We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Carlos Ku King a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Carlos, so excited to have you with us today. So much we can chat about, but one of the questions we are most interested in is how you have managed to keep your creativity alive.
Give yourself a break. There have been a lot of times where I felt burned out, and kept pushing for the sake of finishing a project I felt needed to be finished; unsurprisingly, I was not happy with the results. If you have the means to take a breather, and disconnect from projects for a while, do it. One thing I do when I go through a creative rut is take on a hobby, or go do something that is completely unrelated to my field.
That is how I stumbled upon analog photography. I was getting a little too burned out with video projects and that seemed like a nice escape that slowly but surely became another passion of mine. Another thing I do sometimes is consume as much media as possible. You don’t know where you will find inspiration, so I open myself to all kinds of things I can watch, read or listen. I’m lucky to have been raised in a diverse environment that exposed me to a lot of different content from all over. If there is something I feel I’m clicking with, I open my notes app and make a note of it for later.
Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?
I’m a video producer, as well as a visual artist, but I would say I’m primarily involved in video and some photography. Most of my inspiration comes from media I’ve consumed since I was a kid, everything from anime, to foreign films, music, 90’s video game artwork, and 1980’s advertisements.
These days it’s hard to imagine life without having a camera around, I don’t know how it happened but I always had a fascination for cameras. There was something about how mundane things are seen through a viewfinder. They are different, and imperfect. Imperfect but beautiful.
That appreciation of imperfection is what drives a lot of my work these days. For a long time I put a lot of pressure on myself for things to be perfect and that set me back on finishing a lot of projects I had planned. As I revisit some of the works that inspired me as a child I find these “flaws” to be charming and to add more character to each piece.
I like that freedom when it comes to art.
A lot of my work in video is documentary based because of these reasons. I like to find a subject and try to catch it in its rawest form, without scripts or set ups, I want to know why and how it is that exists with no interference. There is one big project I’m working on at the moment that perfectly encapsulates all of that.
In recent years I’ve worked on more photography than in the past, analog photography to be more specific. Most of which is street photography. Street photography started as therapeutic, yet it became a passion, and part of my portfolio permanently. The best compliment I ever got about my photos was “I saw your photo on my Instagram feed and I knew why you would take that”. I rarely post photos of myself online, so it’s nice to hear they can see me through my work.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
I think the most important thing for me in my career was to be curious. Sitting in front of my computer for hours, trying to figure out how to work Adobe Premiere or After Effects (two programs I use daily) was crucial and wouldn’t have happened had I not been curious enough to pick them up. Maybe a little bit of passion came with it but that’s a bit too corny. Another thing I did during that time, and honestly I still do to this day, is to educate myself constantly. Back when I first started I would watch hours and hours of tutorials and would later practice what I learned on this applications, and every time I did that, I would learn a technique or how a tool would work without really noticing. I love doing what I do, so it never really felt like extra work.
Another important aspect of this field is making connections. It is something I am still working hard on being better at, and I can see if you are introverted like myself how that would feel like actual work, but I hate to tell you it is something we just have to be better at.
One last advice I can give you if you’re starting is, do not commoditize all of your art. Leave something for yourself. If you have chosen a career in the arts you will have to make a living from that of course, but leave something for yourself. Leave something you can be free in and have complete creative control. Something you can explore, and maybe learn something new from it.
Looking back over the past 12 months or so, what do you think has been your biggest area of improvement or growth?
This past year has been great as far as working on different projects and having a lot of creative freedom even with client assignments. Juggling several projects all at once has been a challenging yet fulfilling experience. Somehow I survived it haha, and I think I’m better because of it.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.uncannyvalleymedia.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lcl_null/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carlos-k-a4985689/
