Today we’d like to introduce you to Shawn Frederick.
Shawn, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
Like so many other kids, I loved playing baseball and wanted to be a pro in the big leagues one day. But I also loved other sports too, like skateboarding, surfing and riding dirt bikes. Most of this was with my best friend Darren Dickey. To this day, some 40 years later, he and I still laugh at the craziness we got into skating ditches and the local skateparks. Or riding motos in the fields and deserts near our houses. As I got into junior high and high school, pursuing baseball faded and I really got into exploring the board sports. (Surf and Skate). When my buddies and I would go to the deserts riding bikes or to the beach to surf, I’d be the one with a camera in my backpack. So inevitably, I came back from the trip with the pics of us all. And it wasn’t long before I realized that once I processed and printed the film and seeing the photos of us all having fun, that those photos were like a time machine right back to those good times we all had. And to see how happy my buddies were to see themselves in action was even better.
Fast forward a few years later, now out of high school and living in Carlsbad, I needed to find a job to pay my bills, so I headed to the beach with my camera and started shooting photos of the local pro surfers and submitted those pictures to the magazines. I’d love to tell you that it all was magic and the magazine loved my pictures and I made tons of money and so in. But the reality was, my photos sucked! That’s when I got the biggest wake up call ever! The main guy at the magazine (Breakout Surf Magazine) was Guy Motil. And if you wanted your pictures in that magazine, you had to go through him. Little did I know- he was a no BS type of guy and told you how it was. No sugar coating it at all with you. And sparing you a very long story, I ended up working there for a couple of years and learned so many things From him, Chris Ahrens our editor, George Salvador our Publisher and Allen Carrasco our photo editor, and others that worked there too.
By the time 1986/87 rolled around, the Breakout Magazine creative team was now at a new magazine called, Transworld Snowboarding and Guy straight out told me, if you want a career as a photographer, go study the craft and not to be another washed up surf photographer standing on the sand at 40 with no job. So, taking his advice, off to school, I went and began studying. I’d stay in touch with Guy ever so often and he’d bring me along on a few of his snowboarding shoots, which were fun and really good times. And it was at one of those shoots with Guy that I met a few of the competing pro boarders and we became friends. From those friendships and a few other introductions made to me by Guy, I was able to branch out and start shooting more on my own. So now out of school and a handful of contacts in the now-growing snowboarding industry, I started traveling to the most epic of locations around the world and began shooting snowboarding full time.
As the 1990s were fully underway and snowboarding on a full range of growing, many big advertising companies from Madison Ave began calling upon the industry to shoot and produce Ad Campaigns for the brands they represented. And of course, at the same time, the World Pro Tour stops were drawing huge crowds and the top pros in the industry were starting to make real money.
Suffice it to say, being in the right place at the right time has played a huge role in my career. But looking back at that- it’s was also the incredible amount of studying and preparing of my craft that allowed me to accept those fruits of labor too.
Fast forwarding to the 2000’s, this decade brought on a whole new list of challenges. Life had changed in so many ways for me. I was a young 30 year old adult, making a wonderful living, had a lot of adult-like bills to pay and now, the advertising industry after the 9/11 attacks, the dot com crash that wiped out so many was all changing. And I was in no way prepared for it as I thought I would be. Easy money street was over! My many trips around the world shooting pro athletes was slowing down, my relationship failed and was now hustling every day to find a gig or a job.
At that time I was stoked to be living in a few blocks from the beach in South Orange County, which was/is the Mecca of Action Sports, but with budgets and photo projects with the industries endemic brands slowing down, I decided to pack my rags, skaggs and bags and move up to LA where there was more work.
From the time I hit LA, it was a whole new scene there. And not being the partier-type, I stayed focused and was on the grind to get a job. Not realizing that my portfolio of epic snowboarding or surfing shots from the best locations around the world didn’t matter at all, I found myself humping film gear for camera operators and shooting set photos on tv shows. It was eye-opening to say the least. But I did it, learned everything I could about the way things worked in Hollywood and soon, my ethics of hard work and a closed mouth started paying off. Producers and Directors started asking if I was available to work with them.
Today, some 30+ years later, I now Shoot, Direct and Produce projects for feature films, television, advertising campaigns and even shoot and direct a few music videos and documentary films.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I know of no road in life that is smooth. And if it were, I’d never take it!
I don’t turn away from hard work, long days on set or challenges or hurdles in life, or in my work.
Every single struggle I’ve been faced with, and like so many others, there are always struggles, they have been painful, frustrating and for sure I’ve wanted to punch walls and kick things. But that’s normal when you’re passionate about what you do. It doesn’t mean you do those things, but passion to me is the fire in my belly. It’s what keeps me firing to be better than I was in my last job. It’s what I believe makes you a leader and someone that not only has a vision but someone that can execute that vision to its completion.
Regardless, some of the struggles I’ve faced over the years have seemed insurmountable – like keeping the business going in the down times when no one is hiring, or making payroll when you have no business coming in, or even dealing with all that while your personal issues arise, like when my father and grandfather passed away. It seems like life always beats you down, picks you up and beats you down again.
Some say these are the lessons of life we need to be taught, and other say it’s just plain ole bad luck. For me, I’ve always lived my life knowing this little fact, “that everything shall pass”. And while that seems silly, I always tell myself that when times were Good and when times were Bad. And every single time it has been true.
GA Productions – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
Our business at Frederick Pictures is a 30-year production company that produces authentic media content by way of Films and Photographs. (documentary films, feature films, industrial regulatory films, corporate anthem films, short form films like tv commercials and music videos, and we also do a lot of still pictures too- for advertising agencies, automotive or motorcycle brand, numerous accessory brands, fashion and lifestyle apparel and footwear brands and just about any other brand that ties it’s lifestyle to a customer base. We also produce monthly content for many companies social media campaigns.
I also do a fair bit of writing so that has ended up with our doing projects for many book publishers, scripts and so on…
What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
There have been so many moments in my career that have given me an amazing feeling of accomplishment and elation. When I look back at some of the snowboarding trips I’ve done in the Andes, the Alps and the Atlas mountain ranges- where I stood atop mountain peaks that didn’t avalanche and kill me- or when I swam with my cameras in heavy ocean conditions, those are the moments that I’m very proud to have made it out alive. Other times that I’m incredibly proud of the work we do is when it directly affects another life in a positive way. As an example, the short film we did for a non-profit charity (Beat the Streets LA) that helped them raise money for the work they do, and when the film premiered, it did so to an astounding ovation. When someone responds that way to your work, where you have honestly moved them- it’s a feeling unlike any other. It changes you!
And lastly, a really cool thing I get to experience now that makes my heart smile is working daily with my wife AnneMarie and watching her in action- it is so cool. She’s one of the best producers I’ve ever worked with, and everyone says she’s the nicest person that you’ll ever meet too. And they’re true! Oh yeah- and with her having a background in the culinary world- her pastries, cookies and cakes are to live another lifetime for! Haha…
Pricing:
- $5000 to $500,000
Contact Info:
- Address: We are based in Calabasas, but travel far and wide to do our clients projects.
- Website: www.GA-Prod.com
- Phone: 310.739.3860
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: ShawnFrederick_photographer
- Other: www.AdriaticAcademy.com
Image Credit:
Photographs courtesy of Shawn Frederick
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