The Legend of the Silver Fox
Behind the Lens with Jason Zindroski
Photos By: Jason Zindroski
Story By: Jason Zindroski
As a kid you are always asked “What do you want to be when you grow up?” If you had asked me when I was 10 years old, I never would have said a Professional Photographer. Growing up in California, I always knew that I would want to own a business of some sort, but a photography business sure was never on the list.
That’s the crazy thing about life though. Things change as you get older and as time goes on. Opportunities come your way that may influence or even completely change the direction of your life. After high school I got a part time job at a credit union while I went to school at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California for a business degree. I had no idea what I was going for. No plan for a career. No plan for a business I wanted to start. I did, however, have a plan of getting a degree to fall back on just in case whatever I went for didn’t work out.
Growing up, I was always in the desert. Digging into the dirt was my favorite pastime. My addiction started with dirt bikes and ATV’s, then eventually turned to prerunner trucks; which is why my friends and I started going to off-road races. Back then I was barely beginning to dabble into photography. All I wanted to do was shoot some rad shots. I always had a cheap camera with me and would snap photos while at the races. I had an interest in photography but wouldn’t say it was a passion of mine. In 2003, I decided my little point and shoot wasn’t cutting it so I laid down about $500 of my hard earned part-time money and bought a DSLR, a Canon Rebel 300D.
During that time, my cousin started a website called Dezertrangers.com, and being involved in that got me more hyped. A year later I decided to get media credentials for the SCORE Laughlin Desert Challenge race in January of 2004. As a regular spectator at a desert race, you’re typically not that close to the racing itself. I quickly found that having better access and being up close and personal with the action as trophy trucks hit the Laughlin road crossing at full speed definitely gets your heart pumping. Every time I’d look through my camera and see them jump across the road, never touching the pavement, it gave me such a kick of adrenaline that I knew this was something I wanted to keep doing.
Still excited from the event, I got back home and I posted a gallery of photos on the site. A few people hit me up about wanting to purchase a print of their vehicles. Heck Yes! I was beyond stoked! My first ever sale was to Steve Sourapas who bought a 20” x 30” print of his old Corona Trophy Truck jumping the road crossing. A light bulb went off and I thought that there might be something there, so I hit up one of the bigger photography companies who’d been doing it forever to see if they needed any extra shooters. They politely told me, “no thank you,” that they didn’t need any other photographers. So I said “screw it, why not try on my own?” I started jumping through hoops to get to every off-road race I could while posting photos on my site hoping to sell more prints. Eventually as time went on, a few teams and companies started hiring me to shoot for them. Just like that my career set off, and things just snowballed from there.
This past January marked 15 years since that first race and I never imagined it would have turned into what HighRev Photography is today. I’ve been very fortunate and grateful to be able to make a living doing what I love. Last year I traveled 35 weekends out of the year. I went to all different types of motorsports events around the country, such as: desert, short course, drag racing, rock crawling, sprint car races, and the venerable Pikes Peak Hill Climb.
The journey to get to where I am today wasn’t easy and took an unimaginable amount of hard work. I still have to dedicate myself to get better and build relationships with people who luckily enough want to hire me for my “talent”. It also takes a lot of sacrifice. Being gone so much means I’m away from my wife and three children a lot, and adjusting to that life has its own challenges.
With that said, working for yourself can be very stressful but the rewards outweigh the risks. When I’m at a race it never feels like work because I am doing something that I truly enjoy. Now that I’ve been doing this for so long I couldn’t imagine doing anything else. I really am grateful to be able to do this as my job and always look forward to going to the next event.
If you’re looking to jump into this world, know that it’s not easy, but here are a few quick tips to help you along the way:
- Be humble. No matter how good you think you are, there is always someone better. Don’t look down on them. Look up for inspiration.
- Don’t do just enough on your assignments. There are a million people out there who will do just enough. Put in the extra effort. It will be noticed.
- You only get better by actually shooting. You can scroll websites, watch youtube videos, or read books, but nothing can replace experience.
- Hard work is a must. If not you’ll just be a fad.
- Don’t be that guy in the media room showing everyone your photos.
- Ask for help or advice. You’d be surprised how willing more experienced photographers are willing to give you some tips. Just don’t ask, “how do I get into photography?”
