Today we’d like to introduce you to Chris Hershman.
Chris is a youthful filmmaker and photographer based in Chicago Illinois whose visual work is strongly focused on music and live performance. In his teenage years, he began his path as a portrait photographer but being a musician himself lead him to turn the camera toward the other bands and musicians surrounding him. During his pursuit to grow as a professional photographer, he purchased one of the first Nikon camera bodies that had video features and through his experimenting with video, discovered his love for motion pictures.
His work quickly began gaining popularity through the bands he was filming and the platforms his videos began to appear on, Chris was creating music videos for bands such as Alabama Shakes, Switchfoot, and working with music publications like Rolling Stone and NPR. His video career grew beyond his expectations. Having to adapt to quick success he honed his skills and developed a business within creating visuals for the music industry full-time at a very young age.
His passion for his craft bleeds through his visual work and is evident in his speaking when teaching and education others on how trail-blazed through the filmmaking community. Keeping his originality and authentic approach to his filmmaking allowed his work to be noticed by the movers and shakers within the music industry and is often invited to join tours with bands and approached by record labels to provide video that captures the heart and soul of his clients.
Chris achieves to create photos and video that connect the viewers on a deeper level, making timeless imagery that matters and helping others achieve the same success through sharing his experiences and knowledge to the world.”
Has it been a smooth road?
Freelance life is never easy. I’ve dedicated my life to living in the struggle. Maintaining my individualism has taken a higher priority for me than collecting a steady paycheck. I can easily work for a company providing photo and video content, and in fact, I did for a few years, but at the end of the day, you can easily be contained and restricted. I find my work is best when I think and produce my visuals without limitations.
Locations, budgets, final say in edits are all important for me to have full control of. I search for work and clients that enjoy that side of me and higher me and encourage me to work within my own comfort space. The more controlling clients are, the less I enjoy the work, and the more free they give me, the more unique the piece becomes. The is mostly true through with my music video work. I feel like the William Wallace of Freelance. FREEEDOOOOMMMMM!
We’d love to hear more about your business.
My business is called Chris Hershman Visual Art. I like to call it visual art vs something like photo and video. I feel like we take a unique approach to filmmaking. It’s more authentic and straightforward. Less cheeky and more real. I got my start capturing live music performances.
Early on in my career, I created the official music video for the Alabama Shakes and that video now has over 25 million views on YouTube. Since then I decided to keep my focus heavily on music-related content but since my background was portrait photography, I live in the world of still and moving images. That was one of the first shoots I did, and one of the latest videos we created was for a band call Company Of Thieves and it most recently premiered on NPR.
I also specialize in educating the general filmmaking community on how to create music videos. I’ve been speaking at conferences like CES (Consumer Electronic Show) and NAB (National Association of Broadcasters) for several years. It’s a great honor to speak at the Nikon Tradeshow booths during these shows to explain my process and approach to making music videos. I love talking about what we do because it’s my way of giving back to the community of creative folks who helped me get to where I’m at. We all share our knowledge and encourage each other to grow within our own craft.
Is our city a good place to do what you do?
I’ve encouraged quite a bit of my closest friends to move to Chicago who were living elsewhere.
Some from Minnesota, South Carolina, Indiana and I’m working really hard on my buddy from California. Chicago is an excellent city for freelance work and when you’re growing a small creative business and cant afford to take on employees, its crucial to have a strong pool of freelancers to call on when you are producing large projects.
I find myself most resourced in Chicago due to the network I’ve been building over the past Ten years.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://chrishershman.com
- Phone: 2197819048
- Email: chris@chrishershman.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chrishershman/
- Facebook: http://facebook.com/chrishershmanphoto/
Getting in touch: VoyageChicago is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
