And it's, they're so amazing, but they will get older and they will need me less and I will have more time for my business. My family needed me more right now and I have less time for my business.

I did give my family more time. There is that balancing act that you try to give as much time as your family needs and as much time as your business needs. But my business has struggled over the last five years since my first daughter was born eight years ago. My business has evolved and progressed, but I probably could have done far more evolving and progressing.

Then I was able to do, but I wouldn't trade it for the world.

Marshal Chupa: I think that's the biggest point and something that I'm toying with is okay at the end of the day, what do we want out of life here? And ultimately, yes, our career is awesome. Yes, it's nourishing and fulfilling and all those sorts of things.

But what are the other pieces of the puzzle of life? What is the purpose and meaning that you're actually seeking? And I think the way you're talking about giving a hundred percent to both, energetically, that sounds exhausting but also it's okay, then who cares if you're exhausted, if you're being nourished and fulfilled in the ways in which you're seeking in this lifetime.

And I think that's something incredibly important to focus

Adam Blasberg: on. That's what allows me to put my business on hold when my family needs me more is that question. What do I want out of life? And I think that. Although my business is incredibly important to me and I love photography, I'm passionate about it and it is nourishing and it is fulfilling and I feel so grateful to have had the career that I've had to this point.

More importantly are my two kids, right? And so I was, I can't say that I was happy to put my business on hold, but I did it. And when I get time to focus on my business and to do the marketing and the promotion that, and the personal work that is required to develop my business, I do it and I do it more efficiently than I ever did it before, because I have less time than I did before.

So I'm much more careful with my time. If I didn't have kids, I would probably, my business would be probably. Making more money. I would probably have bigger jobs. I'd probably be shooting things that were more aligned with what I want to be shooting, but I wouldn't have kids and I wouldn't have the family dynamic and the family that I have.

And I'm very grateful for both of those things.

Marshal Chupa: Yeah. And ultimately I think it comes down to what we value in this lifetime. What

Adam Blasberg: we value. Totally.

Marshal Chupa: In that, like an example, okay, you've got the family dynamic. You've got the business dynamic. Like, how are you on a day to day basis separating like that work life family balance, so to speak, that doesn't exist that we talked about, but it's like how do you, are you juggling emails while your kids are there?

Or do you have an office you're going to, how are you separating your day out? How do you get away to do a personal project when you could be hanging with your family in the morning? How do you juggle that decision making process?

Adam Blasberg: It's a tricky one, because when I'm with my family, I want to be working, and when I'm working, I want to be with my family.

It's that dichotomy that I'll never bridge that gap. And I'm okay with that. I know that when I'm with my family, I'll want to be working, and I know that when I'm working, I'll want to be with my family. And that's just a sentiment that I am now comfortable with. And that's okay. It's also okay that I haven't progressed my business as much as I'd like to.

I'm okay with that too. I think that a lot of it has to do with I'm getting a little off track here, but I'll come back to your original question, but I think a lot of it has to do with ego. I had to check my ego when I had kids and put aside that idea of me being like a celebrity photographer, a photographer that's going to be constantly traveling from one big job to the next around the world, flying first class and landing to a crew of people that are like at your will.

I've had to put that aside. Maybe for now, I'm not sure. Maybe that will, maybe that'll happen in my, the next phase of my career. But for now, it had to be something that I was, I had to put that on hold and I had to realize that I was probably only after that for the ego, not necessarily for anything else.

So my ego was a big part of finding that balance between work and kids. It was checking my ego. And then in terms of the practical side of Defining business versus family again, it's a very gray area. There's times where I have to say to my kids listen, I have to write an email right now.

I'm really sorry that I have to just take a minute just to do this. I know you want my attention and I'm going to write this email as quickly as I can. And then I'm going to give you all my attention. And I think my kids are now at the age where they can understand that and give me that five minute space where I need to do that before it was more challenging where I would have, I'd literally have a kid.

Climbing all over me while I'm trying to write a common collected email, my brain had to divide itself into to manage the chaos of a kid climbing on you and the calm email that I'm trying to write. But it's not always easy and I have a space in my house right now that's separate that's in the garage and attached garage to my house.

That I've transformed into an office and people know it's got a heavy door and the kids know if I'm in there, just maybe just leave me alone. I'm probably working and I probably need just a little bit of space just to get some stuff done, but since my youngest is not in full time childcare, so oftentimes I'm running to the garage, writing an email and then coming back and making her lunch and going back and writing another email and then coming back and doing whatever I need.

To help her, it's a constant back and forth. It's never like clearly defined. Very rarely is it clearly defined when I'm on shoots. Obviously it's different. A shoot is a shoot and everybody understands that I have to go to work. Like I have to make money. Yeah,

Marshal Chupa: that's also hard. We spent a lot of time on the road together last summer and I'm sure like all the planes and weeks away were challenging for your family and yourself.

Adam Blasberg: It was really challenging on a way that I didn't anticipate. It was very challenging. I think it had a deeper impact on my eldest daughter who took it for granted that I was just always going to be there. And then when I wasn't always there, I think it had an emotional impact on her. She's come out of it.

It's been long enough now that She knows that I'm here now for good, but I think it was the constant okay, I'm here for two days and then I got to go. For her, that was just too much of an emotional roller coaster to handle at her age. And then also my wife had a hard time with it too, because she's all of a sudden solo parenting for days on end with no end in sight.

It was just one trip after the other. It was constant for her to, she's trying to pull herself back together from that. I

Marshal Chupa: guess realistically, ultimately it can be done this lifestyle and a family, but I guess ultimately it comes with its challenges and its sacrifices. But I think what I'm hearing is that, you wouldn't have it any other way.

Adam Blasberg: I wouldn't have it any other way. No, I wouldn't have it any other way. I'm so grateful that I've been able to pull it off. I think there are people that haven't been able to pull it off. A lot of people, I think, but it definitely can be done. It's so totally can be done. I think it's really helped is that I had an established career by the time I had kids.

I wasn't trying to get a business, a photography business off the ground. And take care of a kid at the same time. It's a big one. Yeah. It's a big one. I can't imagine having to have a young child and trying to get a business off the ground at the same time. Those two things I think would not go well together.

Whereas I already had my business established and I just had to add. Sometimes I could. put it in maintenance phase and like just do what I had to get by without really pushing it forward.

Marshal Chupa: No, it makes a lot of sense to have that. Once the ball is rolling, you have enough clients that know of you repeating work, at least, you're in people's spheres that you don't have to be like constantly hustling as hard as you did in the at least.

So to have that established. And it's definitely something that's on the back of my mind before, jumping into the realm of family. I think that makes a lot of sense.

Adam Blasberg: It does. And then you get my youngest is almost four and I can hit the gas a bit more on my business. I'm really, I'm feeling it now too. Like I'm really excited about marketing and promotion because I haven't been able to do very much of it in the last few years, partly because of COVID, but also, I just haven't had the time. Transcribed I've been trying to dedicate more time to family than to business.

And I think that balance is switching now a little bit where I'm able to give my business a little bit more focus and let my kids, they're doing more activities outside of the house and I can afford to put a bit more time into my business. And it's really exciting. I'm really excited about sending mailers to potential clients.

I don't know, that's never excited me before it's been, it's always been such a. Such a hassle, such a thing that I just felt like I had to do. But now I'm like really excited about it. Printing things, getting involved in my portfolio again, looking at producing it myself and all these things that are really exciting.

What wasn't exciting before is now really

Marshal Chupa: exciting. Maybe there's something to be said for have such an aggressive balance between the two that, you're so saturated in the family department that like when you do get the chance to come back to the other, have the space to do the other thing, it's way more exciting because you're like, you just want.

that change. I just want that other side of you to come alive. And I think as someone who doesn't have kids and is, probably way more time available to me that maybe I'll, I waste it. Maybe I'm not, I'm not as motivated as I should be, or I should, I'm not utilizing those moments.

Like you say, your dad brain turns on because I have. the freedom and time. So maybe there is a proportional piece to having a family that is actually equal to motivating you to work harder and do better in

Adam Blasberg: your creative career. Absolutely. I couldn't have said it better myself. That's exactly what it is.

I give a hundred percent to each of my sides of my life. When I'm parenting, I give a hundred percent of myself to parenting. When I'm working, I give a hundred percent of myself to my work. And before I just, I would I didn't do that. I don't even remember what it was like before. I wasn't using my time the way that I'm using it now.

I'm using it so differently.

Marshal Chupa: Yeah, that's cool. And it's something to, for everyone to keep in mind as they, approach this creative career. And if the family thing is on the back of your brain, yeah, I think just try to stay open minded, which is what I'm trying to do. Cause I've had a lot of fear around it for a long time.

And so I think hearing stories from you and just talking to other people in industry and around that subject, it's people are doing it, it's working and you still have a successful creative career and also have a family.

Adam Blasberg: Totally. There's no doubt about it. You, there are sacrifices that you have to make, but I don't think they need to be as significant as probably those fears might suggest.

Connect with Adam and Checkout his Work

Marshal Chupa: As we just begin to wrap things up here, I'm curious, is there anything firing you up right now in and around, I don't know, personal work or just like life in general, where you're at with things? I'm

Adam Blasberg: pretty excited about a personal project that's been ongoing and I had to take a break. This is like classic, what we were just talking about.

I couldn't, I just had no time to do it this summer. The kids out of school and stuff. It was just too much going on for me to be shooting the personal work that I had going on. But I have this project down at the Hastings racetrack where I have like unlimited access to this basically where all the horses are stabled and all the jockeys and trainers hang out.

It's a really fascinating little sliver of society, like I've never been exposed to this group of people before and to get to photograph them in their like workplace is really, it's been really amazing. But I, again, I did a lot last year over the fall and winter and then the summer.

And the spring and then the summer at to take it off. And I'm excited to get back to it. That's awesome. I think

Marshal Chupa: that's a really cool setting. A lot of potential creative potential

Adam Blasberg: there. Oh, it's unbelievable. Yeah. It's a different world down there. Yeah, that's awesome.

Marshal Chupa: Thanks so much for coming on the show today, Adam.

I really appreciate your time. I think there's some really great conversation pieces in there. I really enjoyed this chat. If people are want to check out your work, where can they go to find you?

Adam Blasberg: My website, adamblasberg. com is probably the best place to go. And then obviously Instagram, right?

Marshal Chupa: And is it just at Adam

Adam Blasberg: Blasberg? Yep, exactly.

Marshal Chupa: Awesome. Thanks so much for coming on the show today. Really appreciate your time and look forward to keeping in touch.

Adam Blasberg: Thank you so much. Marshall is a pleasure as always.

Marshal Chupa: Okay, that was Adam Blasberg. Adam is such a genuine human and friend, as well as someone I've really enjoyed working with alongside over the many years.

I encourage you to check out some of his work at adamblasberg. com or on Instagram at Adam Blasberg. If you liked this episode, please share it with a fellow creative that you think this might resonate with. Or drop me a DM on Instagram and let me know you heard something of value. In future episodes, I will be speaking with photographers, cinematographers, directors, producers, reps, and anyone who has decided to take this ambitious leap of faith at making a life and a living behind the lens.

Thanks for listening, and we'll catch you next time on Shot List.