For this professional practice, I did an informational interview. I interviewed Jon Meyers, he is a Pacific Northwest photographer, crafting photographs about businesses and people. He also teaches digital photography and part time for media arts here in LCC. Teresa, my Media Arts Instructor, gave the information about this man. I went through his website and I liked the pictures that he had there. So I contacted him, I asked him If I could interview him about his job for a class project and he said that he would be happy to do it. So we met each other at campus.

The first question that I asked him was “what type of photography you do?” He said that he makes a lot of images that tell stories about what a business does. “It could be portraits of people, architecture photography, product photography and editorial work for magazines.” He said that he gets to travel to different states sometimes, like the day after we talked he was going to Seattle for photographing attorneys up there. Then I asked him “What classes did you take in Collage?” He said that he took his first photography class here at Lane. Then he switched his major to Plain Art, he did a bunch of work there, but he didn’t really fit with that program so he dropped out. He then moved to Chicago, he worked with several photographers there. Then he came back here and because he had been working with a lot photographers, had a lot of experience, then he just kinda launched onto his own. He got his own studio. He said “I knew this is what I really wanted to do but there was always a lot of steps to get there, so it took a little while” He started in 2003, so he being doing this for a long time ago. He also said that it’s a lot of fun. He said “But running your own business is really hard. Photography now is the simplest thing I do, picking up the camera it’s the most fun part. But there is always so much stuff that ends up needing to happen” But he likes it, he has been doing it for so long so he knows what to do. He also said that he has a book that is coming out this fall, about people with disabilities, with a hundred portraits in it. looking back to his work he said “I think its interesting to see all the different types of photography that I have done. What I enjoy the most is portrait works and being a photographer, you end up shooting things that sometimes is not really in your wheelhouse, but you can totally do it.” I liked when he said that.

Overall interviewing Jon Meyers was really interesting. Knowing all the different type of things he does with the images, traveling to different places and running his own business sound pretty fun to me. He encouraged me to take his digital photography class, which I’m sure I’ll take it. He was really nice. I’m glad I had the chance to interview this cool professional photographer, I really enjoyed it.