#03 Dive Deep
© Kyle Kingsley
A lesson for those searching for deeper meaning in their creative or professional work.
As someone who is attempting to build a platform that serves as both a creative hub and professional profile, I thought it would be appropriate to paint a brief backstory to diving deep in my professional journey thus far.
I completed a BBusSci Marketing degree at UCT and subsequently decided to pursue my passion for photography full-time whilst I was in the trenches of a university degree. Keep in mind that I had just spent more than four years studying commerce to then go on to work as a creative with no professional training in the art of photography. This decision was primarily fuelled by my desire to pursue an entrepreneurial future in line with a strategy that I had set out for myself during university, while also having full control over the generation of my revenue streams from scratch. I also knew that I wanted to make a difference through the photographic art that I want to create in this lifetime, amongst other things. This was the first step in doing so.
The journey thus far has been nothing short of fulfilling. I established a respectable international clientele base of global brands before the age of 25 whilst having the ability to optimise my schedule to be the perfect mix of work and pleasure. It’s not really work if you’re doing what you love - right? Somewhere along the line I noticed something wasn’t adding up. It’s easy to say yes to jobs because they increase the figure in your bank account. Often these jobs result in burn out and a lack of passion coming through because you don’t resonate with the brief or subject matter. It is however important to put in the hard yards to get to a point where you know exactly what it is you want to be doing doing as opposed to what you don’t want to be doing. Having said that, it’s difficult to scale a photography business when you are single handedly creating content to fulfil an aspect of a clients marketing strategy. One becomes reliant on commercial clients to pay invoices for jobs that take hours if not days to complete. This is generally the problem with being a freelancer or someone who makes money off being present in one place at a time.
This is where diving deep becomes important. It has required half a decade of diving deep into the creative process and to get to a point where I am confident enough to release a range of limited edition photography prints available both locally and internationally. Never mind the journey of building a website and e-commerce system consisting of purely your own content. I’ll get to this in another blog post. It’s easy to attempt to sell a random collection of photographs that don’t really mean anything. The challenge is getting to a point where you can sell work that is the product of vision and determination. Having said this, five years is really not a long time in the grand scheme of things. This is merely the beginning of the journey to come.
A portion of the products for sale on this website form part of an initiative called the ‘Conscious Art Movement’, whereby I will be donating 15% of profit per edition sold to organisations aiding both conservation of African wildlife and the eradication of gender-based violence (GBV) in South Africa. I know that this may not seem like a large percentage to be donating. However, this is the foundation of a business model that aims to fulfil a deeper life purpose that I have set to make a quantifiable difference in the lives of others. It’s easy to donate money, but the process of communicating a story around a social or environmental issue in question, creating awareness, and giving back using money raised through the sale of visual art created focusing on the subject in question is the true purpose. This is something that I likely wouldn’t have been able to create and discover if I hadn’t dived deep into the unknown of pursuing my passion as opposed to pursuing the traditional graduate route.
Dive deep into whatever it is that you are currently occupying yourself with. Understand that the process is an integral part of your journey, and will always act as one of the many building blocks you will use to build the tall tower that you’ll become. These words serve as tools for both myself and others. I for one know that the true value of my work is unknown, but these small acknowledgements of diving deep are a great way to find value along the way.
Dive deep.
All my love,
Kyle