The MOOD Podcast

The Hidden Cost of Chasing Success in Photography: What They Don’t Tell You - Erik Almas, E89

• Matt Jacob

Share episode

“I Don’t Think Photography Will Survive — But I Will.”
___________

Erik Almas is a legendary photographer known for his cinematic composites and emotionally rich commercial work. With a career spanning 25 years, he’s shot global campaigns for brands like Audi and Pfizer — but beneath the surface lies a deeper story about artistic identity, mentorship, burnout, and the search for meaning.

In this intimate and revealing conversation, Erik unpacks how the industry has changed, why he stepped beyond photography, and what legacy really means when everything fades.

Things we discussed:

  • The one photo that changed Erik’s entire career
  • How mentorship shaped him — and why it’s missing today
  • What “finding your voice” actually means as a photographer
  • Why commercial photography is shrinking — and what to do about it
  • How AI is changing everything (and why being real matters more than ever)
  • What Erik would create if no one was watching


Find Erik's work on his platforms:

Website: https://www.erikalmas.com/
Instagram: @erikalmas

_______________________________________________

Message me, leave a comment and join in the conversation!

Thank you for listening and for being a part of this incredible community. You can also watch this episode on my YouTube channel (link below) where I also share insights, photography tips and behind-the-scenes content on my channel as well as my social media, so make sure to follow me on Instagram, Twitter, Threads and TikTok or check out my website for my complete portfolio of work.

YouTube:
www.youtube.com/@mattyj_ay

Learn with me
https://mattjacobphotography.com/voice-alchemy

My Newsletter
https://mattjacobphotography.com/newsletter

Website:
www.mattjacobphotography.com

Socials:
IG | X | TikTok | Threads | YouTube | @mattyj_ay

Matt Jacob:

Welcome to the Mood Podcast. I'm covering the art of conversation through the lens of photography and creativity, one frame at a time. I'm your host, Matt Jacob, and thanks again for joining me in today's conversation. And my guest today is Erik Almass, a Norwegian-born, San Francisco-based photographer whose work lives in that rare space between cinematic grandeur and poetic intimacy. And for over two decades, Eric has crafted images that feel like still frames from a dream layered, intentional, emotionally rich, but yet somehow rooted in something real. His visuals are instantly recognizable Majestic landscapes, soft humor moments, a quiet surrealism that holds your gaze just long enough to make you feel something you weren't expecting Beautiful.

Matt Jacob:

But Eric isn't just a master of the image, he's a seeker, and beneath the campaigns and the accolades is someone deeply reflective about identity, artistic voice and the space between what we show and what we feel. And in my chat with him, we explore the identity crisis that shaped his philosophy as an artist, the discipline of turning creativity into a daily ritual, what it means to find truth in visuals that are often constructed and composed. We also talk about the complexity of being both commercial and soulful how to honor your artistic integrity while working in an industry that often prizes performance over presence and, perhaps most powerfully, we get into why chasing your inner voice might be the most terrifying and essential thing you ever do. This episode is a meditation on perception, purpose and the courage it takes to keep reinventing the way we see. So here we go, Eric Almas. Eric Almas. Welcome. So much to the Mood Podcast. Thanks for joining me, Thanks for having me.

Erik Almas:

Appreciate it for joining me.

Matt Jacob:

Thanks for having me Appreciate it so much to dive into Not enough time which is the story of our lives, but I wanted to kind of break into this conversation with a quote I saw, I think it was on your website, and it said I create emotion and energy in images, motion and homes. Tell me a little bit more about that Kind of unpack that for me, about kind of what you do and why you do it.

Erik Almas:

So this is maybe five, six years ago, before the pandemic, I was a bit lost with my photography. Not lost, but you try to reinvent right, or do something more, something different, something better, and every time I told myself I need to create something new. There was a reluctance there and at the same time, I'd started doing some real estate projects and everything I was curious about was architecture and design, how to create spaces and how they feel when you entered into them. I'd also, by default, started to direct a lot more and I didn't really know where I would go with my life and career, and I had a coach at the time and he goes.

Erik Almas:

This is simple. You just got to step away from your singular identity of being a photographer. Forget about it. What you are is a creator, and that creation can have many forms. So let's find a way where we redefined Eric and what you tell yourself about this need to take more pictures, because you're creative in every moment, all day long. You're like this passion is created in a lot of ways. I'm a creator or a creative creating atmosphere in spaces through light, through photography, through film and through design Something like that.

Erik Almas:

So we sort of reshaped my own narrative about who I was and what I felt I owed to this craft of photography, and it liberated me. To be honest, now, I didn't feel guilty when I did not look at pictures, did not take as many pictures. I felt liberated to dabble in design. Look at design. My Instagram feed was 95% design, 5% photography. 95% design, 5% photography. Now I can look back at that and write five years in and I could say that I've informed the way I take pictures too. So I think there was a letting go in making that statement for me. So that's where that came from.

Matt Jacob:

I love it, that kind of sense of freedom from really kind of following a path that is truly you right. It's truly the voice from within and not really caring about where, which lane you have to stay in or which label you have to put on yourself. So I think that's a really good lesson for a lot of creatives who aren't. You know, I speak to people all the time. They're like I'm not sure what to do. I like to do what to do, I like to do that and I like to do that, but commercial clients want this from me, so maybe I'm just gonna stick with that. I think that's really interesting, certainly with your journey and we'll talk about how you kind of started with it, um, soon.

Matt Jacob:

But something I've really noticed with with your work I've been following you for a while, certainly not not throughout your whole career, but enough to kind of see certainly an evolution in your artistry which I think we all kind of strive for. But we always think, well, I need this finished product all the time, I need to be this, I need that body of work to kind of stamp who I am. So tell me a little bit about that evolution where this kind of desire to kind of consistently create but consistently evolve at the same time, without being distracted. There's always this kind of pull between the two. Would that be correct?

Erik Almas:

Oh my gosh. Distractions are there all the time, and to be focused is the hardest thing of all, I think. How far back should I go? Where do you want me to start?

Matt Jacob:

Yeah, start from the beginning, when you were 11, 12, whenever you got your first camera.

Erik Almas:

Got my first camera, 18, 19. So I didn't get it that early Friends of mine had one. I was in the National Defense, which at the time was mandatory in Norway, took a darkroom course, got myself a Canon EO650. Started dabbling in it. I was a DJ at the time, so I would be a mailman in the army during the days and then I would work as a DJ at night. That was my one year of national defense.

Erik Almas:

I got out of that sort of lifestyle, just disenchanted with not in music but the music I played. I started listening to all kinds of other music jazz, classical and really started seeking outside of what I was doing. And then I just needed to do something else. I had then started taking pictures, a lot of ski pictures, and I thought photography sounds like fun, maybe I could be a sports photographer. And then a meeting with a photographer in my hometown who had studied photography in the US. She said you can't study photography here in Norway, you got to go to the US. He said you can't study photography here in Norway, you got to go to the US. And that one sentence sent me across the pond to the US to study. I thought I would stay for a couple of years, go back, work for a local newspaper, do sports, and then I guess I found photography at a different level than just snapping images but creating them.

Erik Almas:

I did four years of school. I assisted for two and a half years and then I ended up staying here in the US and I think two years into assisting I took one photograph randomly that sort of sparked this recognition in me. The whole thing through school was to find your voice as a photographer. When you talk about evolution, there's a lot of searching and exploring during that time right, which school should be. And then I come, take this one image and I felt this crazy resonance with me and I thought this is all I want to do. This is amazing. I kind of did it. I created something that is uniquely me. I felt at the time you can't really know this when you're in it, but in looking back I did it. There's a clear reference right to Norwegian paintings, lücher culture. All that stuff was baked into that picture. Through that from my style, which is still with me today, it's still sort of a recreation of those elements that are recognized in that photograph. That was the beginning of what has been a really wonderful commercial career in photography.

Matt Jacob:

Yeah, I want to kind of stop there and rewind a little bit. To your apprenticeship, I would say, but your assisting job Was that with Jim Erickson? Was that the kind of mentorship with Jim? But is that with Jim Erickson? Was that the kind of mentorship with Jim? Tell me a little bit more about, first of all, actually tell me a little bit more about this learning of a voice. You know you go to photography school and so many people out there want to jump onto YouTube and learn technical skills, settings, gear, lenses, even style, even like an aesthetic style to some, some degree. Where why is voice important? How would you define a voice, finding a voice, what does that actually mean as a photographer or an artist, a reflection of your hopes, desiresnings.

Erik Almas:

It's a reflection of who you are, what you have experienced, what you want to experience, where you're going. A style is really just a reflection of you as an artist, forward and backward. I think the style leans on what you have experienced all through your life, sort of the innate part, and then there's the yearnings and desires, right that pushes forward, and then, when that big together, your styles sort of come together and then it evolves right through your life experience.

Matt Jacob:

I think when you felt, with this pivotal moment which is fascinating because I had a similar moment in my photography journey and I can remember it to this day and it was almost like a light bulb moment Ah, this is, everything clicks. This is amazing. But I couldn't actually looking back on it. I now know, and sounds like you're saying the same thing, like you don't really know at the time when you're in it. It was not like, oh wow, this is it. I know what I want to do with the rest of my life and this is my voice and this is my style, right, so it's a whole process so there was this photographer, jock mcdonald, old school, that would come into one of my teachers class and he defined it so beautifully.

Erik Almas:

I'm not sure if he came up with this thing, but he said just at the time right, it was magazines. So he said just write about 50 pictures of magazines that you like and then write down what it is about each one, that's you like it, what you like about it, and that list would be your style. And it was fascinating to me that you can sort of analyze your way to a place and then you define. I mean, if I look at any photographer, I can sort of tell what their style is almost instantly, because you're drawn to certain things subconsciously. Some people will never have someone staring in the camera, for instance.

Erik Almas:

Other people would shoot really wide, so it should be really tight. All this stuff is baked into your DNA Anyhow. So that's where it started. And when you start being conscious about certain elements, right, then you start incorporating that when it comes to light, place, subject matter, tight, wide, all those things, and that specific moment that I had I didn't recognize it when I photographed it, but I did bring the elements one model, one dress, one place, and it took this photograph, and it was when I scanned the film and sat with it afterwards that I recognized that this is just saying to me somehow I'm dating myself now and I talk about scanning film, but yeah.

Matt Jacob:

So what did you find? How did your voice evolve? Or what did your voice evolve into at the time? At this point you kind of realized, okay, this is a style that I like. It's a little bit style, being a little bit more tangible, a little bit more aesthetic, a little bit more to do with composition and colors and subject matter. How did the voice, your voice, evolve from that and what did it kind of evolve into?

Erik Almas:

Yeah, big questions, man, big questions, um, uh, so there was two themes in my work, I think, at the time um, big, open landscapes, vistos, and in that setting, either a female or an older male. I didn't know why at the time, but as a male photographer I was attracted to female. I didn't think that was my year of name or desire. And then I talked about this briefly before in some of my tutorials. But I grew up without my biological father, so I had this. I photographed a ton of older men at that time. My first real assignment was out of that portfolio where I photographed an older man. So it was all personal work at the time. Right, you just tried to build a portfolio, you tried to evolve and craft pictures that would be a body of work solid enough for you to be recognized or hired. So in that process there was females I was attracted to and there was these older men that I was yearning to know and that became the basis of what I do today.

Matt Jacob:

And that still carries through to still the work you do today.

Erik Almas:

Yes and no. So my curiosity obviously changed, right, I think through working with Jin I got parched, so that yearning for this unknown father figure settled. I actually met my father right before his passing. He then finally reached out. I say my dad. It's hard for me to speak about my dad like that, because I have a dad that's been with me since I was nine, 10 years old. It's my stepfather, who's the dad to my three siblings. So I have a really solid guy. But still there's a curiosity about who that was and who he is. But part of me is that thing that I don't know. So, yeah, it carries through. I think you carry that with you your whole life. But I don't see that as present in my work now.

Matt Jacob:

And if I were to do a filmic project, right, it wouldn't be about that yearning, it would be about something else speaking of coaches and and mentors, I want to kind of dive into that mentorship you had, or the recipient of under Jim Erickson, and how that really really impacted your career, if at all. Because I think having a certainly for someone who maybe didn't have any relationship with a biological father, I can understand that connection there and that need of having almost a father figure but someone who could guide them through a journey and interest and a passion that they have. I think that's missing these days because I think a lot of people turn to their YouTubes and their social medias and there is a lot of the time that isn't that connection, that in-person or that relation connection, relationship connection with a specific craft and journey. Tell me about your experience through those two and a half years and what you learned that you might not have learned we'll never know but you might not have learned if you didn't have such a strong mentorship experience.

Erik Almas:

So that experience was, I mean, life-changing and extraordinary for me. The classic way to enter commercial photography than I did it was craft a portfolio, show it around or meet people and learn through assisting. So those are two ways to get in the door. I chose the assisting route and I couldn't have had a better mentor than Jin, in that he was unafraid of me. One being hungry, ambitious and wanting to really be a photographer. He supported it always. If I wanted to borrow any gear I could do so. They had more powerful computers at the time at his office. I would sit there from five in the day ended to midnight working. So there was no limitations that he put on. Oh, you can't speak to my clients, it was nothing. But whatever I could do to help, I would take four by five cameras home to Norway for Christmas holidays, for two, three weeks. It's like whatever, take whatever you need and not shoot. So that was the confidence part. I think, from what I heard and seen with other photographers, they get a little territorial lesson. You know these are my clients, you help me, don't talk to anyone. That kind of spirit. Tim was always introducing me as an extraordinary photographer to his clients. He helped me get my first job. So that was the basis of it, and I did not know that at the time. But to have someone that would be interested in mentoring and sharing and supporting without any limitations was super, super helpful. And maternity was also super.

Erik Almas:

Old school I painted garages, I cleaned his cars. I did all of the things that did not be acceptable in today's world. Right, if I hired an assistant which is good in some ways right, you hire someone and you hire them for the job and not for other jobs, but for him being more of that old advertising guard, it's like be at work whenever and then there's office hours, so you do whatever I needed to do. But then on the other side, right, that sounds kind of terrible, but on the other side, I think I was a week into the job and we're traveling to Morocco and Egypt shooting Audi cars. It's like extraordinary. So I didn't really know this world existed, right? And then suddenly you're traveling the world, seeing and experiencing things that you wouldn't think possible on an advertising budget. So it's like this is what I want to do. This is amazing amazing he's.

Erik Almas:

I had a jaguar and a ranger in the garage. You know house in the fanciest neighborhood and he was a creative. Uh, it was inspiring how is that life?

Matt Jacob:

how is that in that um, I guess, that sector of the industry? How how has that changed over the years? We're talking a few decades, I guess, but how would you perceive that world now and how do people kind of navigate into it if that's what they want to do, and is it worth it?

Erik Almas:

You know it's a tough question. I think about this a lot because what we see today, I would say it's super competitive. You get paid today, which you did 20 years ago still a great living but it has not followed inflation at all. But I left it. I would shoot way more than I do today, but nobody's spending money doing small sort of pictures or a one-day shoot anymore. That money goes into digital advertising. So all the jobs that's left are for the larger companies that do everything. As in there's multiple products, multiple markets, I need to have a specific voice for each market so they hire. It's all of it, right? So I would shoot a lot more. Now I shoot a lot less and the pie is shrinking. Do you know, scott Galloway?

Matt Jacob:

Yes.

Erik Almas:

Interesting character. He said if you're over 40 and in traditional media, hang on for dear life and try to be in it for as long as you can. If you're under 40 and in traditional advertising or media, just get out as fast as you can.

Matt Jacob:

So why? Because it's a bit of a boys club or it's just too competitive no, because it's a, because it's a dying industry, right you already need a name in it to survive in it. That makes sense.

Erik Almas:

So I mean it's, it's well paid, it's lucrative. If you could crack it today, I'd say go for for it. It's unbelievable. But I think the young art directors today don't think. Maybe if they read archive or they follow sort of the advertising news, maybe, right, they will know about me. But if they're on social media and TikTok all the time, they don't know who Eric Alves is. They even know the Jacobs and the ones with millions of followers, right? So those are the photographers that they would probably like to work with when they're creating campaigns. So if I were to give advice, I wouldn't say take my approach, what I did then. If I were to start over today, I would look at other ways to try to crack that up. It's a lot more direct to these different companies than it is through advertising agencies, I think. But then AI is coming too right, so it's complicated. Are you even going to chase it?

Matt Jacob:

Well, let's touch on that now. I mean I wanted to talk about that a bit later, but since you mentioned it, I think that kind of blends in with these different genres that you've experimented with very successfully and kind of putting this all together. I wanted to ask you know, you started in that advertising world and you, you, you. Now you're a multi-disciplinary creative right. So how did all that come about? You know you've got different interests, but was it commercial pressures as well, as you saw the industry changing, or how did that kind of evolution start?

Erik Almas:

It started with my dad or my stepdad being an engineer and I thought you know, I'm going to go to photography school. They were a media forward, they had a computer department. So I thought, oh, I'm going to do a computer class every semester. And that was with the first old school Macintosh. It was okay, this is a mouse. That's where it started and that was in 95.

Erik Almas:

So I came out of there as the first generation of photographers really that used, uh, photoshop and the post process as an extension of the craft of taking pictures, of photography. So that put me in a great situation right where I could put pizza pieces and parts together. I wasn't initially such a conceptual figure, but I would sort of paint with the photography a bit. I would add clouds so that people there and there, and add buildings, and then that led to an advertising career really doing conceptual work. How can we fit parts and pieces together? That doesn't necessarily belong together, but tell a narrative within the frame. And so I got lucky to fall into that and it's still there, but that's right for the taking with AI. So I'm not sure where that's going to go from here on out so you played a, you played around a lot with AI, didn't you?

Matt Jacob:

and you, you have this and correct me if I'm wrong you do you have this kind of one part of your style is, you know this, composite photography. You know that the photoshop elements that the more the kind of the creative design combined with photography and ai almost seamlessly blends with that, and I know you, you experimented a lot with ai in terms of both the composite side, but also just the raw generation of of. I know you said you don't really know where that goes, but how does it do you feel that being a permanent part of your work, certainly in the advertising or editorial space?

Erik Almas:

I think it will be for a minute. So now it's a part of it's always a part of almost every picture, but it's by new right Pieces here here, pieces there, yeah, but it's a transitional period, right, and I think there's going to be a divergent between what's authentic and what's real and what's crafted photography, what feels human. I think there will be a premium to it and then there's going to be all the stuff that doesn't have to be that and it won't be someone coming to me to generate those pictures. I think that will be an art director, someone in an office that will just push that out. So I think the way it is now is us, this visual that dives in and thinks it's exciting, something that we would incorporate into our work.

Erik Almas:

I'm estimating an assignment now where one of the options is to generate all the backgrounds in AI and then we're adding the talent into it. But as these generators get better, those talent will emote like any other talent and you can't tell the difference. Then, as I said, I think that will be one bucket that I won't be a part of and then hopefully I will be, you know, considered for the bucket that is real people in real places. I don't think your photography will go away, I think, but then it's going to be more competitive again.

Matt Jacob:

It's going to be hard, I think, for yeah, we're just shrinking, shrinking the pool, shrinking the pond, don't we really? Um, but it also on the on the flip side and I talk about this as well I totally agree with what you're saying in terms of the more authentic, the more real, the more human photos will become, more valuable. You know, people would always want that. So if you can lean into that somehow as you navigate a future, especially the younger generation, then I think that's where the value is going to align, because AI is going just down one road and we can see the finite kind of result of that, I guess, where, like you said, talent won't be needed. It'd be so realistic. The only way you could tell is through the XF data or lack of. So, yeah, I totally agree with you. Yeah, I totally agree with you. And when you were certainly going back to kind of the experimentation, kind of phase, design, phase of composite photography, photoshop, did you get a lot of criticism for that in terms of the combination of real photography with fake photography?

Erik Almas:

Yeah, that was a conversation in the beginning, right? I mean, when I started photography school in 95, I had a photojournalism class and we talked about the ethics of cropping the picture or not, yes, like. And then, uh, it was just a blip, really, because digital photography was this tidal wave that came, so that ideal, real photography disappeared. It was just early, early, early on that I felt that there was some pushback on. Well, but that's not photography. It's like you call it what you want, I'm. I'm crafting something that my heart, you know, swells when I do it. So it's Phil's white bucket. There's an art to it, so you could call it composite photography. The discussion was mute to me because I was so excited and passionate about it. Yeah, it's like, okay, if you have your opinion, I'm going to go ahead and do this thing because it's so awesome.

Matt Jacob:

Tell us a little bit more about that. I guess on the commercial side of things, people didn't care right. It's just they want work done. They want work done. But in terms of the journey of your business I mean, I think a lot of people certainly these days whether it's more competitive or not, more saturated or not, I don't really want to kind of think about that, because it's just different. The industry now is different to the industry five years ago, let alone 20 years ago.

Matt Jacob:

I'm not going to ask you to pinpoint one secret to success, but you've had a very successful, sustainable career and you've had to adapt, clearly. But you've always had a common theme of, like you said earlier, doing something that really swells your heart, what you really love to do, and you can see that beautiful common thread throughout all of your work, whether it's in motion, still composite, whatever it might be. That is something that everyone should be able to learn from and be inspired by, like I am. But tell us the secret sauce how have you built a successful solopreneurship or entrepreneurship as a creative in all of these different facets? What is what is?

Matt Jacob:

What is the secret? Because it it looks simple and, oh yeah, you can just go and get work. We all know it's. It's extremely, extremely difficult, with a lot of hard work behind it. But can you give us some insights as to how you've looking back, how you've you know, a couple of tips and a couple of kind of inherent success stories that have allowed you to build this, this career? That's a big question. I know that's a really big question. I'll ask some smaller questions soon.

Erik Almas:

I think my answer in some ways will be a little simplified and maybe not applicable to today, but one was the mentorship at gym that you asked about. Like I said, he was unafraid to share that. Eric is a great photographer. You should see his work. He was very generous with me wanting to make it, generous with me wanting to make it.

Erik Almas:

My very first assignment was a job that Jim got me. He said I can't do this, but I think Eric would like to take a stab at it. His studio manager produced it. His in-house retoucher retouched it and I got paid a little bit. Then another job like this came around, and at the time it was an American investment firm that had bought the Copacabana Palace in Rio. I think they had $35,000. And that was nothing to Jim to travel the crew to, you know, to rio, to shoot this, shoot this thing. But I thought I could take a stab at it. It was a friend of mine at school that I knew had lived in rio. That was a photographer, and I said do you want to go? Can you produce this? Do you know people? Can you? Can you figure this? So we went on a scrap budget.

Erik Almas:

The two of us hired a great local producer and that was my first campaign, had a time of my life Unbelievable, and I think those were the first two sort of bricks in the wall for me. The way it got recognized in the US advertising market was these award shows. So Communication Arts, photodristic, news, murphy's, uh, american photography there's also four or five of these. So through working with Jen um, I saw what he did right. It was marketing yourself to the decision makers, which is the art producers, art buyers, and that's the same today. So you gotta reach those. And then you gotta be in those award shows, because that's where the art producers, art buyers, and that's the same today. So you got to reach those and then you're going to be in those award shows because that's where the art directors look.

Erik Almas:

So I started submitting to those every time. I mean I think it cost at the time a hundred dollars to submit a picture. It's like I didn't have any money. I have to spend thousands and thousands of dollars every year submitting. There was communication arts.

Erik Almas:

I made it in there a couple of times and then they had still, I think to this day, have this section called Up and Coming or New Talent.

Erik Almas:

Can't remember quite the name of it, but I was featured there, section called Up and Coming or New Talent I can't remember quite the name of it, but I was featured there and I was still freelance assisting here and there, working a little bit at the gym and then other visiting photographers to the Bay Area, and I remember when that came out I just thought I kind of made it and I don't think I assisted after that. I kind of made it and I don't think I existed after that. The only way I can compare to today is that you go crazy viral and everyone in the industry sort of sees this one picture or film that you took. It would be the same as you're creating something that gets millions and millions of views and suddenly you are someone that would be top of mind when they had a campaign you know that they wanted to create, so that was the next so your advice to people is to go viral on social media.

Erik Almas:

Got it writing that down okay, so I just tried to compare it to today, because I just made it into the CA photo angle again.

Erik Almas:

I'm not sure if it has any meaning, but I remember thinking that I bought my first apartment in San Francisco and I submitted my work to them, and I thought, oh my gosh, if I make it in, I'll be fine, for this year I have mortgage payment to make, and it really came down to that one inclusion, so I simplified a bit.

Erik Almas:

What's underneath there, though, is a lot of taking pictures right To shoot, to shoot, to shoot, and I remember Jind saying to me at the time when I was ready to leave. He said that you're the only assistant I had throughout through my career that have actually taken pictures while working for me, and I think it's a little bit like that today, too, that you work and you admire the work of others. You want to get somewhere, but you don't actually work at it, so I would say the ticket is first craft, and then have someone that can vouch for you or get you in the door, and then it's to be recognized, and then, from there, there was a few sort of benchmark campaigns that again made it into the award shows that recognized it. That's been my career for 25 years now.

Matt Jacob:

Yeah, and now today? What does the business look like today? Very similar. What are you kind of working on? Are you working much or are you taking what comes your way, rather than kind of crafting to really get out there?

Erik Almas:

So three things to this Market is up and down. I have had slow periods. I had extraordinary periods. I thought about this not too long ago. Periods I had extraordinary periods. I thought about this not too long ago because financially I'm doing fine.

Erik Almas:

In the slow periods, I said when the economy in the US gets uncertain, I said now I get a lot of calls for reuse, right To extending the license of pictures, and when it's busy, nobody want to. Let's make a new campaign. Economy is thriving, so it balances itself out in some ways. I'm afraid now you know with younger photographers, social media, the ease of just recreating pictures. There's no solid ownership contract. People give away unlimited use. Just okay, I just have it. $200 you could have if you could own these pictures. I mean, that's in the world that I came up in. That was just blasphemy. If you were to give away your copyright to the pictures like a buyout, they'd call it. That would be in like the $40,000, $50,000 to $100,000 range. If you were to own my art. It's numbers that people outside the US would just gasp at, but that was kind of the benchmark.

Matt Jacob:

And what is it now? How would you assess that now?

Erik Almas:

Nobody buys unlimited usage from me, it's just too much. So it's two, three or four years upfront, sometimes five, and then that runs out. There's often a renegotiation right If they want to continue running that campaign. What that would cost. More often than not now, when there's a purchase order, they like to have a re-license already negotiated. So within the purchase order or the contract, this is what we pay for the fee, this is the production cost. This would be the reuse for both talent and for the photography. So I think there's a maybe this will come about when ai really gets a foothold, that the original photography again, it will be valued on a usage base.

Matt Jacob:

Many people might not want to be but really commercially won't, won't, won't, the won't. These companies and these I presume they're advertorials and advertising agencies that are buying these images from when they just turn to ai, because then they don't have to pay these license fees yeah, that's very possible.

Erik Almas:

I talk to my wife about it all the time. Right, what does it look like for us two, three, five years down the road? It's like what am I going to do?

Matt Jacob:

Yeah, do you have an answer?

Erik Almas:

yet think photography will go away. So I'm going to craft pictures. I want to make films, and then there's the design part of spaces so?

Matt Jacob:

so what is what does a win look like to you now? Like what is, I guess, success? But you do a job or you have a plan and you move forward and you talk about the next three, five, 10 years, whatever it might be Today and in the future. What does that win look like? How would you mark a success down If I.

Erik Almas:

I was about to say if I get six, seven jobs a year, I would be super happy. I don't have it handy, but just as I thought about that, 20 some years ago, I wrote down my this thing called my ideal life, and in there it said I would do six seven jobs a year. Yeah, so advertising wise, right, that's a great living. And in there it said I would do six, seven jobs a year. Yeah, so advertising-wise right, that's a great living. It's a really great living. That's a 1% living in the US and it's fun, I have to say.

Erik Almas:

So, when you're a photographer right, you're left with your own thoughts, your own creativity. So you're in a bit of a photographer, right, you're left with your own thoughts, your own creativity. So you're in a bit of a vacuum, right, you lean heavily on what do I want to say, what do I want to do, what do I want to create? And then someone comes to you. That is, their job is to be idea comeuppance right. Be idea, comeuppance, right. How are we gonna take this product or this brand and how we want to tell their brand story? And they come to you and say this is the ideas we have and you get to be a part of that unfolding in a really creative environment it is gratifying and for me as a location photographer, that often involves going somewhere, having that travel experience, creative experience, collaboration experience that you don't have when you're by yourself.

Matt Jacob:

So advertising you know it's.

Erik Almas:

Yeah, it's been an extraordinary thing for me and you get to create the budgets right. That's out of the common. So I mean I've gone to great lengths doing personal work to craft pictures that has these ideas fulfilled, but that you have advertising behind it. You could get great talent, great places, access to places that you normally wouldn't, and all of that.

Matt Jacob:

Cool, yeah, there must be so freeing on one side of it. But also, do you get some limited creativity? I mean working for someone else.

Erik Almas:

Essentially, there is always a risk of having your own creativity or freedom to create stifled a little bit, but it sounds like you don't have those limitations when you're working on a advertising campaign so yes and no, but I mean, I'm lucky to be in the position where they come to me for my aesthetic and my style, so it's never a um, oh, you do this, but don't do that. It's, this is our ideas, this is what we want to say, and they would love your help in doing this. So, yes, it's defined by who. Their demographic is right. So the talent get chosen to, to hit whoever they want to market to, but within those parameters I get to create all those things we talked about.

Erik Almas:

Right, that resonates with me, so that I've done things differently, absolutely, at times. But the innate palette, the innate feeling, the mood, what I'd like to maybe extract from the talent, all that stuff comes from me. So, yeah, you can look at that box that they give you, right, you can say that, oh, I want to paint outside the box. Or you could say that these limitations are extraordinary and I want to do my best work ever within these parameters. So it's a little bit on how you approach it. There was this one art director it was an assignment for Pfizer and he said that this is the most money Pfizer ever spent on advertising. Don't fuck it up.

Matt Jacob:

Was it the COVID vaccine?

Erik Almas:

This goes further back than that, but that, I think, is stifling right. It wasn't just for me to go and create. I stayed very much within the boundaries of what they wanted to achieve. So that's one end of the spectrum. At other times I've had clients come to me with a little paragraph about what the space is, what the character is, and then let's go create within that. So it has to gamut. I think whenever there's an audience right that you want to please and that could be if you work for yourself building an Instagram feed that's beautiful, attracts people you try to please that or cater to that in some way. So it's not any different, I think, for someone starting out trying to build an audience online than working in advertising yeah, yeah, there's always.

Matt Jacob:

There's always someone to to put your work out to in order to achieve something right? This was actually going to be a follow-up question from me to you about how important the end user is, whether that's your client or whether that's your family, whether that's someone seeing your prints on a wall, whoever it might be, whether that's someone seeing your prints on a wall, whoever it might be. I guess what I'm trying to ask is if no one ever saw your work again, right, if no one saw that end product, would you still make it, you know? And if so, specifically what would you go and make?

Erik Almas:

What would I go and make today? Today, I would shoot quiet portraits or I would shoot quiet landscapes. I'm working on a little. I did one short film with my wife and we're working on another one, I think. So I told you briefly, right, what was driving sort of the creativity? Right, there's the longings for self-fit. And now when I got kids myself, so like Buckethead talked about old men, that has been satisfied. You know me photographing a lot of women. That's been satisfied. I got kids, which is extraordinary. I mean their curiosity. I keep thinking about what my daughters tell me, right, when they come up with this story. I just think, holy shit, that would be such a beautiful picture. That inspires me. It's interesting because how do I say this in an elegant manner I had something to prove when I was younger.

Erik Almas:

So it's never just been the art, right, it's always something that underlies the art. If I just wanted to take pictures, I wouldn't take pictures all the time. I wouldn't take pictures with the ferocious tenacity that I had for so many years. It was to prove something to myself and to others, right, that I could make it, and I think that's underlying most artists, no matter what. So I guess your question was does it matter if it doesn't get seen or doesn't have an audience? Not as much. I think there's a human need, right In some ways, to be recognized or seen or feel not to feel important, but to feel validated and feel like you have a place. That was important to me.

Erik Almas:

So now that you asked me these questions right where, after shooting commercial work for 25 years in a very blessed situation, to have had the career I had, what did I create? It would look quite different, I think, than the work that I'm known for. It would be something that's more introverted, it would be quieter, it would be seeking something else than just sort of a surface story. I look at some of your work, right, when you reached out, I looked at what you're doing and I mean not that I'm going to psychoanalyze the work, but I would say that you're someone that's probably been looking for and knowing yourself through these portraits that you take, right? What is it about these that I can maybe see myself in some ways? So my yearning now would be a sense of quiet reflection. So those would be the pictures I would take yeah, I'm with you on that that was a long answer um, no, I, I love it.

Matt Jacob:

It's a.

Matt Jacob:

It's a.

Matt Jacob:

You know that people, people understand that as you go through your different seasons of life, um, as you change as a person, as you evolve as a person, likely you're maybe, maybe not necessarily just your art will change, but the way you look at that and the way you approach it will change, whether that's for a commercial aspect or or not.

Matt Jacob:

So that totally makes sense and, um, yeah, I mean, I'm totally aligned with that, wanting some quiet, stillness, equanimity in, in, in images, um, and it's definitely a lot of that self-reflection or all the time, whether it's coming from, I think it is dangerous and this is just through personal experience, not dangerous, but you can get distracted or you can create for the wrong reasons or for reasons that may not fulfill you personally. If it is to feed your ego or to prove something right, essentially the same thing that can be, that can create some incredibly powerful stuff. But whether you will, whether it will resonate with you over a long period of time, time intimately and personally, whether that even matters, I don't know, but, um, there might be a little little disconnect, right?

Erik Almas:

so you, you're always going to create for different reasons throughout your life when you get to the end of that right, there's no there there, that's the famous one, right. But you get there and you go. Oh, yeah, yeah, exactly yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's just a journey exactly it's just a process, yeah, okay.

Matt Jacob:

Well, um, what? What is something that you feel that you can? I guess let me rephrase this is legacy important to you as you move forward, would maybe create now if no one was watching per se. Is you? I mean, from from the outset? You have such an incredible body of work that any photographer artist on this planet would be proud of. But is that important to you? You know what you leave behind as a, as a creator, whether you know that's when you leave something to your kids. Um, you know they're essentially your legacy. I know that. But in terms of your work, do you, do you think much about that? In terms of I want to leave behind this amazing body of work that I can be proud of forever?

Erik Almas:

oh, yes and no. So I went through this, right. You asked me when we started about this quote or this idea of me creating several different things, and at that time I had so much guilt for not. I thought I owed it to my career and that. Body of work, right. Audio work, right. So okay. So now I gotta create books, right? So what is my book project? Where do I start? Right.

Erik Almas:

So how do I transition into being an artist that's recognized for the artistry but not for and not for the commercial work that I did? How can I either re-edit and look back, or back to and see if I could find something there that resonates, that I could build upon? So there's, I was about to say, there's a book at the end of it, but I don't know if the book form is legacy, but traditionally it has. So I thought about a lot of that and then I said there's so many other things I wanted to do. One, being a dad, a present dad. Two, building things is amazing, and just think about the way you take pictures, right, mine were very structured in the beginning Put up my frame, perfectly designed, and then figure out what the narrative was within that frame. So I almost felt like I was now like a theater director, almost that this is my canvas and then let's light it to be the way that I want the light to be, and then how the people come in, or the story, whatever that was happened inside that frame. This people come in, or the story, whatever that was happened inside that frame. It's almost the same. If you design a space but you have a three-dimensionality to it, right, what does it make you feel when you step in there? Where does the light come in? What is in the morning? What is in the afternoon? It's almost the same exploratory as when you craft a picture. It's a little different with portraiture, when the interaction is with that human, so that energy between you. But the way I started with being very structural, I think that has evolved with filming and all. I think I've gotten better because of it. But the foundation of my I'm going to create this frame is very similar when I create spaces, anyhow.

Erik Almas:

So that's a long answer. I guess there's no. Have we talked a little bit before we started, right? That I had some medical complications and when I limped through that there was not one thought about my work. Oh, my gosh, I gotta hurry up and finish a book. Oh, I gotta hurry up and take more pictures. No, I gotta slow down to be with my family. I gotta slow down to absorb every bit of it. I'm gonna have my shoot experiences, which I realized that I truly love for the reasons we talked about the collaboration, the creating something with other people. So I would love to continue that if the advertising business will have me, not if the advertising business will have me. But my yearnings are not as in, I got to create more to leave a legacy. I want to be more present and almost create less in the format, not that I want to stop creating, but I don't think about photography as legacy. Is that?

Matt Jacob:

a letdown no no, it's refreshing.

Matt Jacob:

I think it's very easy for people, including myself, at times take the craft or themselves too seriously right. At the end of the day, none of this matters. It's something that we have to find. I think it's a vehicle that we can find, an element of purpose, an element of belonging, an element of fulfillment. But at the end of the day, it's just another thing. In a hundred years, no one's going to remember us. No one's going to know. In 100 years, no one's gonna remember us. I was gonna know who we were right.

Erik Almas:

I mean it's seemingly simplified right to give that answer, but I was chasing photography and being successful from 22 to 42 really right after 40. And then I was like I've gotten to a great place. I had a great 40th birthday with some extraordinary friends around and my family and I came out of that thinking what I'm missing is family, right? So I don't want people to think oh, oh, this guy doesn't think about his work and career. I mean, that's been my. That was 25 years of my life pursuing it, not just me, but been a studio manager and a full-time assistant and the sole focus was to make eric almost crack this, this nut right of being a successful photographer. But as I've gotten older, gotten family and the situation I'm in, I can reflect on that and say it's not just photography, it's so much more to it yeah, it's a way of life but it's different periods though.

Erik Almas:

I mean, if a young photographer is listening to this, I'd say, go chase it with all you got. I mean, if you love it, yeah, and it fills your bucket and your heart, like it did for me when I was young. So you got to chase that with everything you got when you're young, all of it and then you're going to get to a place where, holy fuck, I'm burnt out, I'm working too much, and then you're going to reflect back on it and say, okay, okay, what else is there to life? And you know, that's what I did. It's like I want a family, I want to slow down, I want to have this other life experience.

Matt Jacob:

Yeah, I totally agree with you. Everyone has their seasons in life, and certainly in that period between 20 and 40, I guess, before you hit your inevitable midlife crisis, uh, you know, you gotta, um, you gotta go chase what you want to chase, as long as it's true to you right and you're not doing it for some someone else and you're not being fake and uh kind of. You have to go through those things to really understand yourself and what you do want. But, yeah, I don't want to, I don't want to feel down, you know, put any downs on people either. It's a it's such a fulfilling thing to do and there's so many ways to do it Right and there's so many ways to put your own personal stamp on things and make it your own and make a business out of it. So it's extremely exciting in that respect. But, um, yeah, life can sometimes hit you, um, and then you have to kind of pivot.

Erik Almas:

I think the one advice I would give to kids right Kids, young photographers especially with AI coming in is that they have to be extraordinarily authentic. So they got to find that thing that makes them sing, otherwise there's going to be such a sea of pictures that it's going to be very hard to stand out in. So we have to just get more raw and more emotional and more true to ourselves as AI comes into the picture.

Matt Jacob:

Well, we didn't even touch on your motion picture stuff, your short films and other, you know, education stuff, how?

Erik Almas:

did you touch on some of it?

Matt Jacob:

even like, yeah, we, we could be here for hours and hours. But, um, you know, I think for me and for the audience, we we respect and love your photography so much as well as everything else. But you know, we know eric, know Eric as a photographer and you know even little things like the cinemagraphs I think I saw on your website which I hadn't really seen before, and there's so much uniqueness to what you put out there in your voice and your style. It's so refreshing and so inspirational. So, look, I hope to do this again, where we can maybe dive into all of these other areas and other skill sets that are prevalent to you in your work. But until then, thank you so much for taking the time and being present with me, and I've really enjoyed the conversation.

Erik Almas:

Like what's bad. I listened to a lot of your podcasts coming into this and you're very, really soulful into your, so thank you for making me feel comfortable in the conversation and the next one that we do in person, I'd love to help you out to California.

Matt Jacob:

If you can give me some wine. Yeah, if we can, we can do maybe a wine tour as we're talking.

Erik Almas:

I am there, I'll get on you know, I have a tiny patch of vineyard right there and, uh, it's not a lot that we make sort of one barrel of wine every year. So you know, come pick some grapes.

Matt Jacob:

Yeah, it's fun that's an art in itself isn, isn't it? We could talk about that for ages. I love that process. I've turned my passion you know, I was always passionate about wine, learned a lot about it, did so much wine tasting and, you know, wasted not wasted but drunk a lot of money in the process. And at the same time, I was doing the same thing with coffee. And when I moved here to Bali, there is no wine here, really, because it's so expensive to import and there's no old world wine. It's just too expensive, there isn't a market for it. So I kind of doubled down my passion into coffee and it's a very, very, very similar, you know, agricultural and manufactured manufacturing process, in the way it's this drink that we consume daily, whether it's wine or coffee, uh is made and, um, you know, I just love all of that. I love the art behind it. These, these people, these these uh, what do you call them? These, um, what do you call it? A wine person? A Vin, vin, vignette.

Erik Almas:

A Vintner yeah.

Matt Jacob:

Vintner. That's what I was looking for. These Vintners are true artists. Um. So yeah, the whole the whole process absolutely fascinates me, and, of course, I love drinking as well. So yeah, the whole process absolutely fascinates me and of course, I love drinking as well. So maybe next time we can combine both passions.

Erik Almas:

That'd be so fun.

Matt Jacob:

That'd be great fun. Until then, thank you so much, eric. Such a pleasure, such a privilege. Really appreciate it. Take good care of yourself. You too, thank you.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Matt Jacob

Host