[title subtitle=”WORDS Dwain Hebda
IMAGE courtesy Joel Ledbetter, Sky Vantage Photography”][/title]
One glance at Joel Ledbetter’s work reveals the eye of an artist. The New Jersey native launched Sky Vantage Photography eighteen months ago and has already built a catalog of beautiful images including weddings and landscapes. Even his industrial photos of decidedly un-artistic subjects like power plants and electrical towers ooze their own brand of artistic quality. So, when you find out that he got into photography more or less accidentally, it’s a revelation that defies belief.
“I’d never been into photography, I never was interested in it,” he says. “I never was into drawing, either. I was a terrible drawer.” One thing he did have a passion for was flying aircraft, particularly the remote-control kind, which led him to drones. He bought one, more for the aircraft than for the built-in camera, and started to play around with it.
“I started taking pictures and videos of different things around the house, then turned to weather events. The Weather Channel would pick up my stuff,” he says. “Then, I got calls from people, ‘Hey, will you take pictures or videos of this?’ That got me into photography.”
Joel’s timing was perfect and jobs began piling up fast. At first, he was merely technically capable, but as time went on he began to develop a photographer’s eye for framing and lighting. “I started doing videos for anything and everything, whether it was weather-related or weddings or new construction. You name it,” he says. “When I got into it, people would say, ‘Wow, I like what you do.’ I’d be like okay, that’s just me.
“Then over time it became about fine tuning those things and over time I was able to develop that skill better and better. Now, I go out and I’m driving down the road and it’s like wow, look at that. I already see the picture and me taking it before even getting the drone or getting the camera out.”
Joel says keeping up with advancements in both aircraft and camera technology is a major challenge in his line of work. “It’s kind of like a cell phone; they come out with something new every year,” he says. “They could be releasing a new counterpart to the one that you bought two or three years ago and all of a sudden yours is the old model.”
Now living in Winslow, Joel stays busy full-time shooting primarily weddings, new construction and surveying. Most jobs are within a fifty-mile radius of home. His dream is to one day combine his love for outdoors and his skill as a photographer.
“I’m a huge outdoor person. The Buffalo River area, I love to kayak and just explore Arkansas and find new places,” he says. “Where I’d like to go professionally is Arkansas state tourism. I’d like to show off Arkansas, or even surrounding states for that matter, showing the beautiful places and the beautiful things that they have to offer. Getting people to go, ‘Wow, we need to go here and visit that.’”
Sky Vantage Photography
Find Sky Vantage on Instagram and Facebook for more beautiful images.
skyvantagephotography.com
501.760.8487
