Meet Sam Landreth | Photographer and Director @ For Living

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

Hi Sam, we’d love to hear about how you approach risk and risk-taking
I look at risks more as a matter of trusting my instincts: if an opportunity seems like a worthwhile endeavor in any way, I’ll go for it. When I first launched my photography business in 2016, the phrase “say yes and figure out the rest later” was one that I clung to: any time a road trip, interesting shoot, opportunity to collaborate or meet new people arose, I committed immediately and it always paid off. I ended up booking lots of work right away and making amazing friendships seven years back that are still going strong today thanks to that outlook.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
To take you back to the beginning… it was the first week of 2016, I was 19 and had just moved out to Portland, Oregon with a couple of suitcases and a basement storage room as my living situation. My goal was to start shooting engagements, senior photos, and small elopements full-time. I was working a retail job and in my free time, messaging every local creative under the sun about working together: this led to test-shooting with models and makeup artists multiple days a week, meeting up with others for coffee, and saying yes to just about everything that fell into my lap. I was posting on social media as all of this started to unfold, sharing availability for bookings: this is where I found the majority of my work. Within three months, I’d quit my retail job because I had so many senior sessions and engagements booked that it was no longer necessary. While on road trips around the Pacific Northwest with my photo friends, I started posting travel recommendations and outfits on Instagram and my lifestyle blog, which quickly escalated into shooting social campaigns for brands. I separated my work into my own lifestyle content and brand work vs. weddings and engagements and continued to shoot weddings through 2019. Since then, I’ve been shooting for lifestyle brands, hotels, and tourism boards full-time; I now create a lot of short-form video for brands as things have shifted in this direction; in 2021 I launched my website, For Living which centers around cooking, interiors, sustainability, personal style, travel, and wellness; my husband and I have also been working on our homeware brand, Kaia, for the last four years with plans to launch this year. Very excited about all that we have up ahead!

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.
Day 1: I’d start with breakfast at Destroyer in Culver City, a mid-morning trip to the Getty Villa, back to the city for wine and snacks at Found Oyster, then dinner at Saffy’s up the street.

Day 2: Breakfast and coffee at Go Get ‘Em, window shopping in Atwater Village (love stopping into Wine+Eggs and Dreams), a trip to Skylight Books in Larchmont, drinks at Atrium, dinner at Quarter Sheets.

Day 3: Breakfast at Courage Bagels, coffee at Dayglow, an afternoon at the Huntington Library + Gardens, wine at Tilda, and dinner at Son of a Gun.

Day 4: Breakfast at Sqirl, coffee at Maru, a walk around the Silverlake rez, shop around Fig and York, drinks at Gold Line, takeout from Daybird.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
My friends— after I graduated high school, I started to connect and meet up with photographers from all over the country via Instagram. As I learned about how they’d recently quit their jobs to launch into photography full-time, I was so inspired and motivated knowing that it was possible for a bunch of 19-21-year-olds to make this work. Their encouragement that I could do the same truly made all the difference after coming from a small town in the Midwest where everyone I knew was discouraging me from forgoing a traditional path.

Website: forliving.co + samliving.co

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/samlandreth/

Other: Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@samanthaliving Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/samlandreth/_saved/

Image Credits
All photos are my own