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Looking back I never thought I would be doing what I do today. After pursuing a conventional career in marketing, first gaining experience at the Alamo City Golf Trail and then at a local digital marketing agency called Giles-Parscale, I realized I wanted to be more creative and independent.
In 2015, I quit the agency life and started freelancing as a marketing consultant. During a meeting with a mutual client, I ran into commercial photographer Jason Risner, Who I knew from my agency days. He mentioned that he needed some help with his website.
After a few months of helping Jason with various marketing tasks, he asked if I could take over all of his sales and marketing. I knew very little about commercial photography but I had experience in sales, and Jason felt confident I could do the job. Jason started forwarding me emails and calls from his clients. My primary focus became booking shoots for Jason.
Now almost 10 years later that focus hasn’t changed. My job as account executive at Jason Risner Photography is all about keeping Jason’s calendar booked and helping him stay focused on photography by taking care of any business-related tasks. My routine work includes meeting with clients, putting together proposals, updating our website and social media, ordering equipment, invoicing, and more.
The real fun in what we do happens on location at photo shoots. Our crew of independent contractors travels all over Texas and beyond meeting people and making pictures.
Every shoot is different. One day we might be in studio photographing food and the next day we’re on a ranch in the Hill Country producing lifestyle photography. That’s what I really love about my job. Each project is a little adventure into a new complex world where I get to learn about something new.
This past summer, we traveled to Snyder, Texas to shoot with clean energy company Intersect Power. We spent two days at their site, which features almost 2 million solar panels. This massive project was still under construction but nearing completion. Power from the panels was already flowing to a substation that delivers energy to the power grid, and large industrial Tesla batteries were also being installed to soak up electricity. We drove around the site taking photos from the ground and then I piloted our drone under Jason’s direction to capture aerial images and video.
Jason is the leader of our team and he is constantly looking for ways to improve what we do, even if our clients aren’t asking him to. He’s truly dedicated to being better and doing more. So we never get stuck doing the same thing over and over again.
In addition to Jason’s creative efforts, he has a unique perspective on life that is based in generosity, taking interest in people, and being true to who you are. Jason is a complete open book who gets to know everyone really fast which helps build relationships and trust with our clients and the people he photographs. This approach allows everyone to get in the zone and focus on the goal while dropping any of the insecurities and paradigms that might inhibit good creative work.
There have been lots of ups and downs over the years. The commercial photography business can be volatile and unpredictable. Job volume fluctuates depending on the time of year, the state of the economy, trends, and just pure chance. We’ll often go weeks or months being extremely busy followed by periods where activity is sparse and cash flow gets tight. But over time it all evens out.
Working with Jason and the team at Jason Risner Photography is a really fulfilling experience that always keeps me motivated and interested to find out what we’ll be doing next.
