Today we’d like to introduce you to Kirk Hensler.
Kirk, we’d love to hear your story and how you got to where you are today both personally and as an artist.
I don’t think any artist actually considers her/himself one. When you’re making something, it’s work to you. Like balancing a spreadsheet or walking 14 dogs through South Park. When people tell me a video we made or a photo we took is beautiful, I have a hard time hearing them. ‘Yeah, but I should’ve been so much better.’
When I first started taking pictures, I was in 9th grade. We had a black and white photography class (easy credit) and my mom had an old 35mm Pentax camera in the basement. I didn’t care for landscapes. Too boring. I preferred portraits. So, my girlfriend at the time became my constant subject. Crossing a bridge over a river, sitting on the bench in the park, dancing at night with her hair in her eyes and hands over her head. Every time trying to follow her gaze and really see her.
I like the intimacy of pictures. I can look at someone and know who they are pretty quick and get a feeling about them. And video is nice because you’re telling a story and you get to make people feel the way you want them to feel. If the piano music comes at the same time she looks up, well, then we’re searching our hearts for the last time we felt so much.
I got into my current business, Hale Productions, after selling my yoga studio and getting into freelance photography and video. I was shooting all my own marketing video and people started hiring me. It was such an easier road than the yoga spot. I lost money for years and years doing this one thing then suddenly people were paying me hundreds, sometimes thousands, of dollars, to shoot content and it made so much sense.
My wife encouraged me to open a brick and mortar studio. We started in South Park in a tiny, 300 sq foot space thinking it was all we needed for portraits. We even shot a music video in there once. But it got too small so we moved to a loft space in East Village. That one was 900 sq feet and there was no way we ever needed anything bigger. After a bunch of client shoots, we moved upstairs, to 1700 sq feet. This time I could build vignettes for lifestyle shots and a product table for flat lays and a dedicated wall for portraits and a kitchenette for all our blogger clients. Everything set up for systematic efficiency. Max output without charging LA prices.
Today, I’m about to sign a lease on a 3500 sq foot vaulted ceiling hangar loft in East Village. It has industry windows and exposed brick and all the excellent textures that make for great photos. I had a chance to rent it months ago, but it was too scary at the time. The rent made me nervous. But our business has evolved into space rentals as well. For other productions and for events. And there aren’t too many jaw-dropping spaces in San Diego that feel like you’re in New York or downtown LA. So, we want to bring that. With a Scandinavian farmhouse kitchen, Brooklyn leather sofas, mid-century credenzas, and all these other beautiful things that, again, help make great pictures.
What started as me trying to impress my girlfriend and get any easy grade has turned a small company poised to do a million dollars in revenue next year and it’s really hard to believe because, at the end of the day, I still don’t believe people when they call me an artist.
We’d love to hear more about your art. What do you do you do and why and what do you hope others will take away from your work?
I’m more of a hybrid. Business and art can’t exist without each other in my mind. Everyone wants content, and that’s what we create. We shoot commercial photography and video for brands and individuals. They need their website redone, we’ll shoot for that. Content for social, done. Brand videos, lifestyle commercials, product flat lays – we do it all.
But that’s not even that interesting to me. There are a million photographers in this city I’m sure. What I like about what we do is the sheer scale at which we’re able to output. People want so much and they don’t understand what it costs so instead of fighting San Diego and convincing clients to spend $20k on productions, we’ve found a way to produce a high volume for a better price. That means we control the process. We have the studio. We have our gear set up a certain way and all these different sets and backdrops and colors and we tailor our system to our client’s brand so every shoot is unique but the process is the same.
The stereotype of a starving artist scares away many potentially talented artists from pursuing art – any advice or thoughts about how to deal with the financial concerns an aspiring artist might be concerned about?
Haha. Yeah, don’t spend all your time making shit for your friends for free.
We still do a few shoots a year that are “pro-bono” for our closest peeps but we’ve slowly shut the door on people who don’t pay our rates.
Another interesting thing – sometimes clients treat us like a buffet. Since they’ve hired us to do one thing and paid a fee they will often try to throw some extra bits in there while we’re shooting, you know, “if you have time and wouldn’t mind just grabbing this one shot real quick…” and often I have to explain that you wouldn’t walk into the mall and pay for a pair of pants at J Crew and then grab two pairs of socks, some shoes, and a cute little wool coat on your way out the door. And if you did, you would be arrested.
Do you have any events or exhibitions coming up? Where would one go to see more of your work? How can people support you and your artwork?
I guess Instagram is the new website, right? We put our client work and some BTS stuff on there. @haleproductionstudios. That’s a lot of our best stuff. Obviously, we aren’t going to post some of the more monotonous (bill paying) shoots we do.
What I really want is to continue to attract good-sized San Diego companies to produce their content. We shoot for Boochcraft, Chosen Foods, Kore Essentials, OHi Food Co., Baby Tula, and we just started working with Bonafide Provisions. We love these clients because they’re hip and they let us call a lot of the plays.
Contact Info:
- Website: haleproductionstudios.com
- Phone: 6198049430
- Email: info@haleproductionstudios.com
- Instagram: http://instagram.com/haleproductionstudios
- Facebook: http://facebook.com/haleproductionstudios
Image Credit:
Hale Production Studios
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