Today we’d like to introduce you to Kirk Hensler.
Kirk, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I used to own a yoga studio in East Village called Hale Holistic. Since it was yoga and we weren’t exactly rolling in cash, I was taking all of our marketing photos and making quirky short videos for advertising. It started because a good friend bought me a $100 Flip camera. And I became obsessed. The more I shot the more I wanted to be better. I lived on YouTube and in the photography forums and slowly started acquiring better equipment – a new DSLR here, shotgun mic there – and eventually I was making halfway professional stuff. Friends started paying me to take their pictures and make them short videos. At first it was like $200 and I was just happy to be making anything. But then my friend Alex reached out and said Tough Mudder wanted to hire me to make an event video and the pay was $2000. Everything took off from there. I got a client that took me to 7 different countries and 20 states over the next year and realized I was doing a lot better as a freelance producer than a yoga studio proprietor.
I sold the studio. Went full-time into production. My wife and business partner, Alexis, talked me into opening a brick and mortar production space in South Park in 2016 and the neighborhood has been incredibly supportive. We started off taking a ton of family photos just to meet people and build up our contact. Family shoots are a lot of work as any photographer will tell you, but it was incredible training and set us up perfectly for the commercial brand photography and videography we focus on now. We’re growing with a staff of 4 and a second studio just opening up in East Village.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Ha. Business is never smooth. Although this has been a lot easier than the 5 years at the yoga studio. I was considerably more diligent about opening the business this time around. Everything from savings. No debt. No expenses that we couldn’t sustain even on our worst months.
Alexis and I were overworking ourselves. Like big time. Which is to be expected. But it’s not always fun to get your ass kicked out on a shoot and then have to come home together and still make dinner and clean the house. There were moments when we thought about just going back to freelancing and being more minimal. But ultimately our long-term goals require us to buckle down now and try to build something substantial that can eventually run itself.
It’s also rather difficult to find good talent. Which is surprising. There are so many good photo/video people in San Diego but they are either too busy working on their own to come under your umbrella or they are just getting started and can’t yet produce at the commercial level. We got lucky in finding our PA and Editor, Todd. He’s a workhorse.
Our whole thing is being reliable artists. Not like these weird, super talented people that only work when they’re inspired, but rather a freight train that always moves forward and delivers on every promise in a very timely manner.
Finding people that can be both artist and responsible to a neurotic level is difficult.
Please tell us about Hale Productions.
Coming from the fitness world, we get a lot of inquiries to do athletic lifestyle shoots. Which we love. We are a lifestyle photography and videography company.
I think what we are most known for is our Instafamous photography package. We meet with clients and create a photoshoot plan that gives them a ton of different looks/styles/feels so they can promote their business on Instagram for the next quarter with really clean, stylish photography we deliver. There are not a lot of photographers with the vision and the attention to details. So, we’re creating style guidelines, building production schedules, and pulling shots for these 4-hour shoots and making our clients look like they are operating on a huge budget.
We also produce a lot of About Us brand trailers for small and medium businesses. Those are fun. We help write the scripts, plan the shots, and get in and out with production in a single day. Brand trailers are game-changing for businesses.
I’ve said this before, but our turnaround times are unbeatable. Nobody gets work back faster than us. Sometimes it’s the same or next day. I guess I can thank my dad for that, who made us leave 45 minutes early to walk to the next-door neighbor’s house in case there was traffic.
You have to be reliable. People are paying good money for what we do. And if they have to wait 2 months to get their wedding photos back then I don’t really think you really deserved their business in the first place.
Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
Geez. Good question.
In third grade, I started a bookmark company. Every month, we ordered from the Scholastic News and I thought it would be a good opportunity to draw my own custom bookmarks based on current movies or superheroes and sell them to my classmates. It was going great until my secretary (the girl who sat in front of me) turned around and asked why I had her holding onto the money and keeping a log of all the sales. I told her she had nice handwriting.
Apparently, she wanted the answer to be a little more so she took the sheet and the coins and walked right up to the teacher and told on me. I was almost expelled but my parents saved my ass.
What I remember most is my mom telling me that I had taken advantage of my classmates and my dad grinning ear to ear trying to pretend to be mad.
What I love so much about my childhood is that my mom made me make each and every classmate a really high-quality bookmark to give to them the next day along with an apology. And my dad also let me know that what I did was also good and that I should follow that nerve.
Contact Info:
- Address: 3009 Grape Street
San Diego CA 92102 - Website: http://www.haleproductionstudios.com/
- Phone: 6198049430
- Email: info@haleproductionstudios.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/haleproductionstudios/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/haleproductionstudios/
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/hale-production-studios-san-diego-3
Image Credit:
Hale Productions
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