Why We Create

This one's personal. Tristan Utrecht — cinematographer, DP, and someone I've watched go from PA on my very first real directing project (the Fujifilm "Students of Storytelling" shoot) to shooting feature films in under a year — comes on to tell the wild, full story of how he got here.

We're talking dropping out of high school in 11th grade, getting flown to Papua New Guinea at 17 to shoot 360-degree VR safety training in the middle of the jungle, and somehow landing back in photography by 13 with nothing but a point-and-shoot and the guts to cold-email a professional photographer for a mentorship. Then there's the leap that changes everything: walking away from a level of success in Australia, selling his car, and moving to Portland with no job, no real plan, and just his grandparents as a safety net — betting on himself all over again.

We get into what "success" actually means, why film school might not be the move (unless it comes with real industry connections), the difference between being self-taught and learning real crew dynamics on a doc that took him around the world, and why almost everything good that's happened has come down to showing up when it got scary and being in the right room at the right time.

This is a conversation about leaps of faith, building real community instead of chasing a global one, and why the answer to "should I do this?" is usually just: do it.

This one's a real one. Dillon Vibes — sport and fitness photographer, longtime friend, and someone who's been on this same weird creative path since we were both just hungry kids shooting anything to get the reps in — sits down for a conversation that goes way deeper than "how'd you get into photography."

We get into the messy truth about passion: is it actually required to make it, or is that just a story creatives tell themselves? Dylan pushes back hard on the idea that most successful people in this industry are passionate about it — and honestly, it kind of wrecked me a little. We talk luck vs. talent, the difference between running a creative business and being an artist, and why you can't pitch a client something that doesn't already exist yet.

Dylan also gets real about the pivot — going from shooting a little bit of everything to fully committing to sport and fitness, and the moment someone told him this could actually be a career. We talk about creating just to feed your own soul (wait til you hear about the night-shoot basketball project), the "societal consumer" craving authenticity over polish, and what we actually think we're providing to the brands and clients we work with.

No script. No filter. Just two photographers/filmmakers talking shop, disagreeing, laughing, and figuring it out in real time.

Follow Dillon: dhttps://www.dillonvibes.com| @dillonvibes

Some people choose the easy path. This week's guest. chose the hard one and wouldnt trade it for anything. We sit fown with Johnathan of Black Duck Revival to talk about what it really means to chase a passion-driven life: the sacrafices, the grind, and why its still worth it. This is a conversation about fufilment over comfort and finding meaning in the process rather than the payoff.

Jasmine is a super talented filmmaker out of Austin Texas who Ive gotten to work with several times on some projects for FujiFilm, Amtrak and a few others.