Blog #10: The Beginning of SPatelProductions
Is it already Sunday again?! Guys, I’m going to be honest. I don’t know where all the time is going. It’s STRESSING ME OUT. Literally, I blinked and it’s the day before my LEAST favorite day of the week. I’ve got a bad case of the Monday’s on Sunday, frick.
You guys know Suketu and I are incredibly passionate about building our business, SPatelProductions, which encapsulates Half Past Chai, all our socials, and our actual photography/videography/media production business. But HOW exactly did we get into this biz? And WHY you may ask? Well, let me tell you all about it.
The year was 2017…
Suketu and Hallie were fresh little newbies in college. Suketu, at this point, has had his passion in video creation for roughly 5 years. He began his YouTube career while in middle school, making all kinds of skits and videos out of the comfort of his childhood bedroom. He slowly transitioned that talent into testimonial videos, and school projects as the years passed. Hallie had little photography experience at the time, only taking her first photography class in 2016 in high school. Although she was new to the game, she instantly fell in love with the creativity and art in photography and media production. Along with her own passion in photography, she found something her and Suketu could pursue and love together, which made it even sweeter of a gig. That love only continued to flourish between each other, and for the craft itself. It bonded us. Since we found something we can grow in together we have only ever enjoyed working with each other and learning from each other’s unique experiences.
We started out just taking pictures at the park, or driving downtown to take cool city photos, or bringing our cameras to friend/family functions for extra shots, just so we could practice becoming familiar with our cameras. We started building our business by taking one-off senior photos, or party photos, and continuing to master our own craft with each other until we felt comfortable enough to take on the bigger gigs.
We were college students in 2017, and yeah we had jobs… but we had LOTS more free time and less responsibilities back then. Why not kickstart a business?
Well, Hallie knew the right people to get Suketu started, as a wedding videographer. Suketu’s first paid professional videography gig was for a wedding barn, smack-dab in our hometown in Indiana. Suketu charged $200 for his first wedding, after putting 12-16 hours worth of work into it. As the more country folk in my family would say, we were “chargin’ peanuts”.
Charging Peanuts: something so small it is not worth considering, especially an amount of money
This first wedding experience is something we learned a lot from, not only from the monetary side, but how to capture the essence of that specific wedding in a short film. How to make it cinematic. And, that it is NOT as easy as it’s made out to be. I feel like some people just think you can pick up a camera and master the art in mere minutes. It’s quite the opposite. It takes time, LOTS of time, successes, failures, and many trials 1. to become comfortable with your camera and know exactly how to use it and 2. to figure out your style in how you capture what’s right in front of you, oh and let’s not forget about making it flow into a nice storyline. That’s important too.
Since then we have only continued to grow, as I took on my first solo wedding in 2018 after second-shooting a handful of times. Even though I’m very experienced now and feel like an expert with my camera, I won’t lie to you when I say that I still get jitters right before a wedding, or any big gig I’m hired to do. I, along with so many others, suffer from imposter syndrome and I’m a professional at siking myself out. The biggest lesson I’ve learned in all my photography experiences is that in order to grow and learn, you HAVE to put yourself in those uncomfortable situations and basically dive head first right into it. Basically, just throw yourself into what you don’t want to do, but you KNOW it will be good for you. You think I WANTED to photograph my very first wedding by myself? Uhh, HELL NAW. But wow am I grateful for that experience. It would have hindered my growth had I not taken that opportunity. I took that rough, and cringey experience and made something out of it so I could get better.
So the why, why did we start a business? Yes, we are both incredibly passionate about what we do. But why didn’t we start with that full-time right out of college? Better yet, why did we even go to college if we knew that the business world wasn’t what we really wanted? Honestly, that’s a story for a different day, so look out for that in the coming weeks. Maybe I’ll title it something like “Pursuing A Passion (You Can Capitalize From)”.
I am so incredibly thankful and grateful I’ve found my passion that I’m also able to make money off of. Sounds kinda crazy, but wow photography and videography have helped pay the bills over the years. I would support anyone, if you aren’t absolutely in love with your 9-5 job, to begin your search for your passion if you haven’t found it already. Not everyone does, and I can’t imagine a world where I’m not able to express my love in my art and pour my heart into it. You see, content creation, writing, and photography are my love letters to whomever they are for. I can’t express myself this way in my code at my job, no no no… there’s something to be said about putting every ounce of yourself into your work so much so that it’s all you think about, and it drives you and motivates you to work harder and be better and also enjoy life? Idk, being myself, my vulnerable self, and having you accept me is the best form of love. I’m so thankful to have this platform and this business and all the friends it’s brought me. I wouldn’t change it for the world.
I want to thank each and every person who reads these blog posts. It brings me so much more joy than you’ll know. I appreciate you, I love you, and I can’t wait to create more for you. Have a great start to your week, Half Past Crew <3
