What is the one thing in the world that you can do better than anybody else? A Must Read If You Love Photography!

"I got one piece of advice form a photographer by the name of Chase Jarvis about 2 years ago and it was something that I felt was extremely valuable at the time when I received it. And he told me after looking at my portfolio that I needed to find out what is the one thing in the world that I can do better than anybody else. And once I figured that out then I would get hired to do that one thing and I would never have to worry about money" - Benjamin Von Wong

We are excited to share our full conversation with talented and creative photographer Ben Von Wong; grab a cup of coffee, make yourself confortable and get inspired!

Ben: Alright, well my name is Benjamin von Wong and I’m a conceptual artist I suppose. I create content that is simultaneously skills as well as motion. I seek, I teach, I do basically a whole bunch of other different things. At the end of the day, most people know me as a photographer. So it seems to be the easy way to put myself in a box that people can understand what I do. I picked up photography completely by random. I was a mining engineer by trade. And one day, a girl broke up with me while I was working in a mine in Winnemucca, Nevada and I decided that if I didn’t find myself a new hobby, I would go crazy. So, I decided that it would be nice to take picture of the stars and I had no idea what I was doing but I wanted to take pictures of the stars. So I went to Walmart and I bought my first point and shoot. And as most things go, you start small and along the way, things slowly develop, they grow and before I knew it what had initially begun as just a small little hobby turned out into a part time job I would suppose.

I started doing a lot of event photography; I did weddings, I did cocktails, I did concerts, I did anything—anything as long as it was with my camera. And that went pretty good and so I woke up one day and realized that I had 2 job; engineering and photography which really wasn’t what I had initially set out to do. So as a result, I quit my engineering degree and—sorry, I decided to quit photography—the business part of it so that I could do creative things because I didn’t want to have two jobs. I wanted a job and a passion and so I started doing creative things and then fast forward to about a year, year and a half, I ended up in the situation where I realized—I woke up one morning and I realized that I didn’t want to be an engineer for the rest of my life and I couldn’t figure out why I was still going to work. So I decided to quit and I started traveling with photography and that’s basically what’s been going on since then.

ViewBug Editor: That’s amazing — you said you bought your first point and shoot, you started taking photos and you started doing events—what was the tipping point—did you show people your photos on your phone or on a website and you said “Hey! Look I take very cool photos, can I take photos of your event or…?” How did you do that first step of taking that plunge?

Ben: My friend who was in the same photo club as me couldn’t make it to an event and he asked if I could replace him and I said okay. And that was my first paid job and it was the first time that I had actually got some pay to do something I liked to do and I was like, “Hey, you can earn money doing something you enjoy. This is pretty awesome!”

ViewBug Editor: Very cool! This one is a tough one. It’s kind of like a philosophical question that we like asking people. How could you describe in one sentence what photography has done for you in your life?

Ben: One sentence? Photography has empowered me to make a difference and have meaning.

"I think that it’s important to remember when participating in these competitions that winning or losing is not a measure of how good or how bad you are. What is the most important is to continuously grow and progress and stay true to yourself and as long as you do what you love and you love what you do and you keep at it, you’ll grow and prosper as an artist. And at the end of the day, that’s important than any prize or nay title that any one can bestow upon you" - Ben Von Wong

ViewBug Editor:: Very cool. And that goes hand in hand with the second question that I wanted to ask you. You have amazing crazy different type of images, that’s why you’re who you are and you being so popular and gaining such a following. When you’re about to do a shoot, are you sitting down in front of your computer and you say “I want to shoot a model, a ballerina on top of a building in Singapore.” I’m going to do it or—how do you plan this crazy idea on shoots?

Ben: So I’m not a rich kid and I don’t have unlimited budgets, so really I wait until opportunities come to me and make the most out of it when they do happen. If there is—if I find somewhere that I really want to go or somewhere that I’m really interested in, then I try to find opportunities that will enable me to go there either through teaching, either through working, either through whatever happens to be—the idea is really to find out how to make it financially viable once you discover that thing that you’re interested in whether it’s a person, a place or a location. So all of these locations and all of these concepts are really put together one piece at a time. There’s one spark, there’s one tipping point, there’s one single thing that really goes like okay I get it this is something I want to do and then you try to build up from there.

ViewBug Editor: So you don’t have a notepad with your ideas of things that you would love to shoot one day or in the future like this crazy visual thing you have in your head and you want to pull it off? Is it more like whatever comes and what pops up in your mind you work on it?

Ben: The problem with dreaming big and imagining anything you want is that you probably can’t do it. You can’t just do anything you want because realistically there’s a lot of a constraint. It’s been far more effective to start with one piece of the puzzle—something possible for us whether it’s a location, whether it’s the model, whether it’s the costume, some—that one thing that really inspires you that you already have and then build up from there and just start from nothing which is your imagination. And say okay now I want to make it all happen! So I find that you have a far higher success rate if you simply begin with the things that you already have access to.

ViewBug Editor: That’s a good way to put it and talking about those scenarios, have you had a favorite photo session or favorite shoot?

Ben: My favorite projects are not the projects that have the craziest photos but the ones that have made the greatest impacts on people. So I realized a project which was really not even a photo shoot but a video where I volunteered my time and flew myself over into South Carolina to help them make a viral video and raised 2 million dollars for them over the course of a year—less than a year to save a 4 year old daughter is one of my most memorable projects. I surprised one of my fans in Australia by putting myself in a box and showing up at his doorstep and taking him on a one week adventure. You know those are the projects that don’t produce necessarily the best images but they’re the ones that you remember the most.

ViewBug Editor: That’s pretty cool and do you have some projects that you just don’t want to remember—that they were like a nightmare scenario that you planned something and it just turned out completely different?

Ben: I wouldn’t say nightmare situation, there have been—I mean as you get more mature as an artist, as a photographer—I think you get better and better at making sure that no matter what happens, you’re still able to deliver a decent job. The simple reason being that your job as a photographer is that regardless of what happens, what the challenges are, is that you take a good image. So the more experience you accumulate, the less likely it is for you to end up in a situation where you have a total failure. You usually have all sorts of back up plan and tricks and tips up your sleeve to ensure that no matter what happens, you’re still able to get something. And I think for me, what I find very fun is the very human element that people kind of look at me and have this impression that I’m this unfailable*, eternally creative individual who is constantly happy and inspired and bale to do these wonderful things non-stop. And the truth of the matter is I’m just another person and there are better projects and worse projects and quite simply, the projects that aren’t your best are the ones that are also easily forgotten. And the ones that are your best are the ones that people remember you for. So you don’t need to spend too much time dwelling on things that don’t work out. So everything that doesn’t work out is just another lesson for you to improve in the future.

ViewBug Editor: That’s well said and talking about the projects that have worked out, we know your photographs very well and we know that they’re very magical and a lot of people question how much is pre-production, how much of the photo is post-production, editing. When you’re taking a shoot, do you already know what kind of post-production you’re going to do with shoot?

Ben: Sometimes yes. I mean on projects where you have plans and you need to know exactly what you’re going to deliver, it matters a lot. And on projects where it doesn’t, then it doesn’t matter.

ViewBug Editor: So you just go through the creative process while you’re doing the post processing. When do you know—when do you say, “Ha! This is it! This is how I want the photo to look.”?

Ben: Usually, I mean I think I generally have an idea but I never know exactly how it’s going to be and turn out.

ViewBug Editor: Going back to the philosophical part of your photography -  if you could go back to when you were getting started with your point and shoot and there’s a lot of photographers that are in that stage right now, is there something that you could tell them that you wish someone would have told you back then?

Ben: I got one piece of advice form a photographer by the name of Chase Jarvis about 2 years ago and it was something that I felt was extremely valuable at the time when I received it. And he told me after looking at my portfolio that I needed to find out what is the one thing in the world that I can do better than anybody else. And once I figured that out then I would get hired to do that one thing and I would never have to worry about money. And so I sat down and I thought about it and I said—and I figured out—it took me about a day or 2 to come up with an answer. Because I’m not the best photographer, I’m not the best lighting, I’m not the best post production and I probably never will be. So really what am I the best at being and what is anybody the best at being? How do you become the best at one thing anyways?

And the answer that I came up with—I don’t know if it’s a right answer but the answer that I came up with was that we are the best at only one thing—we are the best at being who we are. So I’m the best at being me. So what that means as cheesy of an answer as that sounds is that if you’re able to define yourself in marketable terms, to define why you are the best person for a specific job then you become the best person for it. So if I were to breakdown me as an example, I’ve grown up and I’ve been to 13 different schools in 3 different countries and 3 different languages which means that I should be really good at—I’m great at connecting with people and I’m good at culturally being with individuals. Like all these things are attributes that are very valuable to have because I can communicate effectively with different cultures. Another aspect would be for example, I have a background in engineering and while that has nothing to do with photography, inherently the fact that I have a background in engineering means that I have the ability to rationally approach a problem in a step by step logical way.

So I’m not like an artist which kind of has a little bit of trouble putting down these thoughts together rationally from* a business perspective. So I can help solve problems with an engineering background but with an artistic mind. I did 10, 15 years of martial arts which means that has nothing to do with photography again but then perhaps you tie that in by saying well that means that I actually understand how a body moves. I can capture motion quite well and I understand the dynamics of human movement and know when the best time capture an image is. So you take basically all of these events in your life that make up who you are and figure out how to package it into what you do in a marketable, unique way. So I might not be the best photographer but I have the ability to logically approach a problem, solve it, explain it—master all the aspects from pre-production to shoot to post production. In addition to telling a great story through my behinds the scenes which means that I’m good behind and in front of the camera with the ability to inspire and teach and have a social following. So when you put it in that framework, then suddenly you become a very unique commodity with very unique attributes that make you desirable because nobody else can do what you do. And so that’s helped me a lot.

ViewBug Editor: That’s very helpful and I think a lot of photographers will take a lot from that advice. Any final thoughts that you would share with Viewbug members on their photography, on how to become creative, on where photography can take people, on how the art of photography is changing our lives or anything in general that you would like to share with Viewbug members?

Ben: I think that it’s important to remember when participating in these competitions that winning or losing is not a measure of how good or how bad you are. What is the most important is to continuously grow and progress and stay true to yourself and as long as you do what you love and you love what you do and you keep at it, you’ll grow and prosper as an artist. And at the end of the day, that’s important than any prize or nay title that any one can bestow upon you.

ViewBug Editor: That’s well said. That’s exactly our philosophy, we see the contest as a way to grow as a photographer and to get creative and find inspiration.

Ben: Alright.

ViewBug Editor: Excellent! Ben thank you very much for all your time and for the chat; it was very interesting and helpful.

Ben: Sure well hopefully it helps and resonates with some people.