In this episode, I get to talk with Vadym Guliuk. His mission has been to Satisfy the World with the best still and motion images. You can reach him via his website: https://www.vadymguliuk.com

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Junaid Ahmed 0:06
Welcome to a new episode of hacks and hobbies with your host Junaid Ahmed.

Welcome to a new episode of hacks and hobbies. I talk about packs, life hacks, hobbies, have got a million hobbies. And one

my favorite hobby of them all is video, making video, shooting video, creating content and capturing life as it happens.

So I started this this podcast about earlier this year. And in 2018, I decided I'm going to do something great. And I've been thinking about doing something for a while. And then turns out 2018 has to be the year because I turned 42 42 is the answer. Right.

So I've reached out connected with a lot of people on LinkedIn have connected to a lot of people have attended LinkedIn local events, that with people spoke about videography using a mobile phone. And through this process, I met budding

Vadym Guliuk 1:22
Vadym Vadym like waiter

Junaid Ahmed 1:27
by somebody Angelique here, he's been doing photography for quite some time. And I love the work he's done. I have followed his his art, his creations on LinkedIn, and Facebook. And I saw a lot of good stuff that you're putting out there. So tell us a little bit about yourself.

Vadym Guliuk 1:52
My name is Vadym Guliuk with our videographer, drone pilots, virtual reality Explorer, many hats, and what I do is I do videos and I deliver my clients best looks to different mediums.

My mission is to satisfy the world was the best image possible for for your specific needs and I do is through application of latest technology, best techniques and my expertise,

Junaid Ahmed 2:28
that's awesome. Love it,

the funny part. So I connected with Beetham about a week ago

maybe a couple of weeks and I was like you know we just started chatting back and forth and I was like I want to talk to him because he's doing what I want to do or what I wish I was doing for the past 10 years and so I was like you know what better way than to go and talk to him

now we're talking and you're going to hear it out you can take it out and if you're interested and having to talk with me please feel free to connect because I want to know what your story is

so welcome buddy How are you doing I'm very well

very nice to meet you

so my name is Junaid are on the podcast Hacks and hobbies. I started this about few months ago and I got into my hobbies, beekeeping and like I need to record this any to document this process. And why podcasting? Well it was easier to capture everything that was going on my education going through the process of building all of the equipment and getting it down to brass tacks, you know, getting it out there. So for the past three months have been just documenting the keeping process but now I want to learn from other people what their hobbies are, how did they bring their hobbies from being a hobby to full time side full hustle or main hustle essentially so I learned about you I connected with you on LinkedIn of connected to with you on Facebook I followed some of the stuff that you do putting out there and I am absolutely flabbergasted I mean it's amazing so thank you tell me tell me yeah you're welcome to tell me how did you get into this

Vadym Guliuk 4:44
so years ago back in Europe I was doing active for a couple years yeah and I was doing hobby photography and I knew that I wanted to be behind the camera create my masterpieces be the master behind each masterpiece create

so when I moved to the states I didn't go west coast deal pursuing an actual two year I

dove into photography and video and creating beautiful imagery

Junaid Ahmed 5:18
nice to just read it to what you love to do absolutely How did you find the

like that this would actually do it for you or throw that in there

Vadym Guliuk 5:32
in their personal you know yes which would be boring to do

Junaid Ahmed 5:37
that tell me tell me more

Vadym Guliuk 5:40
absolutely

Junaid Ahmed 5:42
so this is

my first time doing a video a video interview in front of the camera and all less fit other interviews I've done we're being behind the camera right we're already asked you know do you know what to say and then either just putting these pieces together yeah

Vadym Guliuk 6:01
super nervous be on camera is an easy way

to have somebody behind us

Junaid Ahmed 6:10
right right

Vadym Guliuk 6:13
shooting you have a you know

Junaid Ahmed 6:15
and that's what you do with photography right when you we have

Vadym Guliuk 6:19
lots of creation they explained before the record button is being here yeah we're the shutter button to create an image creation believer and I believe that no accidents happen you know in in photography I read the mood I create the body language yeah a composition and then when all pieces match that click or record button happens yeah as if you were to imagine a Lego box yet have you have in your trunk so imagine shaking the box and you open it up and decide on a ship comes up yeah already made he doesn't happen doesn't happen. Same thing in photography and video lots of direction and staging happens before the beautiful images.

Junaid Ahmed 7:04
Yeah, let me just to set this whole stage up took us by an hour

an hour like wow, this takes a lot of time all the gear that you need to bring going to make sure you got to have SD cards because I forgot mine on SD card.

Vadym Guliuk 7:24
No worries.

Junaid Ahmed 7:27
And I figured you know who else to talk about photography and videography videography then you because you've been doing this for for a while. And this is somewhere that I want to go into as a professional or as a hobbyist. I've had passion with video for a long time though. First camera that I used was an eight millimeter camera. That's not the typical eight millimeter camera. But it was a Sony or a Canon, a Miller tape you pop in and then you know start record. It's the resolution is lower than DVD quality, right. But it was so much fun. You create your setting up the scene and you're shooting. I was like, This is fun. And then somehow around along the way I got into photography

now. Sure, I was using point shoot photography

or point shoot cameras. And I was just go for the shot. But I didn't like I didn't have this back end thought through. Like I didn't study the whole thing. Although there's no studying his whole practice, right? You know,

Vadym Guliuk 8:39
lots of shooting a ways to go to heaven. One of my favorite exercises was to actually mess with the settings like white balance your aperture, shutter speed, and see what kind of mistakes you can make. Yeah, so that when real life when something goes wrong, you know, in an instant, how to

change it to the right settings and be and be able to continue to shoot.

Junaid Ahmed 9:07
Yeah. So what's next?

Vadym Guliuk 9:11
What's next

Junaid Ahmed 9:14
got the hobbies you got into photography made it big. And now you're doing a lot of event photography, what type of photography? I do, My specialty is people I believe, if I work with people that have to know how to make him look and make him look they are vast, you know,

Vadym Guliuk 9:35
all of us. We walk through, you know, the store as we see these magazine covers, yes. And we want to look kind of this. Yes, you want. You want to look presentable, you know, so when I work with people who are not models who are, you know,

everyday people, business business people,

it's my job to direct coach them on their body language and their expression, figure out what lighting begin to use, what kind of what is the message in the first place? Right? Oh, we'd be creating different types of headshots for somebody who's into hospitality, business versus law enforcement. There is different messages we we are going

to show absolutely

Junaid Ahmed 10:23
nice,

right? So that is pretty awesome. So with photography comes, I think, get the message across well, or how do you get people to notice that you're doing or what is what is one of the ways that you

get noticed you advertise your website set up? Only know why I'm going to that?

Vadym Guliuk 10:50
Well, word of mouth,

word of mouth.

Junaid Ahmed 10:55
Yeah,

Vadym Guliuk 10:57
I've done it all by Canada, advertising, Google ads and stuff like that. What they found for myself, when works best for me is is a word of mouth. And another emerging tool, which which we can use as social media platforms.

Yes,

it gives you exposure to thousands of people. And you never know somebody might be watching that race at the given the right time. And they they instantly going to give you a call.

Junaid Ahmed 11:27
Yeah. Now that's, that's very true. Social media has come a long way. I remember I was just looking into Facebook, and it said, You've been friends with your cousin for 11 years on Facebook. I mean, Facebook's been around for over a decade. Right?

Vadym Guliuk 11:50
Exactly.

Junaid Ahmed 11:52
And what's what's amazing is that it's growing. It's still growing and where it's come around. Like, initially, it was just all about connecting with friends. And then they introduced the business platform. That's one of the reasons why it's still growing. Because there's 2 billion active users on Facebook. The advertising advertising on Facebook is on point, right. So that's one way to get to your audience. You can dial in the specific people that are searching for photography, searching for their other they haven't they're having a wedding. Maybe you can even look at what's on their calendar. Are they going to a wedding in the next 30 days? Maybe they need a photographer? I don't know. There's a lot of trouble. I know, right.

It could be like, you know, I I'm attending attending a wedding. But I want a personal photographer myself. My family,

Vadym Guliuk 12:54
right? Everybody's got to make up on dresses. on

Junaid Ahmed 13:00
practical it is. It is very practical. And do you're able to shoot on the wedding day on a wedding day because you're already getting ready for a wedding. But don't miss

any. That's right. get there on time. Because that's the other problem, right? So this past summer I attended for weddings. And these are my, my wife's cousin, my cousin's dog getting married, and everybody's getting dressed up. And there's so many different things happening. You know, like, okay, when some good shot your other other, you're walking around with a camera, or you walk around with a baby on your head, right? So it's one or the other, I managed to have a strap in one camera on one hand and one baby baby on the other hip magic capture some good photos. But anytime I wanted a photo of myself, my family, like, all right, who's gonna you know, you just have to hand your camera to somebody else.

And you look at the photo and there's so much ceiling in that photo. There you go, right. Like, no, like, you kind of have my feet in, you know, either.

So it is very necessary to have a professional somebody who knows what they're doing, they'll capture you, in a beautiful way

Vadym Guliuk 14:20
capture you and before they capture you. You know, there is two ways to go. But I recently put up a blog on my website was a wedding photographer based on my 10 plus years of experience and philosophy. And there are many hats, wedding photographers get to where it's a portrait photographer is a photo journalistic kind of photographer, food photographer, architectural photographer, product photographer, jewelry photographer unit. But there is there is a lot of skills, you know, we should go into photographing a wedding day. But the two most important skills are the portrait and the photojournalist they go hand in hand,

for example, for example of the quarter your lowest

moments like little girl of whispering sweet words into the bright year

Junaid Ahmed 15:16
with doing work for yourself. Yeah, comes a very

important factor is motivation.

Vadym Guliuk 15:27
Oh, yes, it's a very, it's a very good thing. So first of all, it begins with a passion, you gotta have lots of pressure to do what you do, and that you run into all mg

as, like I was, you know, anybody who thinks of going, you know, self employed full time you think the goal is to have more time for your family, or for traveling and stuff like it. But what you end up doing is you work 80 hours a week week, so that you don't work for somebody else, 40 hours a week, that's what you're going to be doing. And, you know, whether to be motivated through that, you know,

be clear with your goals with what is your personal Why, why do you Why are we gonna work double shifts they to, to, to succeed in your own eyes, whether it's for your family, or for other circumstances. So for me, it began was passion, I knew I wanted to be behind the camera, I knew I wanted to create beautiful images, my mission and vision is to actually satisfy the world was abreast to emotion image to apply best techniques and expertise and state of the art technology suitable for specific needs. And that goes hand in hand with headshots with event photography, video, drone commercial kind of projects

is that, you know, I'm driven by satisfying and delivering bad, better and better and the best in the best results possible for for, for the projects,

right.

Junaid Ahmed 17:17
And as motivation takes time to build up, right

Vadym Guliuk 17:23
consistency, consistency you get, you get to be consistent. And

over the time, you're going to gain more and more scale, you'll be able to expand your line of services that they should do get paid more

landlord, landlord clients. And you know, the reality is, it's all in your hands as much as you're willing to push and put in it. And that's why you're going to be working 80 hours a week in order to achieve success.

Junaid Ahmed 17:57
Yeah, and most of the times, it's easy to do the 80 hours a week, because you know, really leaving your home, you're working 80 hours inside your home. I mean, depends on the events that you might have to go to. Now, another awesome person that I've been following on LinkedIn is Eric Didier. Now, Eric,

he is working 100 hours. And he says, You know, I only need four hours of sleep. Because I am loving what I'm doing on a daily basis, right. So when you love what you do, you don't really feel like you're working because you're doing what you would you love to do. And you can spend hours and you

sometimes you can even sleep with so much content whizzing around out there. There's only one storytelling platform that helps you keep calm and stay informed and inspired. Flipboard Flipboard curates the world story so you can be smarter in your work life and play. Choose from thousands of topics to personalized Flipboard and get the latest stories from the best publishers delivered to you. 24 seven. When you see stories that you want to save or share, tap the plus button to add them to private or public collections. It's that simple. Use my millions of people every day. Flipboard is how people move themselves and the world forward. Get Started. Now at Flipboard calm. That's flipboard.com my right because you have that I got to edit that video. Got to edit that sound. I did all these photos. Get them out there get feedback, because that's where the passion. You know it loves it reignites and that's the feedback

Vadym Guliuk 19:50
I've had. I've had days when I was shooting for 1820 hours straight. I get back home. And then I want to just go to all my photos.

Junaid Ahmed 20:01
Is everything fresh? Oh, yeah.

Vadym Guliuk 20:02
Oh yeah. And just, you know, just get that prep work done. And get ready to to work on Monday.

Junaid Ahmed 20:11
Now another thing that we we've been seeing the new college students is that they want to be doing that entrepreneur label the entrepreneur title in their name, but

Vadym Guliuk 20:24
and they're just coming out of college, some people are dropping out of college. But is that the right way to go? Do they know exactly what they going in getting into. Speaking of education, I think it's a little bit overrated. When it comes to the expectations from a grown up, I was told, you know, just go to school, go through your graduate degree, spend another six years and then you'll be set for life, you'll get a job, a job to pay for your vacations for your house, for your family, and you're gonna, you know, eventually retire and enjoy the life in reality, when it comes to being an entrepreneur. And whether you have degree or not, you never stop learning. There is a lot of self development, about your personality, your best applications on yourself, loading different techniques of your trade being the past, and that never ends that never stops. So if you're somebody who doesn't like studying, maybe entrepreneurship is not for you. The school and being educated and self discipline doesn't end was was a school you will have, you will have teachers to discipline you anymore. You will have anybody to grade your work, you'll be your own accountability partner to go through life.

Junaid Ahmed 21:41
Yeah. And that's, that's, that's one hard thing

to

swallow. Like, okay. And a lot of the times, well, the reason our parents told us that, you know, go to school get a good job, then you have it set for life. Well, the problem is back in the 50s, it made sense, because

you're the schools are teaching you to be in a certain place for eight hours. So then you can replicate that when you're at work, you spend eight hours at school, you come home, you do whatever, you got eight hours for work, you come home, you're replicating. And it starts from a very early age, by preschool, kindergarten, teaching that same thing, so now it's ingrained, but the system has changed so much. I mean, there's so many more ways that people can make a living and be well off, then just go to school. But majority, I mean, school does get you to a point where you understand and open your mind. But is it for everybody, you know,

Vadym Guliuk 23:01
I wish when I was growing up, that since my first grade, I was being put in a school where I'd be just starting with, in my case, you could be only art, photography, videography. And you know, sometimes I dream and I imagined myself studying all of that since I was seven. And I would be curious to see what would have I become, by the age of 18, I think I would have a lot more clue what they want to do with my life. And

just imagine, but it's good to drink, you know, you know,

Junaid Ahmed 23:39
you have a really good point there. Because if you think about it, athletes, you think about musicians there started at a very young age. And for example, people will will send their kids to do piano lessons violin, and, you know, all these things and kids who get really good at is because they spend more time doing that on a weekly basis. They're spending 10, 1215

hours a week, or mastering those things. And by the end of 10 years, there's their masters and they're playing in orchestras and any, that's their career now, they really don't need to go to school school was invented or created to create workers for the for the industrial age,

Vadym Guliuk 24:26
pretty much the point you're proven by being a good student, and I'm not about to discourage anybody

Unknown Speaker 24:32
know,

Vadym Guliuk 24:34
very important as you can, you can show up on time done this, and for the rules and turn in your your work, your homework, or your work for good grades, grades, or good salary.

And the life is life, you want to go beyond that. You want to be self motivated, you want to be sold through and you want to know what you want to do, become good at it, and deliver the results

Junaid Ahmed 24:59
is expected. important because those same

skills, those same

things that you learn applies to entrepreneurship. Because when you are paying attention, you're learning and getting the on time showing up, you get the work done. If you're not showing up, you're late, then you're you know, you're you then start to eat into your personality, really, into your credibility.

Vadym Guliuk 25:30
So self discipline

is number one important

aspect to have, when you don't feel like it. When you when things are not working out. And what you're going to be pushing, you gotta, you gotta keep on pushing.

Junaid Ahmed 25:49
And there'll be times that you're bored. Which is fine.

Vadym Guliuk 25:53
Which which means which means you gotta step up your game

and expect expand your horizons and see what else is out there that you haven't mastered yet.

Junaid Ahmed 26:06
And that's where hobbies come in. Right? If you're bored at work, now, I had, I had a talk with a friend of mine yesterday. And he said, You know, I was really into music and, and sure it affected a little bit to the work he was doing. You know, he's a computer programmer. Caitlyn when he comes home, he's praying playing a guitar it affect a little bit because he was expanding and the direction that he was going, but you know, it still worked out for him.

But there's, most of the times you love programming, right? You love programming, programming at work, you come home, you're creating your own projects as good because you're focusing and you're expanding your mind in that specific area. And that's where hobbies can sometimes offload your brain. Because sometimes you want to spend time just organizing your tools. And when you're organizing your tools, you're using a different part of your brain, which then lets your other part of the brain solve problems that you might have at work, programming wise, or photography wise, or whatever it is, you're thinking. Another interesting thing that I saw

is we don't let our minds wander anymore have so many distractions, right.

So easy to get distracted, but just not just that. I mean, we actively distract ourselves by trying to be multi taskers when they were looking at other phone, okay, do I get in, you're basically changing how your brain works. And there was a study done that 510 years ago, our attention span was about 15 minutes. Now, it's down to about five minutes.

Exactly right.

I think you gotta, you gotta, you gotta check email.

But again, right? It all comes down to are you able to overcome those distractions and be motivated and keep on going, you know,

Vadym Guliuk 28:18
they're all when you look at the perspective perspective, in life

time is the most valuable asset that you have. You can make more money or more of anything else. But you cannot make more

sense when you think about it. That way. You just get applied yourself and not waste any time.

Junaid Ahmed 28:39
Yeah, absolutely. That's so true. When they say time equals money. That is not true. That is, that is the lie being told to you. Because time cannot be replaced. Money can

Vadym Guliuk 28:53
be early.

Junaid Ahmed 28:54
Yeah,

Vadym Guliuk 28:55
another year or another 20 years time wasters,

Junaid Ahmed 29:02
man, there's so many tangents. There's so many levels to go into me know which way to go anymore.

Vadym Guliuk 29:09
Okay, go into personal development,

personal development,

speaking of being your best self, whether it's in your relationships or your business or other ventures in life. What I found useful for myself as diving deep into my personality is figuring out what I am what triggers me What excites me and then applying my best through different levels, you know, segments of of my life and I come to find out that I am an NTP and I like I like dreaming. I like big ideas, ideas just popped into my head, you know, don't have enough time to jot them all down. And then when it comes to execution, it's a little bit different, global, different game when it comes to execution, and making making it happen. So knowing that I I just trained myself on I already knew what's gonna, what's the other message, she's gonna pop into my head, as soon as I start applying those ideas. And I just, I just had to figure out for myself, what, what to do about it. Yeah, because getting down to the routine work and actually making it happen is my personality wise, is that the best application of myself, speaking of getting bored, probably, that's what would make me it makes it makes me board Yeah, I like everyday, everything new. That's my problem. I do photography and video because, you know, I work with different clients all the time. It's different projects even to catch as they're not treated the same way. There are different messages, different personalities will bring it up, you know, to are created the same as well as absolutely different. And once they brought in drones and virtual reality cameras, I'm just overwhelmed with myself and, and providing a whole range of different services and, and just having a good time. It is

Junaid Ahmed 31:20
very, very, you know, it's funny, I took a took the test the other day also showed me that I may end up right, so like, wow, and I was thinking to myself, if I had taken that test 1520 years ago, I would have been totally different person because I was maybe it was an introvert. But thanks to Tony Robbins, thanks to Gary van der Chuck. They've helped open my mind and in the ways that I've never thought was possible. And having mentors is an excellent way and a very important thing to have many because you look at professional athletes, they have coaches absolutely right. They are not professional, they didn't get to that level without external pushing mentorship. So having mentors is an excellent way to help realign where you're heading.

Vadym Guliuk 32:24
So how do you what do you

Junaid Ahmed 32:26
do? I mentor

I, I try I've had I've had the opportunity to inform people about user experience, because that's my main field user. I've been doing that for about 15 years. And I'm getting a lot of questions on LinkedIn. And people just connect to me it's like I want to go into user experience what should I do? What should I look into? So I tell them okay, you need to subscribe to these guys you need to take today these courses and how long is it going to take you to get to where you want to be and then everything requires time everything takes a lot of time to get to where you want to be

Vadym Guliuk 33:09
lots of lots of time lots of effort left so you know it's not working out what do I do now? Yeah,

just just be ready for for the roller coaster and that's the beautiful part about it is there is there is you know, no stability whatsoever you just and you know over some time you know you gotta you gotta get used to it. And the beautiful part is that you can expand and grow as much as you can handle or as much as you can dream and possibilities are endless. Speaking of

speaking of NTP I took this test maybe 1214 years ago for the first time and I didn't really pay attention yeah too much to it but some years past and I reconnected with it against five years and

I was already doing photography I was you know rockin and rollin is trying to

and the funny part was that is it in the description for the profession that says interviews are good to be tog refers and lawyers and I left and sort of didn't get it the first time

photographers well I kind of get you know yeah the lawyers not so much and he let me thinking for two solid days and I started to actually get the point and see why these lawyers if you imagine a trial case

lawyers go against each other defending the case play in and out different scenarios what's going on

and in my own mind with ideas that is I played both devil's advocate and you know in a lawyer so I took in these cases at myself constantly photography the light the you know the video the the speed angles how many cameras and we're going to use our processes how molecular process differently SHOW US drone drones again, you know, the angels was it was happening in it how do I get to satisfy myself was was what I see and presented to the client heaven father in law was it I've been doing that for the past, you know, I guess all my life

all my life now that I know what it is. But when it comes to photography and I'm going to constantly you know, race on you know, doing better and better and better and figuring out what's what's what's the next thing for me How should we process it actually work with people how surely you know satisfy myself and I take my cell phones these trials all the time you

if it's good enough or if it's just like you know, last time was was was the best way to improve it. And outside of photography, it also comes it plays into the processes when you you run your business and there was many hats in it you get the castle your you get to do the sales you're the marketing guy, you're the editor, you deliver customer service all of that plays in and when it's just one you being an NTP. It can help us out to find those shortcuts very effective forecast which work and which save you time so that you can you know spend your time with family or hassle more take your clients out Yeah,

Junaid Ahmed 36:46
no, that's that's absolutely true. You get to do with a lot of people and lawyers get to be deal with a lot of people as well. And each cases can be different. Are you saying I'm not a lawyer lawyer, but I know lawyers I know attorneys there they are my family.

Vadym Guliuk 37:06
Do you debate

Junaid Ahmed 37:08
debate? I probably debated my mind but I haven't taken that deep dive right and that's that's one of the reasons for that is because I'm constantly breaking my own thought process by distracting myself. Right. So and org. It's funny, they asked me Okay, so what's your new hobby this week,

because I'm into beekeeping. Great Photography videography is another one I wanted to do stand up comedy at one point and joined the Toastmasters club to do you know, speaking, and every time they're like, dude, how many things you're going to do? I did vote working. You know, I love to build stuff. I've got my own workshop smell

Vadym Guliuk 37:58
so good. So

Junaid Ahmed 38:04
what Amy was really awesome meeting you what was way

over to working with you in the future. You know, if you're on going on video, shoots, photo shoots, whatever it is. I would love to be

Vadym Guliuk 38:17
absolutely hit me up, you know, productions in the world more than one person. I'll be glad to bring anybody on board. Awesome.

Junaid Ahmed 38:27
So yeah, let us know. made them tell us how you pronounce your name because I keep probably mispronounced your name.

Vadym Guliuk 38:36
So the best way to figure out how to pronounce my name forever. It's Wait, wait, wait,

wait. Yes. Wait. And

we're Vader. Darth Vader. Darth

Vader

know

and it will be a white empty land. You spell my name, you know, the law school, blah, blah, or you find me online.

Junaid Ahmed 39:04
Nice. So, Baden Gulick calm is where we can find more information about the photography and will be them does and that's another episode of hacks and hobbies. Thanks for listening.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Junaid Ahmed has been a user experience designer for over 15 years. As a UX professional, he uses the user-centered design philosophy to come up with solutions. Trust the system, it works!

“People say that we only live once, but I believe in living every day!”

Junaid has been interviewing people from all walks of life on his podcast Hacks and Hobbies.