Today we’d like to introduce you to Guillaume Lechat.
Guillaume is a french photographer who has always gravitated to shooting real people in their real lives. Whether it’s at home, in their workplace or in their workshop.
Guillaume loves to capture the uniqueness of those everyday moments. At a time when it’s getting increasingly harder to connect with those around us, Guillaume Lechat is managing to do just that.
He’s making interactions feel as normal as they should be and creating and telling beautiful stories from people around the world. And he’s doing it all with a bit of a French accent.
When Guillaume is not shooting for commercial clients, he has a love of motorbikes, learning new things and trying to find a moment of calm in amongst the chaos of raising two young daughters with his wife in their fran-glish home.
Hi Guillaume, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
I’m a Frenchy who grew up in Paris in the 90’s, rocked by MTV video clips, Friends and Michael Jordan. I always admired the American Pop Culture, something a bit more colourful than the sky of Paris.
My mum worked for the French airline company, Air France, so we traveled around the world a lot and during those trips around 16 years old, I developed an interest in photography. I had no idea it could be a career at that point.
At 20, I studied at a photography school in Paris which at the time was all film-based and we spent a lot of time in the darkroom. It was a fantastic way to learn because it meant that you had to really think about each frame before you shot it and gave me a greater respect for the craft.
After an apprenticeship for a high-profile wedding photography company in Paris (if you want to learn a lot about photography in a short amount of time this is the perfect but super stressful way to learn). Then I decided to ‘go freelance’ and I worked as a photography assistant in different well know photo studios in Paris. This was such a great insight into fashion and commercial photography and helped me see this was what direction I wanted to head in.
Little did I know how tough it would be. Slowly but surely, I started getting small clients and then after working in Paris for some time, I decided to move to Sydney, Australia for a few years.
Then after Sydney, I moved back to Paris and met my now wife, a British girl, who was also a photographer.
I then got signed to a big NYC agency called BA reps (Bernstein & Andruilli)
By that point, I was traveling the world for commercial jobs. From Barcelona to South Africa, Japan to Indonesia. Definitely worth the tough start in photography. Jobs were predominantly for lifestyle brands like Budweiser, eBay, Eastpak, L’oreal.
Through photography, my wife and I have been able to travel all over the world and one trip that was still on our list was the deep south so in 2017, we did a six weeks roadtrip. Before this, we had been considering moving to the west coast.
When we arrived in Nashville, we instantly love it, everything seems nicer, an easy past surrounding by super cute houses (we arrived in East Nashville) and it was really inspirational. The people we met quickly and this mix between old and modern America and “Why don’t we move here instead of the West Coast?”
Fast forward 2021 🙂 Here we are. We moved two years ago and don’t regret it. We have now two girls (3 and 1) and Nashville is the best place to have family and to wake up with the sounds of the birds.
In work terms, it’s definitely been taking time to get clients here, especially moving just before the pandemic started. I still have a lot of clients in Europe that I fly back for and then slow but surely I’ve been getting more jobs in the US both locally and in NYC and LA. I’m excited to see what is next…
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
– When you first start in photography, you have no experience and it’s so competitive so you work a lot for free to get experience. Even for free people don’t know you or trust you. I have hundreds of bad pictures from my start (and that was after 2years of photography school)
– Then as you start to get some work, it’s not consistent (and I’ve realized it never is) so some months when you feel like you’ve ‘made it’ then the next months eating beans out a can 🙂
– Once you start getting bigger clients and working with agencies there is a whole process to get through before you win the job. You put a lot of time and energy into each potential job and it can be disappointing when it doesn’t get awarded to you – but I’ve learned that’s just part of the job. “Sorry they took the other guy”, but sooner or later you are the other guy
– Since I started photography in 2004, I probably wanted to quit 20 times and then a cool job come and you are like, “Ok that’s a fun job I have”
There will always be bumps in the road but it’s a part of it, you just need to not give up and enjoy the ride.
Who wants to play a full video games with the indestructible armor… that will be boring…
So maybe we end on discussing what matters most to you and why?
At work, the most important things for me are:
– Understanding the need of the client.
– Bringing my expertise (knowledge and practice).
– Being available for my clients (for example replying to any client’s mail in 1h).
– Putting a good vibe on set (relaxed but focus and hard work).
– Over delivering.
– Make the client a regular client.
Contact Info:
- Email: contact@guillaumelechat.com
- Website: https://www.guillaumelechat.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/guillaume__lechat/
