Meet Cohen Croslin

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Cohen Croslin a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Cohen, we’re thrilled to have you sharing your thoughts and lessons with our community. So, for folks who are at a stage in their life or career where they are trying to be more resilient, can you share where you get your resilience from?

I get my resilience from past experiences. Throughout my journey, there has been a lot of trial and error and many things people don’t know about. My first paid shoot I got scammed and after showing up, paying to get in, and taking the pictures, I was told the pictures weren’t good and they weren’t paying for them. I was frustrated because the person still used the pictures after I used my time and resources. This was my first lesson on why deposits were important. The second big thing that happened to me that taught me how to be resilient was when I finally started making a name for myself, my camera broke before my booked shoots. I had just got home from a trip to DC and when I got out the car my camera bag broke. My lenses were fine but my camera shattered, of course I was upset but I was more stressed thinking about all the photoshoots I had coming up. I had to figure out a way to get a new camera as soon as possible. I took this as a sign to upgrade my equipment so I switched from Canon to Sony and had to figure out how to pay for all of it. Thankfully I had some money saved up and I used Klarna to do my payments. Once I got the camera, I was at every track meet taking pictures until the season was over. While using my new camera along with my brothers, I was able to make the payments for my camera and pay for my prom stuff as well. While these aren’t the only trials and tribulations that I have been through, both of these situations taught me that when things go wrong you can do two things, give up or persevere. Nothings easy in life, especially when your trying to do something great, so you need to have a growth mindset at all times and if you do, you’ll be 10 times more successful. It’s scary to think about, but if I had given up when those two things happened to me, I wouldn’t be where I am today.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

My name is Cohen Croslin, I am a 19 year old Baltimore Native, Student-Athlete, and Photographer with 3 years of experience. My business name is Cstyles Archives. The name Cstyles is a nickname given to me by my older Brother and his friends. Although I hated the name at first, it eventually grew on me and now that’s what I go by. The Archives part was an idea that I came up with by myself. I wanted my name to be unique and different from what other photographers in my area called themselves but I also wanted something that connected my name with photography and why I started photography. As a photographer, I live to capture special memories, events, and moments. When I take pictures of these moments, they are captured forever and thats where the Archive part comes from because it means to store something. Photography was something i’ve always been interested in and I started out taking pictures on my phone. I was taking pictures of my friends, family, landscapes, and anything else that I found fascinating. I was always interested and excited about sports photography the most because I’m an athlete myself. Being an athlete, I know how un-predictable sports are and how they bring out the passion and strong emotions of others, which is my favorite part about capturing sports. Sometimes as athletes we get caught up in the moment and we don’t get to see what everyone else see’s, but when I click my shutter those moments are captured in time, allowing us to re-experience moments we hold close forever .

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

Three of the most important qualities I have learned throughout my life that I apply to my work is being teachable, having patience, and being confident. Photography wasn’t something I just picked up and strived in, I had to be a sponge, being able to learn new skills and information, and then applying it makes all the difference. A lot of people get the idea that it’s as simple as pressing a couple buttons but it’s so much more than that. You have to know what certain settings do, you have to know how certain lenses affect your compositions, you have to know how to deal with people, and you have to know how to take criticism. None of this stuff comes overnight just like anything that’s great, which is where my patience comes in. If you lack patience, it makes it difficult to learn because you seek perfection as your expectation when taking photos and editing them. You are not going to master the technical aspects over night, you are not going to master your editing software overnight, and you most definitely are not going to master working with different people over night. Patience is the most important quality that i’ve developed while being a photographer because i’ve been able to apply it to other important aspects of my life like college, soccer, and relationships. The third and final thing that’s been important on my journey is confidence. Lacking confidence can be so detrimental to your photography business or life and at a point in time, I lacked it. When I first started, I’d take pictures, post them, and the compare them to other photographers. This is a no go as photographer because everyone’s journey is different, everybody’s experiences are different, and everyones eyes are different. The photographers I compared myself with had years of experience, and had been well established in their businesses and in the photography community. I realized it was wrong to compare myself to someone who had more experience than me, and when I stopped doing that and shifted my focus to my aspirations for my photography business, wanting to succeed and be the best I could, my mental health became way better. Lacking Confidence is also a huge cause of missing out on opportunities, believing I wasn’t good enough caused me to turn down many shoots, which was bad for business because 90% of the people I work with come back and refer me to new clientele. When my confidence eventually grew, so did my business and although I have come a long way, I know that I need to push my confidence to fully reach my potential.

Okay, so before we go, is there anyone you’d like to shoutout for the role they’ve played in helping you develop the essential skills or overcome challenges along the way?

Definitely my Parents and Great Grandmother, I was blessed to grow up with both of my parents in the household along with my Great Grandma, which is not as common in African American households. My parents and Grandma have taught me life skills that have been applicable and essential to my growing business. They’ve taught me how to effectively manage my time, manage my money, problem solve, critically think, and persevere through adversity. Life is so un-predictable but having these basic life skills can make navigating it so much simpler and it’s definitely made my journey as a photographer easier. As far as qualities go I get my hustling and work ethic from them too, my parents have always made what me and my siblings thought was impossible, possible. They always went above and beyond to provide what we need and what we may also want. They aren’t scared of adversity or hard-work and when things went wrong or not as planned they made it work and that’s a quality I admire about them that’s transpired to me.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://cstylesarchivessports.myportfolio.com/
• Instagram: @Cstyles_Archives
• Other: My website for Sports and Lifestyle:

  https://cstylesarchives.myportfolio.com/