Born to be a Photographer
I recently discovered photographer Eric Smith on Instagram and was fortunate enough to be able to interview him in person last month in the lobby of the Sheraton Hotel in midtown. Smith ordinarily resides in Los Angeles, but used to live in New York and was in the city for work. He has been shooting all over Manhattan and has produced some incredible shots that can be seen on his Instagram account or website, esmithimages.com.
When I studied Smith’s work I was impressed by the quality that went into each picture. His work is very eclectic and diverse, ranging from wildlife and landscapes to surfing and urban skylines. After I sat down with him, however, I learned that his background in photo journalism stretches back to his childhood.
Smith grew up just outside of Philadelphia; his mom worked for the Intelligencer, a big time newspaper in Doylestown, PA. An appreciation and admiration for photography was instilled from childhood. “My mom was a photojournalist when I was growing up. She did it for 20 to 25 years. She retired, but it was always there. Honestly, it was always there and I always sort of dabbled in it and appreciated it, but it wasn’t my career,” Smith said. While inspiration may have been cultivated early on, there were no visions of grandeur for what the career demanded. “It was a lot harder and it makes me appreciate the craft even more because I saw what she had to do to make a picture. You had to get your hands smelly in chemicals and I would do that as a kid. I would activate the bath for the paper and you would watch the image develop.”
At first, the challenges pushed Smith away from photography. “It was a pain in the ass; I didn’t want to do it,” he said. After attending the Rhode Island school of design, Smith moved to Los Angeles. “I was an art director. I would art direct photographers. I became a video director. I was living in Hollywood, making commercials, working on movies. It wasn’t until 2007 or 2008 that I really started getting into photography.” Acknowledging his impatience, Smith credits the immediacy brought about by digital technology as a primary reason for his willingness to embrace a new career.
Once he made the transition though, Smith said he never looked back. “It was funny because I was like ‘I can’t believe I haven’t been doing this.’ It’s like all the things that I’ve been learning in my other areas of expertise and then all of the sudden what my mom taught me as a kid all kind of came together.” Even with his pedigree in the field, Smith is still glad he didn’t begin his career as a photographer. “I think my learnings in design and filmmaking all work together to make better photographs. Composition, lighting, I learned all that through other things. So often you’ll get people that start off being photographers and they’re very immersed in the technical and I find that a lot of photographs have a clinical look to them.”
As for his personal style, Smith considers himself a documentarian. He never uses a flash and shoots what is in front of him, noting if the weather is bad, so are the pictures. He realizes advancements in technology helped him become a photographer, but it hasn’t all been beneficial. While the ceiling for great photographs may have risen, Smith also sees the negative influence of technological progression. “For someone that really loves the craft, it does bum me out that everyone has a camera. I guess it’s great that everyone can make life memories, but I do find the explosion of images to be overwhelming. We’re inundated with images; we’re desensitized. I think the standard of images has gone down because everyone’s making them,” he said.
Early in 2015, Smith took a photograph that would end up being seen by millions of people across the world. He captured an extraordinary moment in one of his pictures while photographing whales off the shores of California. Smith didn’t realize it until looking through the selection later, but he caught a young man sitting on the end of a boat looking at his phone while a whale can be seen emerging from the water just feet in front of the man. Smith posted the picture on his Instagram account, accompanied by the caption “A sign of the times,” and it went viral. While he is modest about the picture’s popularity, Smith is aware of its impact and what it says about a society obsessed with cell phones. “This picture captures the zeitgeist of our time and what I’m thinking. I’m thinking that it sucks,” he said.
The picture serves as a gut check to society, but the fact that photographers like Eric Smith are out capturing moments like these helps bring awareness to countless issues and bring about a positive influence.
