Today we’d like to introduce you to Evan Ramzi
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I have always been interested in pursuing a career in the arts and have played music professionally for over a decade. During my studies at the Manhattan School of Music, I met a filmmaker who I would exchange music and film recommendations with. The films we watched together inspired me enough to buy my own camera so that I could make short films of my own. I quickly resorted to photography since it required less preparation and time than film making.
Around this time, I graduated from the Manhattan School of Music and moved to a yoga center in Tennessee. The yoga center happened to be building apartments and homes to accommodate the growing number of residents on campus. I naively volunteered to photograph them thinking it would be rather easy. To my surprise, however, it was really challenging and the pictures were awful.
Seeing as there is nothing more motivating for me than truly sucking at something, I began scouring the internet for architectural photography tutorials so that I could quickly improve my skills. While my schedule at the yoga center was very intense and involved non stop activities from 5 am to 10 pm, I found myself zoning out during the day in order to watch photography tutorials. This was when I realized that one could actually make a living photographing buildings and homes.
I began devising a plan that once I left the yoga center, I would return to my hometown in Los Angeles so I could photograph homes during the day and play in jazz clubs during the night.
I figured I would just have to send a few emails, get a few clients, and have a sustainable business by the third month. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
Most established architects and designers already had their go-to photographer with years of collaborations under their belt, and most real estate agents did not have the budget for architectural photography.
Eventually, though, my portfolio grew and people started to take notice. I started shooting for some of the top real estate agents in the country as well as many up and coming architects/designers who are doing great work and growing their businesses along side mine. I’ve found that the very same qualities that made it hard for me to find work initially – an unwillingness to compromise on quality and style, slower turnaround times and less images for better results, and being selective with the projects I take on – have been essential to my success and my compatibility with the great clients I have been fortunate enough to regularly work with.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
It has not been a smooth road. For the first 18 months I didn’t make a dime in profits and was barely able to sustain myself. I felt very restless and was so eager to start shooting beautiful projects, but no one wanted to hire me.
I had sent hundreds of cold emails, went to dozens of public events, and spent hundreds if not thousands of hours developing my skills.
I found that when clients would actually respond (1 in 100), they were either extremely cheap or had a go to photographer that they had been working with for years already.
When I shifted gears and began focusing on creating work that satisfied my own tastes, that’s when the clients started to come to me. I have slowly grown my clientele by providing the best possible service for the clients I do have and, as a result, they have been very generous in sharing my information whenever their industry colleagues are looking for a new photographer.
This has all happened without asking for referrals or doing any special outreach. Just focusing on the final product and being a good person who is easy to work with.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I am an architecture and interiors photographer who specializes in single-family residences.
It is easy to view houses as inanimate objects and to photograph them with a very mundane and formulaic approach, but I have always strived to extract life in the homes that I visit, even if no one has lived there yet. The ability to make simple moments feel special and alive is a quality that is present in all of the artists I look up to, and is a quality that I strive to bring into every project that I have the pleasure of photographing.
When I show up to a home, I believe that my clients can sense that I am ready to give my all in order to find magic in the space. I might spend 14 hours or multiple days photographing a home that I know other photographers will shoot in a couple of hours. This might disqualify me for some clients, but for the clients that are looking for what I offer, I believe it is my greatest asset and the main factor that separates me as a photographer.
We’re always looking for the lessons that can be learned in any situation, including tragic ones like the Covid-19 crisis. Are there any lessons you’ve learned that you can share?
Absolutely. Covid gave me the courage to completely shift gears in my life. With the lessening of social pressures and obligations that occurred due to the lock down, I was able to comfortably step away from my familiar environment, move to a meditation center, and start a business in a line of work that I was not even remotely familiar with. My life would look a lot different if it weren’t for the pandemic.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.evanramziphoto.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/evanramziphoto/
Image Credits
Evan Ramzi
