Photography Essay

SAM KOLDER

          The photographer who inspired me the most this 6 weeks is Sam Kolder. Sam mainly takes adventure pictures and videos. He is a huge role model because I love the places he goes and the way he color grades his photos and videos. His style is quite unique and the places he goes in themselves are already super interesting.

         He tends to color his photos brightly with what is becoming more and more common, the teal and orange effect. He is always traveling and always going to the coolest places. I have discovered many other photographers/filmmakers such as Gabriel Conte, and Taylor Cut that have worked with Sam that all have similar photos that all look amazing. On his video side he not only takes amazing video and color grades it well, but the way that he shoots and edits all of it together is just so cool.
        All of his photos and videos are really inspiring as well. A lot of them have a good message behind them such as, helping and showing the poverty in Africa, the kind of lives they have to live, raising money for villages to get water, things like that. Others talking about how we all need to just be ourselves, not focus as much on everything wrong with society, but to go out and to live our lives.
        Another thing that he does that I find really cool, is sponsored for companies to go out and to take pictures and make videos as advertisements for companies such as DJI, Adidas, MVMT, and a lot of others. In return he is paid and because he is sponsored, the companies he is working for pay for him to stay in the craziest and nicest hotels, with things such as pools overlooking canyons, views out of his backyard off of mountains and the craziest places to stay. In my opinion, when you are making your living as a photographer/filmmaker, instead of just running a website, taking senior photos and things like that, I think this kind of thing, getting paid by companies to go have fun and make advertisements for them is the way to do it.
        So, in all Sam Kolder is a real inspiration to me, not just because he takes good pictures/videos that look amazing, but because of the practicality and how he can actually make a living from it, but still enjoying it. He gets to go to the craziest places, take the coolest pictures/videos, edits them while relaxing at the nicest hotels that he is getting paid to stay in and then does the exact same thing the next month.