Today we’d like to introduce you to Jonathon Lipscombe.
Hi Jonathon, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Storytelling for me began at a young age. I was introduced to photography by creating stop-motion videos of my Legos as a child. Later, watching people such as Peter McKinnon and Casey Neistat on YouTube grew my obsession for storytelling through the medium of photography and, later, videography. I started my photography career in middle school, assisting my mother with portrait shoots, editing, and later photographing many of them, myself. That love for photography carried into high school and then into college, where I took a few video classes and began exploring that medium. One summer between my junior and senior year, I moved to a small town in Ohio, about 30 minutes from my university, and started part-time into photo/video as a career. By the end of the summer, I had dropped out of school and was building my creative agency full-time. Now, 4 years later, I am a husband and a father. We’ve moved our business to Indy, and are thriving being closer to family and continuing to tell stories for so many wonderful clients.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
The road is never smooth. There are always bumps and uneven terrain along the uphill battle that is running a business in this field, but I think we can say we feel very blessed. I owe all of my success to my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and the faithfulness and provision He has shown us along the way. We’ve had some great experiences and some earth-shaking experiences. We’ve had clients come and go. We’ve uprooted our whole business to move it to a whole new city in a new state without having anything super planned out in advance. I remember feeling pretty anxious about the move and struggling a lot with trying to figure out how it would work. How would we find a new client base? Would our revenue decrease substantially? How could we balance traveling 3 hours back and forth from our previous city to the new one, while still trying to keep old clients and find new ones? I had a buddy, though, give me the simple reassurance that there’s work everywhere. Every city needs people to tell their stories; it just takes the time and grit to go find those people.
Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I run Sojourn, a creative agency and media production company, based in the Midwest and traveling everywhere. Sojourn comes from the idea that we’re a group of storytellers who use many mediums (photo, video, creative direction, graphic design, and more) to help people build engaging brands and present meaningful stories. We chose the name Sojourn because we’re nomads, travelers, visitors, in this world and in the lives of our clients. We’re all from different cities but come together to tell beautiful stories. We specialize in a wide array of media production for brands, agencies, and businesses looking for something unique that feels like “them.” Some of our proudest achievements are winning 6 Telly Awards (2 Gold and 4 Silver) in 2023 for our work on the project “Champions for Safety: Playmakers at Superbowl LVII.” and more recently, being published in the Indianapolis Business Journal for our photojournalism work on numerous projects.
We love surprises, fun facts and unexpected stories. Is there something you can share that might surprise us?
Something most people may not know about me is that I love teaching about what I do. I spent time throughout college and beyond teaching camera basics classes and one-on-one classes at a camera shop in West Michigan. Since moving away from MI, I’ve still come up occasionally to teach a class on video and am even teaching one this summer on the business of photo/video.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://sojournstudio.co/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sojournstudio.co/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JonathonLipscombe
