I felt like they hadn’t done enough marketing for this particular Meet The Pros. I usually hear about it from the posters all around eleventh floor. However, for this one, I didn’t hear about it until the professor told us in the internship class. It fit quite well in my schedule so I decided to go, and also the speaker’s portfolio looked amazing.

The speaker was Dustin Cohen, who is a photographer and filmmaker. He has beautiful portraits of famous celebrities and such, so I decided to go.

The talk surprisingly started right on time. The doors weren’t even open until 6:20ish. So we all quickly settled in and got right to it.

He started off by giving his educational background and how he got into photography. He graduated from University of California, Santa Barbara and moved to New York right away. Back then, he only knew two people in New York, one of them being Professor Eli Neugeboren. He started emailing different musicians, actors asking them to collaborate. Surprisingly, a lot of them replied back and they made amazing photographs.

After some time, he got an internship at the Rolling Stones magazine, which gave him an opportunity to network and build a strong portfolio as well. He got an opportunity to shoot famous celebrities and gain confidence.

After working for Rolling Stones it was a roller coaster. He kept getting a lot of freelance gigs. But he also made time for personal projects. One such project was “madeinbrooklyn” where he would take photos and documentary videos of strangers.

After doing some madeinbrooklyn work, he got offers from Stella Artois and Canon and they said to do something similar. 

He also talked a little about dealing with celebrities during photoshoots and how you really need to be patient with them. It was really a great presentation by him. He’s well spoken and confident, so it was great to listen to him.

We ended off with Q&As. One thing he said that stuck to me was “Keep Hustling.” Will definitely do Dustin!