MEMBER SPOTLIGHT: MIKE SNYDER
/Studio IX:
Mike, thanks so much for the taking the time. We greatly appreciate it. So let’s start with the basics. Could you tell us who you are and what it is you do?
Mike Snyder:
I'm Mike Snyder, I’m a photographer and filmmaker, and I've been based in Charlottesville for about five years. I run a production company called Interdependent Pictures. I partner with nonprofit organizations and I work on environmental and social justice stories. Sometimes that's producing short documentary films. Sometimes it's producing stories for more traditional editorial outlets, newspapers, and magazines. And a lot of times, beyond the focus on environmental and social justice issues, I'm really looking for stories about agency, action, solutions, and hope, and a positive look on what can be done facing some of the biggest challenges that we have as a society.
Studio IX:
And how did you get into it? What are you passionate about? It seems the two may overlap.
Mike Snyder:
Well, I'm super lucky in that what I do is exactly what I'm passionate about. So yeah, it's really the same question. I mean, in sort of a deep time travel sense I got into this because my dad was a photographer. So I learned from him the core of the craft when I was a kid, but I didn't study or intend at all to become a photographer. I was a wilderness instructor for years. And I that love of being in the outdoors principally led me to study environmental science, which is what I did for my undergrad and my masters.
Mike Snyder:
And so I did my master's degree at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. And I think when I graduated, I just became convinced that the truth is we already have so much of the science that we need to define environmental issues. We've got a lot of the policies we need to be able to work on them and resolve them. We have a lot of technology that we need to be able to solve these things.
It's not that we couldn't improve in all of those categories, but the truth is that a lot of the solutions are already there. And more often than not, we're just not doing enough with what we have. So, I made a career transition to working on storytelling. And the kind of stories that I want to tell are stories of people that are picking up the solutions and are making use of them. Stories about what it means to live well on this planet without destroying it.
Studio IX:
What do you enjoy most about the work itself?
Mike Snyder:
Well, I mean, selfishly, one of the best parts about this is when I was a kid or teenager, my early twenties, I always wanted a job that would afford me to be able to travel around the world on somebody else's bill. And not that this is a lucrative thing and I get to stay in fancy hotels or anything like that, but it has allowed me to keep traveling and exploring and doing things that no other line of work is going to afford me.
Personally that's just been a huge, huge blessing. The other part of that is that it isn't like tourism at all. One of the things that's so wonderful about this, particularly when you work on human focused stories and you really work on intimate, long-form projects, which is mostly what I do, you really get these wonderful vignettes into other people's world that you have no business seeing otherwise.
So it's just a real blessing to get to vicariously and some ways directly live in other people's lives. So I absolutely love that, that part of the job. I think beyond that, it's just the hope that what I'm doing has some sort of impact. I think it's very, very difficult to measure that, granted you make these things, you put them out into the world, and it's very difficult to see if you've moved the needle on anything at all. And probably, broadly, you don't, but the hope is for a few people, you know, maybe just a handful of people you do. And so that certainly keeps me going in this line of work as well.
Studio IX:
Is there an experience that stands out to you? A particularly memorable project, person, place that you encountered in the course of your work?
Mike Snyder:
So I recently got to go on an expedition, on a winter expedition, into the deepest part of the Arctic. And there's really only a handful of people in the world that are equipped to be able to do those kinds of expeditions and also have any business being there because the Arctic is in winter is turned away from the sun, so it's black there for practically six months out of the year, four months at least.
So it's black and it's cold and it's windy and you've got to get up there. It takes three weeks just to get up in to the ice. And it's a multi-million dollar expedition to be able to do that. And so for me, I'm getting this amazing experience and this backdoor entry into this world that otherwise would have taken years and years of expertise to be able to access.
So, while we were up there, we were probably the Northern most people on the planet. The story that I was working on was about light pollution. Right now light pollution is the fastest growing sources of pollution in the Arctic. Not just because of shipping - shipping lanes are opening up with ice melts - but also because with less ice over the ocean, more light is able to penetrate into the water before it would have reflected off. Now it's going in. Which is fascinating. And the researchers that I was working with were trying to figure out what the long-term impacts of this light pollution may be. That research was recently published as a major paper in Nature. We had a feature in National Geographic and the film we were working on is out in film festivals now.
The most memorable part of it was that to be able to do this research they had to put you in this tiny little dingy and drop you over the side of the boat. So they put you in this thing, they drop you over the side of the boat, and then you'd go out maybe 300 yards away from the main vessel. And that's so your equipment didn't get smashed against the hull of the boat. But then to be able to make the measurements they needed to make, because the environment there is so light sensitive, they had to shut down all of the lights on the dingy, all the lights on the boat and you just go to complete darkness.
Studio IX:
Wow.
Mike Snyder:
It was probably the closest thing I'll ever do to a spacewalk, I mean, just entirely unworldly. Like staring into the void literally at the end of the world, you know?
Studio IX:
Yeah.
Mike Snyder:
And I will say it was beautiful in it's own way and terrifying in it's own way. And kind of magical in it's own way. It's experiences like that that really are just enormously gratifying in getting to do this work.
Studio IX:
Yeah.
Studio IX:
Is there something about your work that might surprise people to know?
Mike Snyder:
Maybe this is a surprise. I'd say with photography mastery over the machine, mastery over lighting, all that sort of stuff is foundational. It's absolutely fundamental.
I teach a fair amount of photography courses and I am a big believer that you don't start into concept, you start into fundamentals. If you don't understand absolutely intimately the way a camera works, there's just no way to be able to do anything meaningful with it. So I'm a big believer in that. But the truth is that's just the beginning. And once you've achieved that, you're ready to do the real hard work of photography, which is all interpersonal stuff. It's all soft skills at the end of the day. It's about being able to make people comfortable enough that they can be vulnerable.
It's about finding human moments. It's about asking just the right questions. It's about having a feeling for what a good story is, what an interesting story is for other people. And then of course, you know, beyond the elements of producing a story in the field, you've got to get it out there. And the way that the landscape is set up right now for journalism, particularly as an independent journalist, which is that, you're one among millions of voices clamoring to get published. There's not much money in it and everyone wants to get published.
And so you've just got to be incredibly persistent and persuasive to be able to get your name out there and a lot of that, again, is just soft skills. It's just networking, knowing who to talk to, what to say, and just never giving up. So much of my work is really that, rather than pressing the shutter at the right time. It's really just working with people.
Studio IX:
Where do you see yourself and the work headed in the next 5 to 10 years?. Is there an arc to it or is it something that feels more responsive and open?
Mike Snyder:
Yeah. I am open. I do love what I do. And so I think this skill set, storytelling at large and then specifically photography and film are things that I want to keep doing. I'd love to have that integrated in to my working and personal life in the long term. But again I think for me, because I come to this not as somebody that always wanted to be a photographer or film maker but I come to it as a person who's really passionate about certain issues and want to use this as a way to affect those issues.
If I was called to do something else that was another way to affect these issue then I would move in that direction. So I think this skill set's going to come with me but I'm open to other lines of work. I considered going back to get a PhD for example. I've considered going back and teaching. But I think in the short term my goals are really to keep honing the craft. It's true with photo and it's really true with video, with film, but the bar is just so high, no matter how good you get there's always more that you could be doing. You can get in the top 5% of photographers or filmmakers, not to suggest that I'm there, but if you were to get to that bar that remaining 5% is a whole universe to itself.
So for me right now it's really still, I'm still growing, I'm still exploring, I'm still just building a lot of connections and really trying to make the projects that I'm working on the best that they can be. So I've got a few more years of that and I'll think about what the long term places in the world might be for me.
Studio IX:
Because your work is focused on the environment, and this is something you're passionate about, do you have thoughts about that in the context of what we're going through (Covid-19 pandemic) and what we could potentially gain or come out of this with?
Mike Snyder:
Yeah, I do. I'll say first that I think for me at present and I'm lucky in a lot of ways. I realize not everybody can do this. But one of the things I've learned being self-employed for almost 15 years now is that the way that you stay alive in that field is to be incredibly adaptive and resilient. Over the years I've hit a lot of waves I've had to adapt to. But this is a really big one, so I don't mean to say it's just like anything else I've had that's come along my way. But I think I've been very well practiced at asking myself, "Okay, where's the opportunity here?" Or, if there's not an opportunity, it's just a loss, it's "What can I be doing to get myself set up so that when I'm going again, I'm going in the best possible way?"
So I feel lucky that my job allows for that, but also that I've been well practiced at thinking about how to be adaptive and responsive. So I'm writing a lot of grants. I'm networking with a lot of editors and production companies and distributors. I'm doing a lot of writing and background work for projects. So it's actually been a really busy time.
Beyond our personal experiences, I think a lot of people in my field are thinking about what the long-term impact of this will be on environmental issues. I think if we're going to be optimistic about this and be hopeful about this, what I would say is this is an incredible moment in time. We've hit the pause button and hopefully we can really think about the way we conduct our working lives. We can think about our priorities in life. We can think about our relationships with people. We can have a better, a clearer and a very immediate understanding of our incredible interconnectedness and interdependence. We can see very clearly now that you pull out certain strands in the web and what the fallout is and it impacts us all, some of us more than others. Hopefully we're thinking about more vulnerable people more now than ever before. And I think if we do those things, we take a step back and look, there are so many lessons that we're gaining here.
Mike Snyder:
And I can say more about what I think those lessons are, but there's so many lessons that we're gaining here that are directly applicable to a lot of environmental issues, which are fundamentally similar to international health issues. They have a lot of parallel elements to them. So if I'm being hopeful about it, I say, we come back stronger and we come back more focused. And we come back with a kind of messaging, particularly in my world, things about storytelling and messaging that is resonant with people having gone through this. And we really get to work.
That's me at my most hopeful. I think when I'm not as hopeful, I realize that times like this, psychologically, they're, scary. When people are scared we protect our self-interests first. And my worry is we'll pull inwards. And rather than thinking about broader needs, we'll become more oriented towards protecting ourselves. And a bit like the 1920s after the first world war and after the pandemic then, people went back to jazz and partying once it was over. And all that's fine. I believe in jazz and partying. After this is over, I'm going to jazz and party like everyone else will.
But I think when the good times hit again you have to hold in mind what you learned through the heavy times. And it can't just be a return to hedonism. It can't just be self interested stuff. It has to be getting back to work, doing the work we need to do to prevent these sort of issues from happening again as much as we can. I'm hopeful but again I don't think it's a given that we just improve from here. I think we improve from here if we're intentional about it.
Studio IX:
Thanks so much, Mike. That's all I got. Wonderful talking to you.
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Interdependent Pictures > https://www.interdependentpictures.org/