Travel, Lifestyle and Automotive Photography with Max Loewenstein

Pat Miller: 00:00

I'm Pat Miller and this is The Professional Photographer Podcast. Welcome into the Professional Photographer podcast. I'm your host, Pat Miller and we are live at Imaging USA 2025 in Dallas. Our set presented by Sony, we'll talk all about the goodies that they put on set because they, they kind of went all out on this episode. We're talking about Scaling Your Influence. And our guest is Max Loew. Travel, commercial, automotive–got to talk to him about automotive. I haven't interviewed anyone about automotive just yet, so we'll get into that with him. We'll talk about what it's like to be not only an artist, but a content creator. Is that hard? Is it easy? Does it come to him naturally? We're going to have a great discussion. We will bring Max on in just a moment. Now let's talk about Sony. Okay? They brought out their cinema line cameras, Three camera shoots, super fancy. And we're using their Monitor & Control app. That means all these cameras are being mixed on an iPad. No wires. It's unbelievable. It's been a showstopper. People walk down the hall and they're like, "Wow, check that out." In fact, I've been podcasting here and there's been a crowd of people around the gear all day. So thank you to Sony for going all out and making us look great. Okay, back to standing by. How about we get to it? Scale Your Influence with Max Loew. Max, thanks for coming on the show. How are you today?

Max Loewenstein: 01:24

Good. Thank you for having me.

Pat Miller: 01:26

We're here at Imaging USA. How's the conference been so far for you?

Max Loewenstein: 01:29

It's been fun. I feel like I'm like a networking bunny right now. Lots of energy, lots of socializing, meeting people that I haven't met before and it's–yeah, it's been exciting.

Pat Miller: 01:38

You said you were out late last night, having a good time, making contacts. Right?

Max Loewenstein: 01:42

Making contacts, networking over drinks. That's the way to do it.

Pat Miller: 01:45

That is the way I think.

Max Loewenstein: 01:46

That's when you really get to know someone, you know?

Pat Miller: 01:47

Isn't that the truth?

Max Loewenstein: 01:48

It really is. Yeah.

Pat Miller: 01:49

Well, you need to share yourself with everyone that hasn't seen you yet. Tell us about who you are and what you do.

Max Loewenstein: 01:54

Yeah. So my name's Max Loewenstein. Max Loew is kind of the social that I go by. Easier to say. Travel/automotive photography is mostly my bread and butter. Commercial work for all types of brands. Self-taught. I never took a single course. Yeah, so I just kind of learned from, unless you want to call YouTube a course, but learned from YouTube videos and peers mostly. But it's been a journey. It started in 2017, shooting on a cell phone. Did it for months. My brother was trying to hold me off from buying a camera. I got really into a camera very quickly before I knew how to use one. Convinced me not to buy one. Convinced me to learn how to, you know, do photography on a cell phone. But back then, you didn't have the Pro mode on the. On the phone, so you had to download an app and learned all the Pro controls, shutter speed, ISO, aperture. And I would be driving three hours to go, set up a phone on a tripod and shoot like the cliffs in the ocean and Yosemite and all this stuff. And I was just doing it with a cell phone. And then one day, I felt like I outgrew it. Bought a camera, just snowballed and it just kept getting more and more into it.

Pat Miller: 03:02

What drew you to photography? Was it the final image? Was it the hunt for the image? What part of it really lights you up?

Max Loewenstein: 03:08

It was a mix. It was partially the tech. Like, I just felt like a camera was so cool. It was like almost like a trendy thing to have before it really got trendy. Like, I know obviously some cameras are very trendy now, but it was just really cool to have.

Max Loewenstein: 03:23

And then I started seeing actually a friend from high school started posting, like, really cool images out of nowhere. Follow all my high school friends. It was just normal life updates. And then there's one friend that would just post really cool photos, and I just loved them. And so I connected with him and started kind of engaging with the photo community quite a bit. And yeah, between the tech and the gear that you get to use and like, seeing those final images, I became obsessed with it. And then, obviously, as you start, it's like the process and watching yourself improve was just awesome.

Pat Miller: 03:54

Yeah, that incremental improvement can get addicting. Oh, I can do that now.

Max Loewenstein: 03:59

Yeah, it is still addicting. I think you need to be learning all the time, and you need to kind of chase that feeling of, like, accomplishing something new in your field, you know, it is a very addictive feeling.

Pat Miller: 04:10

I want to talk about commercial and travel, but I also want to talk about automotive, because I haven't talked to anyone about automotive yet. So let's do the travel part first. When you think about the travel photography that you do, what do you like to do? What are some of the things you have coming up? Tell me about that.

Max Loewenstein: 04:24

Yeah, I really like working with, like, a hotel brand. It's kind of like right up my alley. I enjoy doing like nice stays with some nice hotels. But in terms of work coming up, I'm heading to Japan this month with a brand. I can't say pretty much anything about the project.

Pat Miller: 04:40

Undisclosed location.

Max Loewenstein: 04:42

Yeah. But I will say it's a really cool project and it's gonna be–yeah, I get to explore Japan for a week with the brand and then I'm staying an extra week to just go out and shoot my own content. That stuff's not really hotel-focused at all. It's just more so like culture and filming some of the views and just the scenery of Japan and the motion. I love the motion of Tokyo and some of the bigger cities. Yeah, it's just gonna be a fun trip.

Pat Miller: 05:06

You've been before?

Max Loewenstein: 05:07

I've been once before.

Pat Miller: 05:08

I went once last year. First time we've ever been. What a great trip. Just mind-blowing. Oh, enjoyed it. I wish I could go back. Okay, commercial. What are some of the commercial gigs that you do and what do you like about commercial?

Max Loewenstein: 05:21

Commercial? Kind of, I feel like, envelops like a lot of the work I do for brands. I shoot a lot for this, this brand in New York that is a–it's kind of hard to say what they are. They're like a luxury real estate company. I would say they own a lot of plazas and stuff. That's been a lot of my work that doesn't really get seen on Instagram. I don't really share as much as the commercial side of things, but it is a big part of my business, and it just happened to be a lucky connection I've got with this company. wAnd I've been working with them since 2019. This most recent job was shooting holiday decor in a shopping mall. And it ended up being like pretty beautiful and working out great. It ends up being sometimes like a lot higher paying than most of the fun jobs, I would say. You know what I mean? Like, I think travel and automotive is definitely more fun and type of work for me. But the commercial aspect of it also is some like high-paying gigs and stuff as well.

Pat Miller: 06:18

All right, now we get to talk about automotive. I was waiting for this part. Okay, I have not talked to a lot of people that have done this. How did you get into it and what do you love about it?

Max Loewenstein: 06:27

Very random how I got into it. I had a brand want to work with me, I would say like three years ago now. It was Mazda and they wanted me to take out a–at this time, we were traveling a lot, and we didn't have a nice vehicle to travel with. So when a car brand reached out and they're like, "Hey, we'll provide you a car for a week. You go take it out and just do a post for us or send us some photos. I was super interested. So we took out this Mazda. We took it to the Salt Flats, drove it all the way out to Utah. Yeah, went on like this cool road trip. I took some actually really good photos. Photos I'm still proud of, of this Mazda on the Salt Flats at sunset. It was beautiful. Sent it to the client. They absolutely loved it. From that, that agency ended up connecting me with Hyundai, and Hyundai's now been one of my biggest clients. I've started working with Hyundai the last two and a half, two years, tons of projects, doing lots of work for them. And within that, I've kind of grown my love for photographing cars, and road trips and vehicles and all types of photography around cars. But it's led to me shooting friends' Porsches here in the–not here, but in the Bay Area. Some of the work you've seen with their cars. I'm actually going home from this and working with Bentley next week, so I feel like I'm like climbing a little ladder. Like elevated photography work. So it's, yeah, working my way up. Dream brand is definitely to work with Porsche directly, one of my favorites from the car world.

Pat Miller: 07:51

As a layman, how do you approach taking a picture of a car? Is it the brief from the client and what they're trying to have it express? Is it the way you light it? Talk to me how you approach an inanimate object like a car and make it feel fast and exciting and cool.

Max Loewenstein: 08:08

So for me, a lot of it is background because I'm also a travel photographer. So I like to put these vehicles in scenes that would also look good without the car in them, if that makes sense. So it's basically adding an element to like a travel scene that I'm already envisioning in my head. I generally shoot all my work naturally lit. I don't usually work with any external lighting. Big thing when you're shooting cars, you need polarizers. You have to kill the reflections. I was just shooting–there's a Ferrari parked right outside that window, actually. That's beautiful.

Pat Miller: 08:38

Yeah, that was mine. No. I wish.

Max Loewenstein: 08:40

Yeah, I would be super stoked. That was a lot of questions for you, too. But I went out there with this camera. It didn't have a polarizer on it. So a lot of reflections, I was just like. Like, okay, I'm not going to get the photos I want. But generally, you want to kill those reflections and just find a good scene to put it in. And then also, the big thing in. In automotive photography is the rolling shots. You want to get those motion shots. To do that, you absolutely need a team. I love getting help in the Bay Area when I'm shooting this type of stuff. But you need someone driving your car. You're basically hanging out the window or sitting in the back of a truck, and someone's driving the actual model car, and you're shooting them at a low shutter speed. You want to have good light when it's happening. And you're just praying out of 2,000 photos you take, and it's generally a thousand to 2,000 that you're getting that one shot that you need that's in focus. It's got the right amount of blur. Like, those are some of my favorite shots to get. And it's because there's a lot of work involved.

Pat Miller: 09:31

How long did it take for you to learn how to hang out of a car and try and get the shot that sounds. That sounds awkward to me.

Max Loewenstein: 09:37

It's very awkward. It's hard. It's definitely hard. You also have to learn, like, what's the sweet spot on the shutter speed for what speed you're driving. The faster you're going, the higher you can have your shutter speed, and the higher chance you're going to get the good shot. But if you're going really slow and you want to add blur, we've had to go pretty slow sometimes because sometimes we do it off road. I did it with our Bronco and shooting a Bronco off road in the back of the truck. Yeah, it was ridiculous. I even have BTS video of it. That's hilarious. But it's definitely tough. But it's very rewarding when you get those shots. And I feel like that's a big thing. Like, I like the harder shots to get. That just make me feel like I can't believe I got it. You know?

Pat Miller: 10:11

It's hard enough to do all three styles that you do, but then it's put on impossible mode because you're telling the story of all the stuff that you do. So it's almost two jobs at once to do all the behind the scenes, post all the video everywhere. Like, how do you approach being good and telling the story of being good?

Max Loewenstein: 10:31

It is. That is like the hardest part. It's like you said it is. It is working like multiple jobs because you have to do a good job taking the photos. But then it's like, how do I present it so people see it and they understand exactly, like, what the story is, what I've shot. And that is one of the hardest parts for me these days. It's harder than taking the actual photos, is finding a way to present the work in a way that makes sense, telling a story. And it's also just getting eyes on it. You know, there's plenty of work that gets posted that just kind of goes relatively unseen. So finding creative ways in an industry that's absolutely exploded. The creative industry, and especially on social media, it's currently exploding. It's still happening. Finding a way to be unique and have your images stand out in a way where people can see them is definitely something I've been working on in the last year that I've kind of found a little bit of my niche with text. I don't know if you've seen any of my work with text. It's finding ways to present my work in a more interesting way, essentially. But it is a very hard component of the photography aspect.

Pat Miller: 11:30

Yeah, it looks great, and I'm connecting two things in my head that may sound really stupid. However, I'm going to try it because it makes sense to me to see if it comes out the right way. I've had folks sit right there this week tell me, shoot what you want to shoot. So you wanted to do automotive, you started posting automotive, and you want to start getting eyeballs on your work on YouTube, for example, to build an audience. But when you're posting stuff to YouTube, that's a living resume for the next clients that are going to hire you. When they reach out to you, saying, "Hey, we saw your work," are they looking at your YouTube stuff as well? So they know who you are and what you do, not just the images you're getting.

Max Loewenstein: 12:13

So I'm actually relatively new to YouTube, with starting YouTube, but I will 100% say that, like, the work you're posting, like, shoot what you want to be shooting for is definitely relevant to getting brands to reach out, understand who you are, and like the content you create. It's exactly like me working with Bentley when this job is over is they found me from my previous automotive work. You know what I mean? So it's like a major win. If you're posting the work that you actually love to shoot and you're using it as a way to attract more clients, it is 100% the way you want to do. And that's like, the goal. That's the advice I give to younger photographers and creators. It's trying to get into a certain field with photography. Sometimes there's people that ask me, like, "Oh, how do I go about reaching out to this brand or this brand?" And I look at their page, and they don't post anything relevant. You have to have a bit of a portfolio for the type of work that you want to receive from brands, you know? So you want to shoot automotive work, you got to shoot automotive. Do it for free. Like, my first job was free for Mazda, and it led to a lot of paid work with Hyundai, and now climbing that ladder. And it all starts from putting out that portfolio and getting people to understand your work and who you are.

Pat Miller: 13:22

And Instagram is a living portfolio.

Max Loewenstein: 13:24

Oh, yeah, 100%. Yeah, it is my portfolio. Like, I have a media kit. I've used it once in the last year. All my leads are coming from social media.

Pat Miller: 13:33

The stuff looks great. But I just have to ask, you know, off the record. They're not listening right now. It kind of had to feel pretty dang cool when Bentley reached out.

Max Loewenstein: 13:41

It was.

Pat Miller: 13:42

That had to have been a moment.

Max Loewenstein: 13:43

Yeah. So I just gotten this Japan job, traveling to Japan, and a week later, the email from Bentley, and they're like, "Hey, you want to hop on a call? We'd love to find a way to get you in with Bentley." And I was like, oh, my God. They sent me the specs on the car they're sending me next week. And I was like, 2025 is off to a great start. That's all I have to say. Yeah.

Pat Miller: 14:00

That's incredible. Let's go back to talking to someone that wants to do what you're doing. What do you wish that you would have known when you started that you've learned the hard way now.

Max Loewenstein: 14:11

Hmm. That's a great question. I feel like a bit of the advice I gave earlier: shoot for the brands that you want to shoot for. I was one of those guys that would reach out to branded brands, and I have no portfolio in shooting for that type of work. Nothing to show them. So I would say that is obviously like a key factor, but I do really believe in shooting your shot. Like, if you never try to work with these brands, it's never going to happen, right? You have to put yourself out there and be open to being rejected. You'll see all my yeses on Instagram, everything I post. No one really sees the nos. You know, there's been plenty of nos; more nos than yeses. So you got to be not afraid to shoot your shot, but you also got to be really confident in yourself. And I feel like to get yourself to a place where you're confident in your work, you just got to go out and shoot. That's something I'm still trying to do for myself. I get a little too relaxed and I'm like, oh, I have all this work I can post this week, this week, this week. But what I need to be doing is constantly out in the field creating, evolving, thinking of new ideas. That's definitely the hard part. Especially, you know, I turned 30 this last year. I feel more domesticated. Got a dog, Me and my fiance bought a house. It's harder for me to go out and want to shoot photos. Like, I love my home life now. So constantly finding ways to stay out in the field and shoot new content and, and present new work. Especially as a young photographer, I feel like you have to create as much as possible, as much as you possibly can. That's how you're going to get better and improve.

Pat Miller: 15:40

How do you get unstuck when you're kind of in a rut, when you're feeling run down, when you get a couple of nos in a row, how do you pick yourself up and keep moving forward?

Max Loewenstein: 15:49

You got to go out and shoot with your friends. I would say that's what really does it for me. I'll have friends in the Bay Area, like, "Hey, I'm shooting this cool car this weekend." Like, some of the Porsche work that you saw, that was one of those times. It's like, "Hey, we're going to go out and shoot this car." Like, you want to come out, force yourself to get out, get into a new experience, go out and shoot, and it like–I don't know–it's like a reset. You know what I mean? Like, I just you come away with these cool images, you feel good again, you feel refreshed, creative burnout. And getting in that rut is like, so common that you have to find what works for yourself to get out of it, and a lot of that is experimental. Different things work for different people. For me, it is like literally just forcing myself to get out and shoot. And it feels like I'm rejuvenated. Taking the break actually isn't what rejuvenates me. It's actually getting in the field and creating more and getting re-inspired. That's what does it for me.

Pat Miller: 16:35

I'm glad you said re-inspired. I was going to ask, are there areas of your life that aren't photography, music, movies, comic books? What inspires you and makes you think, oh, I kind of like the way that that looks or feels. Maybe I'll play with that.

Max Loewenstein: 16:48

TV and movies, 100%. Yeah, me and my fiance love good TV shows. We love good movies. We're deep into Severance right now. It is incredible. But, like, I'm also looking at the way they filmed it. Like, I'm seeing it from, like, the creative point of view now too. And I don't know if you're on season two, but the opening–one of the opening scenes of season two, they do this crazy camera movement. And I watched all the BTS videos on Instagram of how they did it. So not only am I getting, like, fulfilled by watching something awesome, but I'm also just getting inspired, like, to see what they're shooting with and how they create something. And they're creating it with cameras I own or can own. You know what I mean? They're not like creating on $50,000 cameras and gear and stuff like that. It's obtainable cinematography that they're doing. And it inspires me to want to deep dive more into video as I'm learning this year, while also being super satisfied watching an awesome show.

Pat Miller: 17:40

For sure. That's a great conversation. Thank you for the inspiration. Max Loew, thanks for coming on the show.

Max Loewenstein: 17:45

Thank you for having me. It was great to meet you.

Pat Miller: 17:47

Thanks for tuning in to the Professional Photographer Podcast live from Imaging USA 2025, and a big thanks to Sony for making this look great. Well, as great as you can make this look, but we appreciate you being here. So here's what's next. You need to like and subscribe to this podcast feed because we release this show every week where I get a chance to sit down with the leaders in the industry, and our point of view is to help you build a better photography business. So like and subscribe, and if you want bonus points, I'll email them to you. You'll get bonus points if you leave a comment on this episode. What did they share on the episode that you wanna make sure that you're going to put into your business so you can get further down the road? One other way you can get further down the road, become a member of PPA. If you're watching this and you're not a PPA member, come on bro. You are missing out of all the good stuff that PPA provides. I'm talking about equipment insurance, top-notch education, and a community of photographers around you that are serious about improving their craft. If you wanna know more, go to ppa.com. That's ppa.com. At PPA, you belong here. Thanks again for tuning in to The Professional Photographer Podcast. I'm your host, Pat Miller. We'll see you right here next time. Talk to you soon.