EPISODE 20: CREATIVE IMPACT + INFLUENCE
JOIN US FOR A ROUND TABLE WITH with guests Pei Ketron and Aundre Larrow AS WE DISCUSS how INFLUENCE CAN HELP AND NOT HARM WITHIN THE SPHERES OF CREATIVITY AND IMPACT.
THE ROUND TABLE EXPLORES
Together we discuss with guests, Pei Ketron and Aundre Larrow, how to move from freelancing to working for a large company, processing and responding to feedback, the increasing speed of social media growth and its role in the creative process.
“We are now expected to have built a niche. And then also educate people, create art and entertain people. And there's too many things happening at once. And so what's happening is you're achieving greater burnout. The thing that I try to root myself in is that I will not let a single platform decide who can hear my voice. And that's been really helpful for me to remember that, and that the stuff I'm making generally has a purpose for it. Also, share other people's work unashamedly. At the end of the day, social is still about your taste and your community so make sure your community listens to you. A friend of mine said something that really stood out to me and I think this is the perfect end to it. He was like, ‘I think we have made it so that we believe social media is as vital to our existence. - not necessarily to our business - but to our existence as water, air, food, and conversation with other people. To the point where we believe that some issues can be created and solved in a space that is all but invented,” shares Aundre in conversation with Pei and Angela.
“My father’s an artist. He did a drawing of a woman, and I posted it on Instagram. He said to me, “Did you know that more people have liked that one photo of that one drawing than have seen all of my artwork in my entire 50 year career as an artist?”
There are wonderful things about [social media]. I think we just need to find a time and a place and a proper usage of these platforms to stay sane, stay healthy, stay in a good mental space and to really use them in wonderful ways.”
MEET THE GUESTS
PEI KETRON. Pei Ketron works on the Lightroom Product Marketing team at Adobe, with a focus on building community and leading the Lightroom Ambassador Program. She is a photographer and educator based in San Francisco who spent a decade teaching special education in the public school system before becoming a freelance travel and commercial photographer. Pei regularly teaches photography and social media classes privately and through companies such as Creative Live, The Image Flow, and the Santa Fe Photographic Workshops. In addition to her experience with DSLR and medium-format film photography, Pei is also an accomplished mobile photographer. She can be found on Instagram at @pketron.
Aundre Larrow. A Jamaican-born photographer based in Brooklyn, NY. Beyond these frankly reductive labels, at his core, Aundre seeks to understand people. From his work as an Adobe Creative Resident exploring stories across the country to working on the set of W. Kamau Bell’s United Shades of America, Aundre seeks to see the fundamental truth in each human being, regardless of background, culture, or upbringing. The primary question he asks in his work is, “What is the shortest distance from me to you?” When Aundre received a Minolta from his high school drama teacher at 15, it wasn’t as much a discovery as it was a completion, an additional sense with which to navigate the world. He truly believes that all people are worth knowing. That pursuit has taken him to Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to capture the Gwich'in people, to his home state of Florida to document the stories of formerly incarcerated folks fighting for their right to vote and to WeWoka, Oklahoma to photograph the largest Black-owned farm in America. His work is an honest portrayal of social issues through the eyes of his subjects who he views as collaborators and not just people to fill his frame with. His work has been published in The NY Times, The Wall Street Journal, Teen Vogue, and many more.