INTERVIEW: MIKE WILL
Editor Lauren Scott chats to pro shooter and Sony Alpha ambassador MIKE WILL about commercial shoots, creative freedom and an emerging photo community
The adventure, travel and commercial photographer talks candidly about his upcoming work, vivid style and Sony gear
Mike Will is a photographer on the move. If he’s not travelling the world for an epic image campaign, then he’s travelling to live out his dream as a professional ice hockey player.
The ongoing lockdown means that I’m speaking to Mike over a video call from his current home in Guildford, UK, a location that enables him to easily roam around the country for shoots. It’s halfway through June when we chat, and Mike starts by sharing some good news with me – that in the last week or so, work has started to pick up again.
“I’ve just had my first two major jobs come back in,” he says. “And everything’s back on track now, so I’m excited and ready for what’s to come.” So far in his career, Mike has been commissioned by a big range of equally big clients and brands – Sony, Starbucks, Nike, and Deliveroo, to name a few – and his latest campaign was for a Zero Halliburton travel case. “It was supposed to be all urban
London shots, but then the agency changed the brief and we ended up doing country houses and villages instead,” he explains. “Now it’s about country living, going to a retreat, that sort of thing. I wanted something that aesthetically fit that bill. Bath has such amazing architecture, so we shot there and then headed to Castle Combe.”
Pro commercial photographers are always faced with the challenge of trying to balance the client’s brief with their own creative interpretations. Mike, though, finds himself with plenty of free reign. “Most clients understand that, actually, all they need to do is come to me with the message they want, and I’ll come up with a brief. Some brands come with really exact, specific ideas, and then I’ll go, ‘Okay, I understand, but this is what I’m going to do.’”
For many years, Mike has been balancing his busy photography career with an equally successful run as an ice hockey player.
Looking back, he says he was always into art and always creative, but also “really into sport. I wanted to become a professional athlete. That was my dream, so I really pursued that. I was wondering what to do, and college was an opportunity to just get to the next stage, as it were – through life, you need to do something. So I studied photography, which was really fun, but then had the opportunity when I left college to pursue my dream in Canada. I moved there to play ice hockey, completely got away from photography and anything creative, and just focused on the game. Then I turned pro four years later, after playing juniors in Canada and America.”
It wasn’t until 2016 that Mike picked up a camera again. “Fast forward, I don’t know how long that was… probably ten years? Suddenly I was like, ‘Oh, this is so fun.’ And it was just amazing to get out again with a camera.”
Mike shot on film originally, so he already had the basics in his head from what he’d
Above left
PORTRAIT, LONDON
“Shooting portraits at night isn’t the easiest, but with Sony’s low-light capabilities it helps push
the boundaries” learnt at college. “But if you see my work now, it’s very heavily based on editing, lighting and Photoshop. Goodness knows how that came about, I don’t know where I learnt that skill,” he tells us. His style is very recognisably him, and yet very ‘Instagram’ (which is no bad thing, because his consistent portfolio is a dream to scroll through). I wanted to find out how he would describe his style.
“I guess it has a very electric and neon look. I love shooting at night, but when I was starting out, I felt that a lot of the night images I saw didn’t really represent that atmosphere – what looking out over a city was really like. They were quite flat, and none of the colours would pop. And actually, when
you do get to a viewpoint at night, the RAW photo doesn’t always do it justice, so I needed to make sure my editing style represented what I saw in my head.
“On Instagram I had this very aesthetically pleasing page where people would come.
And I could post anything, and that was quite unique, especially at the time when
I was doing that, because everyone either had a portrait page, or a night page, or a day page, and no one broke away from what they shot.” His uniform style meant that Mike could shoot a complete variety of genres and subjects. “I didn’t know what my favourite thing was – I was still learning, experimenting.
“I had to be able to have an editing style that I felt comfortable to post on Instagram. That was my portfolio, that was where all my work was. Everything was posted on there. At first it was just something for fun, and it’s suddenly become my full-time job now.”
Instagram was only launched ten years ago, but it’s revolutionised the way pro photographers share their work and interact with fans, image-makers and brands. “My website kind of dropped off the back because so much work was coming through Instagram. There was no need for it, so it’s almost like a backup. It’s just mad that you can build a career off a free social media platform.”
Mike wasn’t consistent at the beginning of his photo journey, and looking back he wishes he’d spent more time posting when he started shooting. “I was posting very irregularly, when I felt like it really. Unless it was the best shot I had, I’d only post that one shot, whereas I could’ve done more, and it would have given me more traction. There’s all this stuff that will never be seen, because it’s not good enough to sell as a print, and it’s not good enough, obviously, to post now, but at the time it would have been good enough to showcase and have on my portfolio.”
As well as a consistent and original style, Mike thinks that his growth has something to do with luck, too. “I had a few photos that went viral, and I was just working hard to network and meet other people that were in the same stages. We were all growing Instagram together. Having constant travel content was a big plus as well.”
Today, Mike spends a lot of time in the online space, after founding his community and photography events business, UK Shooters. “We host photography events for creatives and like-minded people, to not only shoot content but also meet others and network. Nowadays we all have these amazing social platforms – whether it’s on Instagram, YouTube, or even TikTok now, but putting it into real life and actually meeting these people face to face is so important. We’re spending so much time on our computers and our phones, to actually have real-life interaction is vital.”
MIKE WILL
The lack of a young community was something that Mike had really noticed, especially in London, which is when he started UK Shooters. “At the time, it was like, ‘Well, this will be fun for people to get to meet each other, and I’d like to host a few random events.’ A couple of years later, and it’s a full-time business that’s only getting bigger, showcasing the country’s most talented and up-and-coming creative individuals.
“We wanted to make sure we were hitting up all the different communities around the UK, but then we have the Shooters communities around the world as well. We have them across the US, and we’re about to launch our first European page. We’re really looking to push it and have a global brand and a global agency. And then we’ll be able to have these amazing community events around the world.”
Hit up Mike’s Instagram, and the first thing his bio tells you is that he’s a Sony Alpha ambassador. Sony was the first camera brand that Mike ever picked up. “I don’t even have to worry if I get asked that question,” he jokes. “My first camera was a Sony A7 II. I was in a shop, and I had a Canon 6D in one hand and a Sony A7 II in the other, and I was into night photography, so the fact that it was better at low light was a big factor. But also, the size… I thought, ‘Unless I can fit this in my pocket, or in a small bag, I’m not taking it anywhere.’ That’s when it all kicked off really. I got the opportunity to meet Sony at a few events. And then I was pitching ideas to them about UK Shooters, and about my own work. When they were looking to expand their ambassador program, I was very fortunate to be one of those brought in. I’m very grateful to be working alongside them, because I’m such a fan, I love the technology they have.”
There have traditionally been two types of pro photographer when it comes to choosing a camera brand – some will stick solidly to one for their entire life, while others will swap over whenever the price is right on another model. Mike was passionate about Sony from the beginning – something he says helped him grow: “It was all I’d ever used, there were all these features on there that I didn’t know other brands didn’t have. The technology was so advanced, but I didn’t know how amazing it was until I looked into other brands, and I thought, ‘I definitely made the right decision.’”
Mike has already worked on campaigns in the last few weeks, but I ask how optimistic he is for planning the first UK Shooters event after lockdown. “I was on a call with
The Photography Show, and obviously that’s now being done virtually. But we were saying, we’re hoping that the first big real-life Shooters event will be around Halloween in October. I don’t want to say that’s definitely going to go ahead, because it’s always our biggest and our best. But if we can organise something around then, the hype will be tripled, because people wouldn’t have done anything or seen anyone for so long. We want to make sure that we’re doing it in a very safe environment, of course, and that people feel relaxed when they know they can come to these events.”
At this moment in the conversation, Mike dashes off to get a delivery for a massive new brief (top secret, so we can’t share the name of the brand). Unlike some pros, he doesn’t see a major distinction between his personal work, such as UK Shooters, and the major commercial shoots. Is it one and the same, because it’s still the same creative process? “Yeah, they’re all kind of together in my head. That’s because I’m very fortunate with the brands that I work for. They’re exciting, and those that want to use me… they want my creative eye and my creativity. I’m also very fortunate in that agencies are very accommodating, will listen, and will give that feedback to brands and clients. From there, 99 per cent of the time, they’ll come back and they’ll go, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do your thing.’ That’s given me the confidence to be able to do that, to go out and shoot it.”
“The brands I work with now want social content that could be cool, or fun to look at and engage with. I guess that’s why they’re paying me. They’re not paying me to go and do something that someone else would do.”