Chef Turned Photographer/Videographer

Watch the full interview here : 

Come hear from Bryan Chen, a professional chef turned self-taught photographer/videographer as he shares his journey learning the ropes and eventually monetising his skillsets from freelancing and building his business.

Can you share about yourself, your background, what you do now?

Hey guys, my name is Bryan, 22 year old and I graduated with a degree in culinary management. I pretty much learned everything on my own, started my own company called The Potter Collective which is a video production house as well as the photography um I guess you can put it under the roof of a creative house. 

The Potter Collective, what does it mean, what does it stand for?

The Potter Collective, when I started the company you know I really wanted it to be more of a community instead of company. That's why that explains what "collective" is, it is more like a community supporting community so for example you know let's say I collab with The Hacker Collective, instead of competing against each other we are supporting each other as a community. So one funny misconception about the name The Potter Collective. People tend to think "Oh Potter~, like harry potter?", but potter actually goes to pottery as in making big basses and bows and such. So I thought that was a term that really resonated with me in terms of being creative and hence the name The Potter Collective.

Can you share a little bit more about how you actually started getting into photography?

Right so when I was 13 and I distinctly remember the moment I was in school and I remember my brother actually showed me a video that he did for a science project and I was like dang you can do this with a laptop and a camera and I remember that was like okay you know this is something I really really want to do. I was really interested in seeing what pushing my limits off my laptop so i would just grab whatever camera i would find in the house i record every single project that was thrown at me in school um i make it into a video i make into a play or a script or something that would enable me to tell it in the form of a visual story so as i went on as i did more like passion projects. I learned through YouTube I learned through a lot of research researching especially from YouTube.

YouTube was great for helping me out at that time. I was relatively young at that time so i wasn't connected to anyone who did video editing and such, so I really pretty much learned everything through YouTube. When i graduated from high school, i initially wanted to join film but you know to join a film there's a huge stigma, especially in asian culture being like oh you know film is or at least anything in the art stream will be something that's really tough, or like you know you cannot generate income, and all that so because of that that wasn't why i pursued it as a degree.

But even so while i was pursuing my degree in culinary management, i would be honing my craft in photography and videography. In a food photography because i was in culinary right so every time i cook, i take a picture and back then, i mean even now my family my family runs a restaurant so i do take pictures of their food and that was a great avenue for me to practice my photography and videography skills. You know whenever friends needed videos i just like hey you know can i help out is there anything you need help with and and you know having a lot of friends in the mass calm media community as well helped give me a lot insight into the the hacks of. I guess you could say the video industry and video video making so so then i guess it was just a really it's a journey of concern like practice and just like doing things that i love and that's how i really just learned uh my way around you know videography and photography

What was the first project you were working on when you started taking it and posting it up?

Yeah so I'd say that my first official contract project that I got was my family's business so I'm really thankful to them that they gave me the opportunity to really just practice and to learn through that avenue.

Coming from a self-taught background, did you start doing projects for free to gain exposure points and how many?

So when I started I initially did it for free even for my family business. I started it completely free because I wasn't really knowledgeable in the field at that time and it was pretty bad really, I made a lot of mistakes and such but as I grew I knew that my production value and the quality of the work that I was producing was kind of reaching subpar with certain companies out there then I started raising my rates a little bit in terms of photography but when it came to videography, I was relatively new to that field so I started off by just doing passion projects and comparing my work to industry work. Passion projects are basically free because I do that for myself and I compare them and I ask myself "how is this on par with that?" or "where does it stand, does it stand here?", then okay so I know how I work and this is what I can produce this is what I could do.

But in order to know that the other side of things like the deeper production, back-end side of things what I did was I actually worked as a production assistant for some free timers around. Through that I actually learned a lot of like from pre-production to post-production, I learned about camera gears I learned about what lighting do I need what gears do I need to actually make an interview or corporate shoot for examples. And through that I know this is what industry standard is so if I want to reach that I have to work towards that and so even being production assistant it wasn't high pay but I learned a lot, the learning curve was really steep and with that I actually practiced more. I practice more on my own craft while I was at it I continued doing research and consolidated gear as I did so. Now when I pitch with clients I wouldn't quote a price that would be a skyrocketing up off the roof but ultimately I feel that there's no rule of thumb on how you price a service, it's mainly the service that you give that determines the price.

Mind sharing with us on a higher level how do you get your clients? How do you use every opportunity to grab the client or at least get their interest?

Currently I'm considered myself as relatively new I'm just starting out right, so a great way to get clients is through connections. Networking, one person is definitely connected to the others and I have this weird theory that everyone in the world is actually connected. If you know the trace correctly, you actually see that so many people are connected like who know that I actually get connected through you today right. And so it's really networking in the end.

To grab the client, there's one thing that I always do is approach people and say like "Hey you know what? I'm willing to do a video for you, this is what I can offer, are you up for it?". Like what I mentioned community was great as well to help me get clients because they would refer me to some people if it's not a project that they can handle at the moment, sometimes they just say "Hey Bryan, why don't you take this project on for me?", "Hey Bryan, I think you can handle this pretty well so why don't you take it on for me?" and I was like great I'm all up for it!

What's the biggest challenge you've faced thus far in your learning journey for videography?

It will be dealing with rejection for me. That was pretty tough when I pitch to a client and I go like "Hey, this is my work, this is all my idea, I think it's gonna be great", they are like "Oh okay okay okay" but when I show it to them and they're like this is not what we wanted. As someone who tells visual stories, you definitely want to tell the stories your way. That's the best way like how you envision it but I think as realistically to be in the industry, you have to learn to cater to the needs and wants of the clients as well but by inputting your creative input and merging them together so that was something that I had to learn how to do so that was a challenge that I had to deal with and I guess you say the second challenge would be really just putting myself out there because of the fear of the imposter syndrome, the comparison that is really really tough because there's like my thought process is I scroll through Instagram and I'm seeing all these people who are just so well off in the industry, they're really established and all and I'm asking myself how am I going to compete with them. So basically just really push and do my best out there and it's on my own journey, I shouldn't be comparing myself with others.

What's your vision for the future maybe through The Potter Collective or just yourself, what's your goal?

My goal is definitely to have my own production house to expand my services to beyond just product shoots, portraits and videography. I'm actually expanding them into engagement shoots like taking pictures of couples that want to get engaged, so I'm kind of expanded towards that and it's really to just start my own production house and to have a team of people who are working with me to really tell stories, tell stories of others and to build the community. I guess it goes the same in every industry, I feel that if we are spending too much time being too competitive bashing at each other up, the industry is gonna go nowhere rather we should supporting each other building each other to elevate the entire industry. 

Anything else you want to share with our community before we call it a day?

I'd say go all out if it's your passion, pursue it because it's your passion, put hard work into it, you will get to where you want to be, you will achieve great things. Life's too short to do something you don't wanna to do. 

Thanks for the awesome interview!

Hope you enjoyed this series!

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