24 Mobile Photographers Til Christmas 2014: Alon Goldsmith

Following on from last years successful ’24 Mobile Photographers Til Christmas’ series and to celebrate the forthcoming festive season and another year in the timeline of Mobiography I have decided to repeat the series and showcase the work, thoughts and insights of 24 talented mobile photographers. Each featured photographer has inspired and supported me in one way or another during the course of the past 2 years and I will be asking them to offer an insight into their photography, to reflect on their year gone by or plans for the coming year ahead.

Each day until Christmas Eve we will be featuring one photographer in a sort of online advent calendar so to speak.

Today’s featured photographer is Alon Goldsmith

My biggest takeaway about mobile photography this year is…

A couple of years ago David Hochman, a well-known freelance journalist, approached me about writing a piece featuring my iPhone photography for his column in Forbes magazine. He had seen my work at a show-and-tell evening hosted by a mutual friend. Of course I agreed, and the resulting article helped get my name on Google.

After that, I saw David every now and again, and he’d tell me about his uPod Academy, a semi-secret workshop where freelancer writers come together to make big ideas happen. I was already working as a writer, and with photography fast becoming my passion, I wasn’t about to fork over hard-earned greenbacks to learn to do what I was already doing. But then David suggested I workshop my photography, and that sealed the deal.

uPod was fantastic. We spent three days soaking up the mantra WHY NOT ME and came away committed to a peer-reviewed game plan and the gumption to put it into practice. My mission? To get photo credentials for Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival and mount an exhibition of my work.

With gentle pressure and not so gentle confidence boosting from the uPod alumns, I slayed dragons and transformed the weekend’s visions into reality. In April I shot at Coachella and had a feature published in Snap Magazine. In June I had my first solo show where I sold enough work to get the I’m-an-imposter monkey off my back.

A successful group show at the HaleARTS gallery in Santa Monica followed a few weeks later. I’m keeping things rolling with plans underway for shows in San Diego, Santa Barbara, San Francisco and New York.

2014 was the year I learnt that I could monetize my photography. I began to dare to believe that I could create a career as an image-maker. People began to think of me as Alon Goldsmith, photographer. It’s the year when I hitched my bicycle to a dream and answered the question WHY NOT ME?

Connect with Alon Goldsmith

Online portfolio | Instagram | Facebook | Oggl | Flickr | EyeEm | Tumblr