 and welcome to this edition of Create a Life You Love. I believe that each and every one of us has a Dharma, a purpose, something that drives us from deep within to create a life that we truly love. When you know you're calling, your passion, and your purpose, and you follow it, it leads you to a very exquisite place in life where you are able to make your passion, your work, and your work, your purpose. Today's guest is going to talk a little bit about that with us. His name is Todd DeQuisto of DeQuisto Photography. Hi Todd, thanks for being here. Hello Tony, thank you for having me. Absolutely my pleasure and what a great honor. For me, yes. Thanks. So Todd, I have so many questions that were emailed in to me for you today that all of the viewers want to have answers to. I hope you're ready. We'll see I guess right. So your photographer, when did you first know photography was what you wanted to pursue? Well, I would have to say that I was given a Polaroid land camera when I was in my early teens for my parents and proceeded to go outside and came back in about five minutes later and had shot the entire pack of film of ten exposures and it was one of those cameras where you peeled off the Polaroid and saw the image right away or within a minute and a half and I think they thought, you know, it took you ten minutes to go through nine dollars worth of film. I think they were a little upset that they perhaps made a big financial mistake by giving me a camera but I continued that and they continued supporting that habit of mine and I went through lots of film and I would put all the Polaroids in a photo album and I would, you know, people would come over and this little teenager would show everybody photos of the photo album and everybody that looked at it would go through the pages and stop on the exact same photograph and say something about it and I took note of that and I thought, well, this is pretty cool. You know, everybody's reacting to a similar image that there must be something there and so I thought that that was really good feeling. It made me feel really good. You know, it was great for my self-esteem as a teenager and so I thought, yeah, this is kind of cool. I proceeded with that and just quickly kind of understood that I had a just a little bit different perspective on life and different ways of seeing things and that people responded to that so it kind of fueled that passion. Excellent. Now, did you know then, did you, did you think this is what I'm going to do for my adult life? No, I had no plan to do it professionally at all. I went to school for business and thought that a business degree would, you know, lead me a direction that would be fulfilling and enjoyable and I tried that after college and just really got quickly bored. I knew I was not destined to work either at a computer or at a desk for that matter. Okay, so then how did you make the transition into photography? How did you start that up? I was working in marketing and then got offered to join somebody that was starting a film company and he and I had gotten to know each other throughout the years because I was interested in it as a more of a hobby and more of a something to do after work and weekends and he gave me an offer that I, you know, just couldn't pass up the opportunity to work with him on the ground level of a company that I thought would go somewhere over time and just learn the craft of filmmaking initially, which is, you know, somewhat close to still photography, at least close enough that it's seemed to make a lot of sense. Awesome. So now, how long, including that time, how long have you been a professional photographer then? Well, yeah, I would say until, you know, it took three or four years. I started getting paid as a photographer when I was 24, although I look at that work and I feel it's far from professional, you know, so since my 20s. So I just want to say, of course, everything is an evolutionary process, right? Right, absolutely. And so our beginning work, even in whether you're a marketer or a secretary, our beginning work is never going to be good as good as the work you're doing today. And and in 10 years, you'll look back at this working, see maybe where it could have been. All right. I think everybody feels that way. Would you agree? Yeah, absolutely. You know, looking at something out of context is certainly not a fair judge of how good or bad or it was or it's really hard to look back and say it was either good or not so good. Well, yeah, exactly. And you were paid for it, so it must have been good. It must have been good. It must have enjoyed the product. So that's a good thing. So what type of photography did you start with? I started primarily with people. I enjoy connecting with somebody on a personal level, even with if I only have five minutes with a person. I'd like to try to find something about that person right away and then go about challenging myself to capture that, whether it's a personality trait or some physicality that they have that I think is interesting. So I also found that to be most enjoyable from my early days and even through today. Nice. Perfect. Perfect. So you started with people. What did you move into after you did you stay with the people aspect? Did you move into a different area? It was always connected with people and as even though I had a studio for over 20 years, I prefer to work out of my studio and go on location. So there's nothing better for me than a challenge of going into a location that you may have never been to and try to find the really the magic or the sweet spot of a location and then use that as a background or incorporate that into the shot of the person. And there's nothing that I find more enjoyable than to photograph somebody in a location and have the person that works next to that person say, wow, where is this shot? I would say, well, it's right over there. Nice. And that person had never seen that in that way or never really noticed that area or something. So you're making something out of nothing essentially. Okay, that's awesome. That's very cool. So in the beginning of your career, I understand you had quite a few breaks or some good some good experiences landed in your lap. Do you want to share any of those with us? Yeah, I think first break that came early in my career, I was lucky enough to have an opportunity to show some work to an organization of Washington DC who was looking to hire a photographer to go to China to capture some of the culture and the people there. And I think they're more interested in the people and how the people interact with the environment than the static or the historical sites and the snapshot opportunities. So I submitted my portfolio and somehow got picked to go on assignment there. And the organization's name was the US CPFA, which is the United States, China People's Friendship Association. And they sent me over there for a month. And essentially, I hooked up with a group tour for a few days. But the remainder of the time, they gave me a driver and an interpreter. And I could pretty much go where I wanted to go. How exciting was that? That was fantastic. And I think we have some shots that I brought along of some of that early work. Okay, should we wait to look at the shots? Do you want to go through some of them? I think he's rolling them right now. Let's go through some of those shots. So I was given access to places that a lot of people were not given access to. This was the first tour coordinator that was allowed to bring people into China. And I think in the early 80s or very late 70s. So the access I got to pretty much anything was pretty incredible. Excuse me, I was, you didn't hook up with my driver until about noon. So I had the mornings free. So I'd wander with my camera in the morning. And the game of the morning became to try to lose the Chinese authorities that were following me. So that became a cat and mouse game every morning. And it was just as fun as shooting the people of China. How amazing. But this work all of a sudden broadened my horizons as far as who I could now contact to do other work for. I no longer was just a local photographer. I was one that had work published internationally. So that kind of catapulted my career and made it a lot easier for me to or at least more confident in going to show my work outside of the state. Absolutely. Now I know you do some corporate photography also. Do you want to talk a little bit about that at all? Sure. I primarily, like I said, do people on location. And a lot of that is corporate work. Corporate work is different in the sense that it's just not a CEO in the boardroom or whatever. I try to really get that CEO, if it is a shy of a CEO, interacting with the people on the floor, get him, pull him a little bit or her out of their comfort zone and get them into a situation that they don't all of a sudden feel all totally in control of. So they're a little vulnerable. And in that vulnerability, I find that their personality, once you get their comfort level a little bit under control, personality comes through. And it's much easier to get a real shot of who that person is versus who they think they should be in a setting in a boardroom or their office. Nice. Very cool. That's very exciting. So you've also done a little teaching. I was approached by a few places to teach photography because it's something I always wanted to do in it. And I always said I really can't because I travel so much. Most of my work is out of state and I'm on the road quite a bit. And because of that, how could I ever hold down a weekly or daily teaching job? But I finally said yes to the Art Institute of Wisconsin and I said only if you understand that I will miss X amount of days of teaching. And if you're comfortable with that, I can find a substitute, another professional photographer in in town to cover my time. But if you're comfortable with that, I would love to do it. So I end up, I think I talked for about two and a half years. Nice. I enjoyed it. Yeah, that had to be such a great experience. When you were teaching, were there things that you also learned at the same time? It's very different when you have to verbalize things. All of a sudden you have to rethink things, things that you go through the motions automatically without thinking about perhaps so your lighting schematic or whatever it might be, that all of a sudden it's all of a sudden you have to verbalize it and you have to really take a step back and think it through because my first language is not English, I feel it's in the visual realm. So for me to put things together orally it takes a lot of thought and effort. I get that. I'm one person who is right there with you. That makes sense to me. So you also have a book, the Milwaukee book, which you were kind enough to bring a copy of. We're kind enough to bring it up. Yes. It's another book. It was in 2000 I was approached by a publisher and if I could capture a collection of about 100 images of Milwaukee without any sort of direction they just wanted my vision of the city of Milwaukee. So they gave me a year time frame to collect those images of Milwaukee and I submitted them and they made a book out of them and how exciting. I'm not sure it's even available anymore so it's... I'm sure if you go to Amazon you can find it. I'm pretty positive it's probably still out there. I wouldn't have a clue. I'm gonna guess that. If you google it, if it's googled, it'll be found. Somebody has a copy of it. I'll trust you on that one. Yeah. So other than the Milwaukee book you've had quite a few of your images published or your photos in your career. Can you tell me a little bit about that? What the photos were? What they were for? Well, I think you can go through some of the photographs but I've developed a way to shoot on location using a cart system. So when I show up on location I pull a cart out of my van and I am shooting within minutes versus for years working out of cases. So when I go on location I am, within minutes I'm ready to shoot. I've done a lot of work for a different convention, visitor's bureau, bureaus throughout the country in Florida and one of my favorites has been Door County. Sharing a lot of their tourism guides or guidebooks every year. Because of the water around Door County we do a lot of boating activities. Pretty much I'm giving an idea or layout and then tasked with making that happen and dealing with all the parameters that that shoot can bring up. So I thought for a while that the magazine work is where I wanted to go and until you realize that it's good for the career and getting your name out there but it's not very good for the checkbook because they really don't, they pay a fraction of what a corporate assignment would pay. You know the trade-off is you don't get a credit line in your corporate work whereas in editorial work you have the credit line. So would you say you do a lot more corporate work today than other types of work? Advertising, commercial and corporate work. Yes it's a mixture. I do a very little editorial anymore but it's a good mixture. Awesome, very cool. Now I understand you recently partnered up with iLevel Media. Am I saying that correctly? What has that brought to the table for you and how has it expanded your career? Well I started out in film production so throughout the years clients would ask me if I'm doing photography work for them they'd ask me could you do this film back then or ultimately video and I said absolutely whether or not I knew exactly what I was doing I still took it on and knew the basics of it to get through it but the more I got into it the more I realized it's just storytelling in a different modality you know it's just the motion. So in some respects it's easier to tell story in motion because of the fact that you have time rather than just one image or a handful of images. So in some respects it's easier in some respects it's more difficult but it seemed like a natural progression and so I'd been doing it on my own all along when I saw an opportunity to join a to become a partner in a video production company I saw the opportunity to expand my client base as well as the the budgets that we had to work with we could do a lot more have bigger crews much more ability to bring in graphics special effects animation so really make it more of a big production and that was that seemed kind of fun to me. That's incredible so have you been doing a lot more than of the video is it videography? Yes still photography as a career is really that the pie has been shrinking ever since the digital introduction and the number of photographers has been growing every year so it's kind of an odd supply and demand economic thing going on the amount of money that's spent in photography is just plummeted because pretty much everybody can be a photographer not everybody can tell story in a photo but everybody can get reasonable images with very little investment in camera and knowledge and experience so video has started consuming more and more of my time to a point where now it's probably 60 to 70 percent video 30 percent if I'm lucky 40 percent still photography you know I and I will say there have been so many changes since the first time you took a picture to today the technological advances of photography have been astronomical I mean we would have never imagined some of the things that some of the phones can take I mean just incredible quality pictures but not everybody has the eye and the alignment for it and yeah even even video video has changed such a great deal and if you look at social media if you want somebody to pay attention to what you have on your social media it instantly goes to those 30 to 90 second videos not saying that's what you do I'm sure yours is a lot more detailed and there's a lot more quality content to them but everything is going the way of video now absolutely right so what have you noticed in the changes in technology and how has that other than supply and demand how what have you noticed as far as the advancements in technology and how that's affected the work that you do has it made it somewhat easier or no I think it's really has changed that much I mean in some ways you might think it's made it harder because you have to prove your worth but I've kind of felt that from day one every assignment you have to you know you're based on your you're judged on your worst assignment or your last assignment right so I felt the really a strong need to prove myself on every assignment but I think what the digital age has done to photography is it's taken a craft a true craft and made the craft not so much of highly regarded or respected as it once was and you know everybody's photographer and there's some really great photographers that have only used the phone and can do some great things with them so yeah it's really not that it's cheap in the art of photography but it certainly changed it from a craft to a to whatever it is today I'm not sure to something that's reachable by by everybody absolutely and that's not necessarily a bad thing no I mean when even when I look at some pictures again on social media I'm I'm in awe of what has been captured in them but I'm also the type of photographer that I was taking pictures and went to my niece and said I don't understand why my pictures look so foggy and she took her sleeve and wiped my phone lens and said try it again they came out much better than I just okay I'm that person that needs a photographer or someone to clean my lens apparently you just need a teenager it knows knows the medium much better than you it doesn't definitely you'll weigh how much they know about them about social media and and technology ah it's just it's astounding okay that's let's get back to you though so what types of video are you producing now unfortunately a lot of the video we do is for the web usage which makes it you know the stories have to be very condensed they have to be short form because the attention span or the amount of time that people spend on a video and a website is very limited and because of that you have to tell the story very concisely and quickly so um uh well it's the web on the web usage and okay excellent but what I excel in really is and what I enjoy most are not so much selling a product but telling the story of the person that just happens to be associated with a product or process and but it's more about the person and that I think is much more rewarding much more fun and I think it engages a viewer much on a much deeper level I absolutely love that now you owned uh or our DeQuisto photography yes I although most of my work is through I'm level media I still um you know I I do a lot of personal work and and still maintain a website and I really don't seek assignments uh through my photography I seek it through my level it's the same same process just different flag I'm flying okay and tell me what's your favorite type of photography to do if you could just do it all day long what would it be well I think I get some examples of uh some just work that's not part of assignments uh that um you know most of me are people centered and whether it's uh an assignment or not uh if if I find something I'm interested in I will attack it full force with the camera and uh you know I luckily I still have the drive and the passion for photography so when I'm on vacation I will spend a lot of my time behind the camera just because I still have that drive and that energy to um to capture some compelling alluring shots excellent now the you today if you could go back and talk to that teenager when he first got that camera what would the best piece of advice be that you could give that teenager a good question I know for sure that's on the list it is not that is my question for you what piece of advice I'd probably say um I just can you know continue to explore your ability to observe the world in a slightly different way and I wish I had embraced it sooner and made it more of a earlier full-time endeavor and just um how's that it's kind of weak advice yeah that would be that would be awesome advice that would be awesome yeah just to just embrace uh the the different perspective on life yeah absolutely so after 30 years of photography what is it that keeps you passionate about photography oh I still have the same sort of feelings when people look at my work and say oh that's really that's a nice shot that's really you know I really like that and and to me it's it's nothing extraordinary but it really elicits um some positive responses and I still get a charge out of that and that that has not waned at all through the years let's tell everybody how they can reach you if they'd like to reach you they can reach me either through my website at the crystal photography dot com or i level meet i level dot net either way okay and I absolutely positively want to thank you for being my guest today you've been an extraordinary guest and I it's been such an honor to have you here and I want to say thank you for coming out of your comfort zone and being on this side of the camera um it's really and it was such an honor well thanks thank you for having me and um it's good to get out of your comfort zone once in a while absolutely I recommend everybody get out of their comfort zone I agree and I'd like to thank you for joining us today I will be back again soon with the next edition of create a life you love until then each and every day find one thing you're passionate about and do it watch how your life unfolds and changes in the direction you want it to be thanks and have an amazing rest of the day