Hi, I'm Tamara Lackey and on this episode of reDefine show for AdoramaTV,
I speak with portrait photographer Jeff Rojas about why he decided to focus his
specific genre on photographing men.
Spoiler alert! It turned out to be a smart tactical move.
We also walk through how to pose people around their self-perceived flaws.
Check it out.
Hi Jeff, how are you?
Good, how are you?
Good. Thanks for making the time.
Thank you. Thank you for inviting me.
Hanging out next to this painting with me.
It's rustic, I like it. Let's go with rustic.
So right off the bat I have to ask you... your website...
So your name is Jeff Rojas but your website is...
My name backwards, which is obnoxious and annoying.
And how does it sound again? How do you say it out loud?
So I say Sajorffej and you can pronounce it any way that you want to.
Sajorffej, ok, and the reason for that is?
Somebody bought my URL when I was about 12 years old. I didn't have a
credit card, I didn't have a debit card. I didn't use the internet, well, yes I used the
internet, but somebody parked it and won't let it up,
and here's the funny part, there's 30 Jeff Rojas's in the United States.
I know, personally, one of them. He is not family, he's not anything and I'm trying
to beat him out to get that parked URL. And funnily enough, we're both from Orlando.
We're both in the creative industry. He's a creative director for a magazine.
Me being a photographer. We're both Hispanic puerto ricans
and we're within a very similar age group and we both have the legal same
name.
It can't be any more perplexing, whatsoever.
So we decided we're going to conquer the world together, so because we're working
simultaneously,
Jeff Rojas is just going to own everything. That's the way that we operate.
I like this.
Splitting all the work.
This is interesting but for right now you're going to be remaining...
sajorffej.com.
I can't even say it! But obviously
it works. People find you.
Somehow, somewhere. I think people just jeffrojas.com.
They're like who's Jeff Rojas?
And it pops right up?
Just good metadata, good tags, good marketing, good SEO .
Do you do a lot of focus on SEO for your marketing?
On the back end, yes. It's not something that I teach
but it's something that I have to incorporate into my business.
Yeah, and it doesn't mean that you are doing or you hire somebody to help you do.
No I do everything by myself at this point in my career.
So you're doing what, like you'll post
a blog post and then just go in and add every tag and every keyword and
every description.
So I've learned how to automate everything at this point. There's an app
for everything so, for example, if I do a Youtube video, I know that I have...there's an
app called ' if this then that',
ifttt, so it will automatically post it into a blog and if
I need to go in the back end to add any metadata, I can do that.
It gives me a chance to automate things so everything that I do is in
advance and it's automated
at any given point, so anything that I do there's some reaction to it somewhere.
So you built all that just with that app
all those those...
so with your posting a blog post and you put like nine images up, how's that automated with your keywords?
So the post itself, the most annoying part of
any blog post for me is usually finding a thumbnail.
Like that's the first thing, so if I'm shooting a YouTube video, you have
to find a screenshot of the specific image that you have.
'If this then that' captures the screenshot that you already use for
YouTube and automates it into the WordPress and then you can relink the
video itself as a direct link to youtube so if you go to my site and go to
blog.sajorffej.com, you click on anything and it literally links to where
it needs to go so there's all this back linking and trying to figure out how to
get to drive traffic back to me.
That's cool.
Yeah, it's just trying to automate things, make it easier.
You said at this stage of your career you're doing everything yourself?
Everything. Aside from retouching. I've outsourced that because that takes hours.
That was my next question, editing.
It's gotten to a point where I have to literally just outsource
and usually it's like ten dollars an image, so I don't have a problem doing that.
Do you work with a service or an individual?
Just different people out in Russia. I found that every, I think every country has a
different style of retouching.
I generally like Russian retouching or Ukrainian retouching.
I'm Ukrainian.
Nice! So I like your retouching.
I don't like offer that as a service but I've never heard that before.
Well, I mean, if you look at any market, like India, for example. Their style of
photography and their style of retouching is different than what you find here in
the US. And Japan would be different than the US and just finding somewhere that
you can send your photos to that has that vision that you have. And
photographing men, how did you get into that as your most recognized genre?
Marketing.
Marketing?
Yes. So very clear and concise, I think this is the first
time ever I'm going to say this on camera.
I thoroughly love teaching. I love the fact that I'm able to share information
so there's many other things that I do aside from photographing men,
but when I looked at and analyzed the market that is photography,
you have Sue Bryce who teaches how to photograph women, you have yourself and you
have your specific niche. You have Lindsay fashion, you have all these
different people.
No one specializes in photographing that and at that point
my background is more corporate, so I just figured out little ways...
You saw a gap.
That's it. I saw that niche and just decided to fill that
and it doesn't mean that I was the leading expert to begin with but I just
created something for myself and marketed that
and it gave me the ability to teach about that because there was a lot of things
that I had to study in order to feel confident teaching whatever that
information was.
Right, very smart. And do you find that it's different with posing men? Is it
something that came naturally to you or that you had to teach yourself and get up
to speed?
You know, I try my best to incorporate body language and
communication, trying to understand... like the communication and dialogue that we're
having now.
Like what does your physical body presence have? Mine's more like closed
off and reserved because I'm on camera right now, like that's my natural
tendencies. I'm literally in a pretzel right now, right
so I think about these things as I'm posing people. If I felt comfortable I
would be more inclined to have a conversation with you this way.
Come on. Be comfortable!
And that's...so those are the things that I incorporate so,
not just posing to essentially body structure body type but also for a purpose and that's where...
What's my body language saying right now?
I think you're more comfortable. You've been doing this for a long time...
I'm also leaning into you
You're leaning in, absolutely. And if you look at my body language mine's kind of like...
God why is she getting so close?
So that's the part of having that dialogue, so in theory, in sales, I should have a dialogue with you
this way so we feel more in tune to one another to have a conversation so those are the things that I would want.
Or I could go like this!
Exactly and be like help me. So that's all.
So are you actually going to switch up your position for the rest of the interview?
Absolutely.
I like this. I feel like we've progressed.
Absolutely.
I feel closer to you and we're connected.
That's how it should be.
Alright, so with photographing men
you're looking at body language and working with that?
Absolutely.
OK, and then are you following kind of... because I've seen a lot of your poses,
you have a lot of variety.
Are you following any sort of specific kind of guidelines? Are you just working
with every individual differently?
So I look at... inspiration wise, I look at the greats
and when I mean greats, I don't mean photographers, I mean like Michelangelo
like how did Michelangelo study the body? These people spent all their lives
studying body types and body structures so I use that and incorporate it into my posing.
So different body types, I pose different ways, like for example if
you feel self-conscious about your center, you know not having your center
towards the camera, away from the camera, like something that's 45 degrees, what
can we do to style you, to look a little better and a little more confident to the
way that you pose. So I try to incorporate all these different things
into the photography.
So you've mentioned that before. I've heard you talk about how you work with
people's, for lack of a better term, insecurities or, you know, disadvantages
or whatever. What phrase you use?
So I say people's self-perception and self perceived flaws.
How do you bring that up? How do you start that
conversation? Is it something that you've noticed that they're feeling insecure
about, or do you outright asked or how does that work?
One of the things that you saw in me when I first started sitting here was the insecurity of me being...
Back then when you were a pretzel.
Back then when I was a pretzel. But you analyze that
and you kind of figure out what is that person trying to hide? And I think
another thing is even the way a person dresses really says something about the
way that they are as a person, like what it what are they trying to hide?
Generally larger men will wear baggier clothes to try to mask what's
happening.
So you can kind of start putting all these things together and I really think
it comes back into studying body language and studying psychology and
studying people and trying to understand what you as a person are trying to bring so
I don't directly ask, no, it's more or less analyzing a person and trying to
understand who they are.
Are they trying to hide something, compensate for something. Glasses for
example, most people wear glasses...
wear them 24/7, you know, and my example is this-
you, as a person who wears glasses, have to worry about the beach,
if your glasses are going to fly off, you can't go on a roller coaster, you can cut
your hair you can't take a shower or whatever it is you can't do that.
Why do I, as a photographer, should I ask somebody to
remove their glasses when you're taking a portrait because I can't remove the catch
light in the glasses, like, because I can't compensate for that if I'm beginning
photographer. So I want to cut all these adding to people's perceived flaws.
Are there certain methods you use to make men feel more comfortable on camera,
if you are perceiving that, ok, I've got them posed and everything is good, but
there's a strain, there's a discomfort, like are there any certain methods that you use?
Dialogue.
You know, I think at any given point I look at myself less as a
photographer and more as a psychologist, so what I've started doing
is filming my sessions live.
I've literally just been running my phone for people to see these things but
I don't take many photographs.
I will sit there, have a conversation with you and find an impromptu moment
and just a candid moment and just take that photograph, because I would rather
you look natural, than me try to pose you and I think going back to body
language and going back to selling
I'd rather somebody looked comfortable and confident than look
thick and I think a lot of people read images and can see smile lines. For
example, you smile and it's like vs you don't see the crinkles in the eyes, you
can tell it's not a genuine smile, so these things play a factor. So less
photos, more dialogue.
Yeah, and then you mentioned selling. How do you move your work?
In regards to sales, and trying to sell product?
So most of my clients are affluent people,
meaning that they have a lot of money. I try to figure out the way to work less
and make more.
And that's anything to do... because I think it's very difficult to make a living
charging fifty dollars for a photo shoot especially, for example, camera. Say you
have a three-thousand-dollar camera, it has 50,000 shutter clicks. Do the math it's
going to cost you an arm and a leg to have that portrait session. It will literally cost
you what you just spent if you have a fifty-dollar portrait session, that's what it
costs for 500 photos, whatever it is. I try to figure out how to work less.
So I have all these affluent clients that I market to. I can shoot one or two a
month and be okay. Cut costs, cut overhead to do that. The reason that I don't have
employees is because I'm happy doing it by myself right now.
So if I have 1, 2, 3 affluent clients a month, these
are the people renting a location for two, three thousand dollars and
I don't really have to work all that much and I'm ok doing that and I'm
ok having that dialogue and I think it makes it almost unique and genuine with
that specific person and it gives me a chance to work in other ways in
marketing myself, like I shoot fashion and I do that because affluent people
are like I just shot with a photographer who shot for Elle or Esquire
and that's a whole marketing pitch by itself so I'm constantly looking at ways to
brand my name.
So, this, I think, is a common thing among
people who really know what they're doing in terms of being able to bring in
the clientele you want, is you do the work that, maybe it's not paying you what
you want, but it gives you the brand, it gives you the recognition, it gives you the
reputation and you use that and parlay that in?
Absolutely so recently I wrote
an article for Entrepreneur magazine.
Entrepreneurs are people that are trying to showcase themselves in a certain way.
They have generally the capital to showcase themselves and branding,
personal branding. If you have somebody who looks slumpy
Have you been to slumpy.com?
No, I can only imagine what that website holds right
now but if they're trying to photograph...
sorry, if they're trying to market themselves in a certain way and they don't... that's
not what they're communicating,
I know how much impact that has on their business. I can sell that specific client
suit.
Going back to that, it's all marketing and they get a chance to say I work with
so-and-so photographer, I get a chance to to do this. It's just all marketing and
branding.
Yeah, perception.
To self perception.
And that's also why having those
photographs can be the best money people spend, having this personal brand.
Absolutely.
Take, like, a dentist.
So a dentist goes to take a portrait and you make them look like the dentist
movie back in like the nineties or the eighties and he looks that creepy.
Would you go to that dentist? So think about the impact that has on his
business. People are looking at that image, right and they're deciding, I'm
not going to spend money with that specific person so you have a direct
impact on his finances and in his pocket.
So to me that's not worth fifty dollars. I have a direct correlation to the money
that he is able to make and that's the way that I provide that to sales.
So that's how I'm able to charge what I can.
Would you have any... outside of what you've already shared... any last kind of
hey if I could give you one tip as it relates to marketing or getting that
client you want or, you know, keeping the clients you have, what would you say that is?
Just being genuine.
I mean a genuine dialogue and having a conversation, the same way that we've had and
it's just it's an open communication saying this is something I'd love to do with...
for you. Like most of the clients that I have, I have relationships with at this
point,
and it's opened more doors into more areas. One of my clients is well versed
in the Rn'B industry and I get a chance to meet these people. I mean not get a
chance to like photograph behind the scenes with me and them but I get a chance to,
like, do things that other people wouldn't do because I have a personal
relationship with somebody and when you say it like having open dialogue you
mean literally communicating to them that you want to work with them. You want to
you want to work with them long term and it's interesting because I think
that's actually a little step that a lot of people miss along the way. It's
usually... it's almost like... this sounds terrible,
like hit it and quit it, like try to make money from someone and like runaway and that's not...
That does, in fact, sound terrible.
But that's not what you want. It's a long-term relationship. I want long-term
relationship.
That's what I want.
So you're just trying to say 'Look, man, I do not want to hit it and quit it with you'.
No, that's, you know, not in my male portrait sessions. We can have that
conversation a different day but not in my male portrait sessions.
You use different words but we now get the gist of exactly what you mean.
Exactly.
That's fantastic.
Long term relationships.
Long-term relationships... because they are more fulfilling to you.
Yes, absolutely, it's just, you know, you get to learn a person, what they like,
what they don't...no I'm joking and that works in photography as well!
All the way! It's amazing, the parallels.
Absolutely.
Alright, so I know where to send people to
learn more about you which I've got to learn.. I want to say it as well as you do...sajorffej...
How about this? I'll make it easier. I do all my videos, all of them, are kissfoto.com.
Oh that's so easy!
kissfoto.com. Why, because I also will be teaching in Spanish, so it's nice
to incorporate the f in there.
Oh, perfect, alright so kissfoto.com,
that's where all your videos are and then and all the metadata and stuff all
links up to your site and then how about on the social medias?
It's all the same, sajorffej, which is annoying. Everything is the same.
Well I know how to see it, I just don't know how to say it which is all you need.
And that's ok.
To type, just you need to know how to see it.
Just google. Google helps.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Thank you so much Jeff Sajorffej.
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