033: Honza Martinec – Why Being Yourself Is Your Best Marketing Tool & Always Remember – Sharing Is Caring!

June 30, 2021

“Learn how to say no to the stuff that you really don’t want to do.”

HONZA MARTINEC

Hey everyone! It’s Sally here, from Studio Ninja. Today’s episode is all about Honza Martinec.

Check out some of the biggest points from Honza’s interview below:

What is your secret when it comes to capturing natural images?

That’s good question, actually, even for me. But yeah, I think what I found out that I love about weddings is… And the people that book me for weddings and they always tell me, “Okay. Yeah, we saw your work and we weren’t on this wedding. We saw in your portfolio, but we felt like we were in that place.” That’s what I love about capturing weddings. The atmosphere is everything to me because I want that I capture the day and the people in a time, and in the future time I want them to remind those moments, how they felt, how they cried, how they laughed, how they danced, everything. This is the stuff that’s really important to me.

I’m not a guy who focusing on all the details and just because… I don’t know. The picture of the bride’s dress hanging on the wall somewhere… It’s nice, of course. I don’t say that I don’t do that, of course sometimes I do. But the people, they choose me because in 10 years after the wedding, if you look at this picture, I think it won’t remind you how the day great it was. If you see some kind of a picture, I don’t know, with your mum or with your dad and laughing and crying and dancing, whatever, these are the moments that reminds you how did you feel in that day. That’s important to me and that’s what I love to capture. I don’t know if it’s some kind of secret or something but I think we are working with the people. It’s an empathy, it’s the stuff that you really need to have, probably, or maybe you can train it somehow or something.

But what I try to do is to be the friend of the people. I have to say that people who choose me is, in a lot of ways, they’re very same as I am. Then I don’t feel as some kind of random guy who comes there but I’m going there as a friend of the family. Sometimes what is the most cheer I could get after the wedding is someone asks them, bride and groom, “Hey, that guy is your friend? How long you are friends?” They say, “No, he’s not our friend, or friend friend, but we just find him and yeah.” If someone say that, it’s the best for me that I could ever get, like the feeling I could ever get.

What are your top tips for new photographers?

There are so many ways how you could shoot weddings and I think the most important is to find the way you really like and then show it to people what you like, because I know it’s hard for new guys. If you’re just new in a business because the people don’t know what you do and sometimes it’s really hard to begin with this. It happened to me when I was beginning as well, that people they honestly didn’t care who is that guy with the camera. The only important part was if it’s for free or it’s cheap. That’s what they cared in my beginnings. But in these days, I didn’t even know I could be photographer so it works somehow. But some kind of a tips for new guys… Try to find this.

Maybe one tip I just remind to me right now is, and it helped to me as well, is because if you shoot the wedding and you’re happy about the job you did and you want to post everything, all the great shots online. Sometimes it’s really nice and I do that and ask the couple after the wedding what is their three, five favourite shots of the day because sometimes you think that, “Okay, yeah. This great portrait in sunset, sun is going down, great atmosphere and yeah, this must be the number one picture of the wedding.” If you ask the bride and she said, “Yeah, no, it’s nice but that picture with my mum as she look at me in the ceremony… This is…” That’s the value I love about weddings and these pictures are very important in the matter of time. I think it really helped to me because I was married last year I think I never had the problem with the empathy and try to feel what the people feels, but being on the other side… It really changed me in some kind of way. I’m not sure how to describe it, but now I can really feel more what people feel… I don’t know, before the ceremony. I know he’s nervous. I’m with the groom and he’s getting ready and I always, “Yeah. You know, man, It will be fine. Don’t worry.” Just try to cheer him up but right now, when I came through this… I know what they feel and I can adjust to them more. I know with the picture… Because, as I said, the favourite pictures.

We had a great photographer, it was a friend of mine. It was Dalibora from Croatia, Dalibora Bijelic. Really, really great girl. But she gave us the photos from the wedding and we had… I don’t know, thousand of or even maybe more because it was two days party and it was amazing, but yeah. I was super, super excited about the pictures because it was beautiful. But if someone asked me about favorite shots, I could give them tons of great, great couple shots with my beautiful wife and that how we enjoyed the day but they are the shots that… There’s a one shot with my dad. He was dancing with his knees and I had… My dad and I, we had a complicated relationship in the years before and now he… It was the best party of my life, honestly, and he was dancing with me on his knees and this is the picture that I don’t have to say to my wife, but these are the shots that matters to me.

That’s what I love about it and that’s what I… One advice: just ask people what they love from your work and try to focus on this kind of stuff because you have so much power as a photographer to capture these memories and these memories are super important. I always felt on the wedding when you’re doing those group shots with their family… I remember my beginnings and I would say, “Yeah, this is the boring part and everybody wants to be… They want my natural, the most candid moments and nobody wants the picture with my grandma and that stuff.” But I found out that these are the shots, as well, that are really important because I know at the day, you are the bride or a groom and say, “Yeah, it’s boring and I have to stay here and people are changing around me and just doing group shots with this part of family and this part of family, but I know that in years that you will be super happy that you have picture with your parents, for example.”

If you could start your career all over again, Honza, is there anything you’d do differently?

Honestly, I think just going to these workshop that it could speed you up because right now, if I will be a really new guy in the business and I would go maybe to my own or whatever different workshop, that could speed it up few years of experiences to me. It would be nice but honestly, as I said, I love how I did from the very, very beginnings up til the point where I’m right now. I think I wouldn’t do it differently because yeah. I was lucky, of course, but I love it, so.

Thank you!

Thanks again to you all for joining us and a huge thanks to Honza for joining us on the show!

If you have any suggestions, comments or questions about this episode, please be sure to leave them below in the comment section of this post, and if you liked the episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of the post!

That’s it for me this week, I hope you all enjoyed this episode.

See you soon,

Sally