February 26, 2017

Meet Trevor Pearson of Trevor Pearson Productions in Mid City

Local Stories

Today we’d like to introduce you to Trevor Pearson.

Trevor, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
My mother was a Graphic Designer and my father an Engineer. So I had always a creative and technical side to draw from. I enjoyed photographing friends in school after receiving a fully manual SLR for Christmas age 10. In high school, I took three photography classes and received a C, D, and an F… So I targeted architecture in college – until I left to race mountain bikes professionally for a number of years. I enrolled in Brooks Institute the day after National Championships and the rest is history.

I was immediately drawn to advertising photography in the studio as I could engage my creative and technical sides on each project.

Building the business, relationships and my portfolio was constant work. At first, I was spending 60 hours a week on the business, with marketing, communications, and portfolio development with barely any shooting. After a handful of years, I was able to hire a couple of full-time people to help with most of that and spend the required time on set with my clients, which I still love.

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?
I believe that ‘the cream rises to the top’ but, ‘you need to put yourself in a position to be successful’. It was always work, but I never called it that. I loved (and still, do) working on the business of photography and on each project. Every day is different and brings new challenges.

I have also endured two recessions and a number of months without any assignments over the years, but those are normal occurrences in the industry.

The real overarching issue now is the devaluation in photography in general. We all see so much content everyday in the media and more so on social media. Everyone can be a ‘photographer’. Not really, they are documentarians, not skilled at photography. But this has dramatically altered the professional photography landscape. The bottom half of professional photography is now gone – eaten away by stock photography, the Canon 5D bringing moderately high-resolution images to anyone with a couple thousand dollars and the ability to ‘fix it in Photoshop’. We give our clients the full package: start to finish, top notch production with constant and immediate communication, creative consultation/sketching with written treatments, the newest digital technology, a modern comfortable studio (centrally located) with everything that we would need and finished post production files that exceed expectation.

So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Trevor Pearson Productions story. Tell us more about the business.
Our headquarters is in Mid City close to Culver. I own a 7000-foot brick warehouse that is custom built for the kind of work that we do.

Most of our work is in the studio, shooting product, automotive and food. This work has taken us to the corners of the country and internationally. Our clients are the discerning advertising agencies and brands that we all know well. As well, we shoot product and cars on location and frequently motion for both broadcast and online.

I find myself most proud each time that we make a client happy. I love nothing more than receiving a thank you note. And I repeatedly find myself proud of my team. They make everyone happy and all of it so much easier. My three full-time team have been with me between 6 and 13 years. I am proud of that too.

Has luck played a meaningful role in your life and business?
Real luck is a bit of give and take in my opinion. Sometimes you have some and sometimes (you don’t usually know it) that luck goes somewhere else. I don’t think about it much. I think about hard work and consistency. I make sure that we are able to capitalize on any luck that may be passing by. I have always tried to put myself in a position to be lucky, not rely on it. The more that I focus on the business, changing trends and the needs of my clients, the more my ‘luck’ increases. That is not chance.

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