Meet Mike Frost | Photographer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Mike Frost and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Mike, we’d love to hear about how you approach risk and risk-taking
The risks played a huge role in my career. At the start of 2020 I was active duty in the United States Navy in my contract ended in February. I chose to get out and I got a pretty good job at a pharmacy here in Orlando compounding medications. The money was good, and I was knowledgeable and good at what I was doing, but it didn’t feel fulfilling at all. I felt like I was just walking into work and going on auto pilot until my shift was over. So in July 2020 I bought my first camera just because I was scrolling through Amazon and saw an ad for one. I never had any prior experience before that. I instantly fell in love with the idea of capturing images, and spent most of my day learning about photography, either through videos or trial and error. Things started picking up so fast that five months later I had enough clients to somewhat feel comfortable to leave my job. It was still nowhere near the money that I was making at the pharmacy, but at the time I felt like it was enough for me to trust the idea of quitting my job. So one day I went into work, and in the middle of my lunch break I decided to go speak with my supervisor and put in my two weeks notice. I knew nothing great was gonna come out of me living in that comfort zone, so I put pressure on myself to just jump in and figure it out. Everything after that just went uphill.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
To be honest, it was easy in someways and difficult and others. My favorite type of work would be creative portraits and composite photos. Watching an idea that I had in my mind turn into an actual image is one of the most exciting things I’ve experienced. The easy part was improving the quality of my work Because I’m constantly excited to learn from different people and different sources. The hard part was just figuring out the business side of things, because I really didn’t start this journey chasing money. I genuinely just love to create. If money was no longer a thing I would still be doing the same exact thing that I do now.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
If I had a friend coming in for a week from out of town one day, I might plan a day to go see an Orlando Magic game, and then go grab some drinks downtown, spend a day at the springs at Wekiwa, go to Universal Studios, try new restaurants or things they’re interested in. Also, one thing I like to do is go on Groupon, because it normally shows me different activities that I normally wouldn’t even search for and I just go try it out. My favorite thing to do now is to just go on different adventures and experience new things.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
There are definitely people that played huge roles in my life. It would be too difficult to really sit down and figure out which one to name. I think I would have to say all of the models that I worked with that trusted me to create with them back when I had no idea what I was doing. They allowed me to showcase my work, and in turn those exchanges led to me figuring things out through trial and error and getting better each time. I figured out I had to start slowing down doing collaborations with people for quite a few reasons. A handful of the reasons being I was losing almost all of my personal time trying to be the best photographer I can be. My relationships with my loved ones took a hit because I was constantly busy. Although a lot of the people that I worked with were amazing, I felt like I’m majority of the other people I tried working with weren’t respecting my time if it was free. All of these mistakes turned into life lessons, and I grew from it.

Website: ShotsbyFrost.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shotsbyfrost?igsh=ejg0c29ncTJpaG8x&utm_source=qr

Image Credits
@jerrett.w @juniee_bee @jaded.nat @indicaPhoenix