Today we’d like to introduce you to Craig Denis.
Craig, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I grew up in New York and went to school for Fine Art up there. I was always intrigued by the magic of photography and made that my concentration in college. I don’t know about anyone else who went to art school, but I didn’t learn a damn thing about how to make money when I got out or anything about how the business world works for that matter. I was completely lost when I graduated without a direction to go, I had the skills but no idea how to put them to use. I decided that photography was going to be my game and I would pursue further education at a commercial photography trade school in Massachusetts. The catch was when they accepted me it was October of 2004 and the next class they were going to take in was starting September of 2005 which was a hell of a long time to wait. In the mean time I randomly emailed a brilliant architectural photographer in Miami whose work I admired and he had been in the business for 35 years. I threw out the idea of assisting him, it turned out that his first assistant just quit and he was looking for a new one. He invited me down to try out the job for 2 weeks and I jumped on it. I ended up working with him full time for a year and blowing off that trade school when they called for enrollment. I have been in Miami ever since. That year full time from 2005-2006 was the best grad school anyone could ask for and I didn’t come out with massive student loan debt. After that year I freelance assisted dozens of photographers in Miami with all different specialties while slowly honing my own craft and transitioning into a primary shooter. It took some time but now I am a full time professional photographer specializing in architectural and interior photography. I work for myself and am frequently commissioned to photograph projects here in Miami, up in New York and all over the place for that matter. We have recently taken on major projects in Kenya, South Africa, Mexico, Guyana, and the Cayman Islands just to name a few places, and this party is just getting started.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
If I wasn’t so stubborn this photography venture would not have worked. Trying to break into the industry during the recession of 2008 would have sent most people running to a desk job. I was willing to seriously scrap around while building my image portfolio, to the point where I remember looking at my bank account after paying the monthly bills one month only to see $6.13 left in there (and those $6.13 were laughing at me). As scary as that was, I was still determined to make this happen and managed to stay persistent with my goals.
We’d love to hear more about your business.
Craig Denis Creative specializes in architectural and interior photography, shooting for a client base of talented architects, general contractors, and interior designers along with hotels and furniture design companies. The images we create for them spearhead their advertising campaigns and can be seen anywhere from local and national editorials to bill boards off I-95. In a sense, we don’t just create images for our clients, we create the image of their businesses. If the images that represent the work in their portfolio are garbage, then no one will hire them and that’s where we come in. The most rewarding part and what I am most proud of is knowing that our clients have the confidence in us to capture projects that in some cases they spend 5 years or more completing. As a photographer that’s a lot of responsibility. What’s even more rewarding is when I get a phone call from one of our clients saying that the images we did from such and such project just won this award. Which happens multiple times a year.
Another aspect of what I do aside from commercial shooting is my personal work, which you can see in the Fine Art section of my website. I never lost the passion to pursue what got me into photography in the first place and that’s making art out of it. A few times a year I try to escape with just my camera and tripod with the intention of challenging a specific location that’s been on my radar for a while. This has taken me to some unexpected places from the remote and mysterious Easter Island to photograph the Moai, to the jungles of Cambodia to shoot the epic temple complex of Angkor Wat. Wherever I end up, I always come back with a unique set of images, some of which have been printed as large as 5ft long. Often times, some of the interior designers that I work with acquire my pieces for their installations which is always an honor. I have some ideas cooking for the next project which I am aiming to execute this fall, stay tuned for that!
What were you like growing up?
For the most part I was a quiet kid who was always drawn to art. I got really good a drawing and painting and I was fortunate enough to have a dark room at my high school where I was first introduced to photography. During my junior year, my art teacher singled me out and set me up with a college level life drawing class at FIT in New York City which I lived an hour away from by train. This drawing class was reserved for kids that showed promising talent and were planning to pursue a higher art education, I had no idea what direction I wanted to go at that moment, but knew I was good at art and it was something I enjoyed.
I was terrible at math and still am, it was so bad that I bombed the math portion of the SAT. I remember my teachers putting so much emphasis on the SAT’s too, but there was no hope for me in that department. The way I got into college was through my art portfolio and I ended up getting accepted into the Fine Art program at FIT which I later found out is not easy to get into. While I didn’t learn how to run business in college, it did in some obscure way point me in the right direction and set me up with where I am today.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.craigdenis.com
- Phone: 305.801.2661
- Email: craig@craigdenis.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/craigdenis.creative
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/craigdenisphotography
- Yelp: www.yelp.com/biz/craig-denis-photography-miami
- Other: www.houzz.com/pro/craigdenis/__public ; www.behance.net/craigdeniscreative
Image Credit:
All images ©2018 craigdenis.creative
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