Meet Kevin Jantunen | Photographer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Kevin Jantunen and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Kevin, we’d love to hear about how you approach risk and risk-taking
I think that risk is one of the key components to being able to discern where luck and opportunity reside. It is one of the many hurdles to “widen the blinders,” so to say, and be able to see things in life where luck will manifest in a potential opportunity or moment for you to seize and utilize. Too often when you are immersed in a bubble, echo chamber, or despair you fail to see a chance and ephemeral moments whether they be just outside or around your periphery. Taking risks, alongside education, patience, and focus has helped me carve my upward path. Don’t listen to me though, don’t listen to gurus, don’t listen to pyramid schemers, don’t listen to self-declared CEOs/entrepreneurs, DON’T listen to social media, don’t listen to anybody. Learn and listen to yourself, figure out which risks are appropriate to take, and move forward at your own pace. Enduring fruits of labor come to those who are genuine, I think

Please tell us more about your work. We’d love to hear what sets you apart from others, what you are most proud of or excited about. How did you get to where you are today professionally. Was it easy? If not, how did you overcome the challenges? What are the lessons you’ve learned along the way. What do you want the world to know about you or your brand and story?
I honor the art of photography the best I can at the level I currently am at. I loathe HDR, I loathe Instagram/influencer content, I loathe disingenuousness. To bend and control light, to alter my environment and subjects, to spend hours or days with an idea, all these help me to best pull my vision out of my mind into the corporeal world is the most rewarding way for me to create photographic art. Getting to the point, in retrospect, was easy. Maybe during the times of uncertainty, doubt, sacrifice, risk, etc. it was not an easy process. However, I ultimately realized that the long period, prior to my leap, of holding it down solo-dolo to learn and trust myself, stay away from social media and the ubiquitous grifters within, to not capitulate to those trying to hate on me and reduce me, and many more momentss made everything clear and easy. It takes some retrospective analysis sometimes to reach a great place of catharsis. This is obviously boiling down my journey and putting it very simply, but, for the purposes of this automated interviewer-less interview, I think it works. I was able to see luck, through a bit of patience and a bit of learning, and seize upon it and work with some legends in the photography world. Under their tutelage, I learned a lot, business-wise and more importantly creatively. I owe them gratitude even if one of them sought to break me down at a critical point of personal and professional growth.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
We’d skate around El Cid, Flamingo Park, Grandview Heights, Downtown West Palm, and bomb whatever little hills we could find. If they don’t wanna skate, we’d simply kick it. Me and my friends don’t need much to be content and have a good time. If we wanna make some art, we’d do it. If we wanna bounce and explore some spots, we’ll do it. If we wanna have another cookout and feed the neighborhood, we’d do it. Whatever the day calls for. Shout out to The Box Gallery though!

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
Shout out to Rolando Chang-Barrero of The Box Gallery in West Palm Beach, 811 Belvedere Rd, West Palm Beach, FL 33405!

Website: https://www.kajstudio.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yebinjantunen/?hl=en

Image Credits
©Kevin Jantunen – KAJ Studio kajstudio.com kevin@kajstudio.com