I’ve been an Aaron Huey fanboy since seeing his amazing photography of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation at Pop-Up Magazine a few years back. He’s the only person I follow on Instagram whom I don’t actually know in real life.
Yesterday, he posted a photo from his latest assignment. Because he’s a National Geographic photographer, he has a huge following (more than 40,000 followers) on Instagram, and his pictures get a ton of comments, most of which I ignore. However, one comment from this picture stood out to me, largely due to its boldness. It was from Andrew Griswold, who himself has a huge Instagram following. Andrew wrote:
Hey Aaron, huge fan of your work. My wife were just talking about this last night and I was curious how exactly do you become a photographer for @natgeo? As it being the holy grail of jobs for me I was just curious how your path brought you there. Would love to connect! Hit me up anytime.
I loved Aaron’s response:
Secret is to never compromise (no plan B) and you’ll likely need to shoot one thing deeper/better than its ever been shot before. Forget single images. Shoot a story.
Great advice for aspiring artists of all ilks, including social artists.
This is so great Eugene! Thank you so much for posting this. I never know if things like this get read, sometimes I don't want them to be read as I feel its a secret little way of chatting with celebs. Haha. I have connecting, chatted and met some of the most creative people on Instagram and some idols of mine in the design/photography world. It was unreal to have Aaron reply to my comment as I truly was impressed with his story and that reply from Aaron was just perfect!
Thanks for letting me eavesdrop! 🙂 More importantly, I appreciated your boldness in asking in public. It resulted in a response that inspired many more people than yourself, including me.