(upbeat music)
- Camera and photography allows me to explore.
It allows me to go places.
- Being a photographer gives you entry to worlds
that you would never have access to otherwise.
- So if I wasn't a photographer,
I'd easily want to be a geologist.
I love rocks.
- In some way, shape or form, I have to teach people.
- I get to travel, go to interesting places
and I get to meet incredible people.
- My favorite thing about being a professional photographer
is scamming my way into stuff for free.
- The excuse to experience all these things
and pretend it's work.
- It opens up this whole world
that I would never have thought
would ever have been possible for me.
- If I was not a photographer,
I would totally want to work at Sesame Street.
(laughing)
There is no other answer to that question.
Sesame Street, that would be amazing (laughs).
- In many of my assignments, I'm getting paid
to do things that other people pay money to do.
- Like, I just spent the summer swimming with whale sharks.
That's amazing and that's my job.
- I wanted to be a veterinarian
and then I got to organic chemistry.
- I was born a photographer, I can't do anything else.
- I get to travel to exotic places.
I get to witness other cultures.
- Some days I wake up wherever we are
photographing amazing wildlife or a beautiful sunrise,
and I have to pinch myself that I'm not on holiday,
that I get to live the life that I do and get paid for it.
- When I have a camera with me
and when I'm looking through the viewfinder,
I see the world more clearly.
- If I weren't a photographer, I would probably be--
- I'd probably be a lot less happy.
- Well, I often think about this, truth being told.
- If I had my druthers, I'd be a writer on The Simpsons.
- 'Cause what else am I actually good at?
Stunningly good-looking, so there's modeling.
- You know, there is a million reasons
why being a professional photographer
is a really fulfilling role,
but more than any cover or accolade
or anything I've ever received,
there is this one experience
that really changed it all for me,
and I was traveling halfway across the world
in a remote country and I ran into somebody
at a waterfall somewhere and they said, hey Chris,
I came here because I saw one of your pictures
and you inspired me to go.
- My favorite thing about being a professional photographer
is when I get to see other people enjoy the photography.
That's what got me into photography in the first place.
- Everything's worth it if you can really change
one person's perspective in the world and open them up
to something they might not have ever experienced.
- I get access to people's hearts
in a way that I would never be able to,
but because they come to me already feeling vulnerable,
I, from the very start, get to do, I feel like,
healing work, in a sense of showing them
that the human spirit is truly beautiful
and I'm gonna prove it to them when they see their photos.
So that, I don't know, that is amazing, that never gets old.
- I do everything I do for my family
and having the flexibility to choose my clients,
to be able to travel around the world
and bring my family, is something that I cherish every day.
- I almost wake up every single day and I pinch myself
because I can't believe that I'm able to make it
in this city, that I would have never dreamed
that I could do something creatively full-time for a living.
- It's something I feel so thankful for,
to have had this opportunity to do this
and make a decent living at it.
- It's something I do every day,
because it requires practice and craft,
but it just lets me explore
and when I was younger I would say, it lets me trespass,
but I try not to encourage my students to do that.
- But then I also spend time with like Justin Bieber
and my niece texted me and asked me
what his hair smelled like,
and I didn't know what to say.
But the idea that I still have that text from my niece
who's now in college and is like,
what did Justin Bieber's hair smell like,
because I was right there next to his amazing 'fro.
That's the best part of being a photographer.
(bell chimes)