Meet Trent Sherrill

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Trent Sherrill. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with trent below.

Trent, first a big thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts and insights with us today. I’m sure many of our readers will benefit from your wisdom, and one of the areas where we think your insight might be most helpful is related to imposter syndrome. Imposter syndrome is holding so many people back from reaching their true and highest potential and so we’d love to hear about your journey and how you overcame imposter syndrome.

Imposter Syndrome is such a good term to bring up involving my career. Coming from a small town (Porterville,CA) it was an area that felt like if you didn’t work at the prison, you’d be in it. your work ethic – life choices would determine what side of the bars you’d to be on. Where the imposter syndrome creeped into play was soon as I began getting bigger gigs and traveling / leaving the country. You start thinking how did i end up here? im not suppose to be in this position, these places and people im working with, i should only be seeing these scenarios from a internet search not actually working with them in person. But….I HAD to start telling myself, there’s a reason they asked me to travel here, there’s a reason why i was asked to document this topic/person. It’s because i earned the right and opportunity. someone else has the trust in me to do what i do, so i better trust myself to do the same. I have 1 life, i have this one try. Might as well try to knock out the wasted mind space of imposter syndrome.

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 Trent Sherrill and i think what can sum up who i am / what i do… is “immortalizing americana”

since i was 19 years old (37 now) iv dedicated my life on preserving american history here in the states and stories that related to it over seas.

what i do is set up a photo shoots that the concepts is always be era correct, with a car lets say was built in 1958, as a hot rod or custom. find a period correct building : take it out to nature where nothing from 2025 lets say is visible. the concept is if i was shooting this with a my film camera from the era of the car, you couldn’t tell it was 2025. Due to the dedication on the clothing / styling of the model + the build of the car.

on the video side, besides doing video of said photo shoot, majority of my video work is focused on interviewing people with a career that embraces the idea of the american dream / americana itself.

from a WWII veteran, Car Builder, mma fighter , even someone that still does a old trade like making custom glass for vintage signs. i want to preserve that persons story for the people of the future can see what our county was like, and the people who made it what it is today.

when i bring up overseas topics, its for the individuals that dress like the 50’s let say, or build cars of a past era and really keeping the culture alive, even if they are in italy or australia.

my Print life, in a digital world print is precious to me as vinyl would be for a music lover. theres something about holding a magazine / book that feels right, i first started shooting for traditonal rod and kulture in 2010 i believe, which was print magazine i actaully ended up taking over and turning into Speed and Kulture that i own today. shooting for magazines and having your name in print around the world is a great feeling but what meant the most to me wasn’t the ” photos by: Trent Sherrill” printed line on that page, it was the car/story that was able to be preserved, immortalized forever in that article. i know that story cant be lost once documented when in print .

Now, I’m working on my first speed and kulture hard / soft cover book after doing 14 issues of speed and kulture the magazine. I hope my book becomes an item that when someone picks it up, it gets them inspired to live a life of making the American dream alive or getting inspired to do the same and document like i do.

i wish this was a video interview so i could talking about all the stories iv been fortunate to obtain over the years. As you can tell im not a writer i’m a talker…
but the premise and goal of mine to anyone that may read this….get inspired to do something….get inspired to stamp your name in the record books… when your tombstone reads a year – year, i hope to that “dash” between the years could be a play button of a movie that would be worth watching.

if you want to see a taste of the history iv been able to save you can find my youtube of speed and kulture, or car builds i film of my brother in law and best bud Mikey Brown on “paper to pavement” on youtube, print wise check me out at speedandkulture.com

i want to thank y’all for having me and most of all my Wife Kayla and the rest of my family that has been behind me every step of the way. its a sacrifice to do what i do, but i just believed if i didnt do this stuff who will?

love ya’ll

– Trent Sherrill

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

Determination

be Present

use love as fuel

some advice that comes to mind that stuck with me, a manager Morris “MT” at Cutco told me one time when i was working there said “do today what others can’t do tomorrow” that always stuck with me because it really taught me when you wake up and if baseball was life, you take every at bat like it was your last and swing for the fences.

more advice: $ cant be the fuel of what you do with your heart, if you find something you love and you become great at it the $ needed should come.

“quality over quantity, if you focus on the quality, over time the quantity will come”

stick to your gut/guns; i always wanted to keep things classy never trashy.

as having a line of work that stayed ‘PG” i knew it could take me farther as my supporters were not limited by adult only type of portfolio.

How would you spend the next decade if you somehow knew that it was your last?

i live like this already, my father passed when i was 19 ad he was 53.

so i knew right away how precious life was and we are all mortal.

i would spend my life making all the memories i could with wife/family, as well try to tell immortalizing all the stories and archives i could until my final days.

Contact Info:

Image Credits

trent sherrill / speed and kulture / paper to pavement archives

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