Today we’d like to introduce you to Jimmy Fishbein.
Jimmy, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
During my summer break between high school and college, I picked up a camera for the first time and decided to play around. With some luck and positive feedback from my family, I decided to play around a little more.
During my first year of college, I took a darkroom class and fell in love with the magic of photography and the creation of images even more. So, each year I explored something new in photography while taking classes for my major. I was shooting for the school newspaper and local photo studio as well as shooting parties. Toward the middle of my last year of school, I decided to take up photography seriously.
So, I moved to California and studied for 3 years at the highly renowned photography and cinema school called Brooks Institute of Photography. It was during this time that I knew for sure that I was meant to be an image creator.
Upon completing the program at Brooks, I moved to NYC and began assisting photographer Arthur Elgort. This experience was a level that I hadn’t ever imagined. After my serving Arthur and the studio for my first year and my freshman year as a New Yorker, I decided to work for as many other photographers as possible to learn as much as I could. Through the next 5 years, I learned from some of New York’s best, such as George Lange, Mathew Jordan Smith, Andrew Southam, Ellen Von Unwerth, Albert Watson and many others.
In the beginning of the millennium, I moved back to Chicago to start my own company and started photographing people for national magazines such as Time, Newsweek, Fortune, Forbes etc. Ever since then I’ve been specializing in corporate and commercial photography with my company, Chicago Corporate Photography, and Video.
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?
If it were a smooth road, I would be bored and most likely in a different field by now. The fact that I’m still around is because I’m a competitor and I’m always dealing with obstacles and trying to figure out solutions for them. I had a lot of struggles as I do today.
In the beginning, the struggles were basic and fundamental about how to become a creative person and how to see things not only as they were but beyond what they could be. Today, the struggles are understanding how to expand my business and the best ways to market my services and obtain new business.
Chicago Corporate Photography and Video – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
We specialize in professional, high-quality corporate photography and video, and also excel in events and meetings, conventions and trade shows, office lifestyle photography, and real estate. Our photographers and videographers have a combined decades of experience and are all in-house.
We pride ourselves on going beyond just the photo or video and work to understand our client’s business and the marketplace.
What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
Hiring some of the best and brightest employees that really go out of their way to help me and my clients.
Contact Info:
- Address: 900 N. Michigan Avenue Level 4 Chicago, IL 60611
- Website: www.chicagophotovideo.com
- Phone: 312-623-3456
- Email: studio@chicagophotovideo.com
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ChicagoCorporatePhotography/
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/chicago-corporate-photography-and-video-chicago
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