Dante Crisafulli is a former student of SCCC’s Photographic Imaging program. He was gracious enough to come and speak with our seminar class regarding his career since graduating from this program. Dante was prepared with a slideshow of his work and plenty of inside information to share with us.
Dante shared with us that his grandfather was a photographer. Dante was regularly a subject of his grandfather’s photos, and he was very intrigued by photography and the darkroom in his grandfather’s basement. By the time he was 22, he was miserable with his job and decided he wanted to do something he loved. He bought a camera, started travelling, and then decided he wanted to pursue an education in photography. He told us that he benefited greatly from being regimented at school- having due dates, and being put in a “creative box”. I really related with Dante when he said that. I can already tell I am benefiting from the routine of college classes. Dante said he learned about 90% of the fundamentals of photography here at Suffolk.
After graduating, Dante transferred to the Fashion Institute of Technology (F.I.T.) in Manhattan. He told us that this is where he was geared toward commercial photography. F.I.T. focuses on merchandising and marketing, rather than fine art. He founded many connections there and had many internships available to him, like when he was interning for a famous fashion photographer. I have the most interest in this type of career, so I was excited to know more about Dante’s experience.
Dante also interned at a company called Hearst. They do product shoots for magazines. He worked on setting up the studio for the photographer though he wasn’t shooting, he still learned a lot from the experience.
After graduating from F.I.T., Dante did some freelance work before working with VaynerMedia, an advertising company. This was back in 2014, when VaynerMedia was still a startup company. Dante was a part of the production department, and he spent 5-7 days a week shooting for advertisements. He called it “micro content”, low cost, easily digestable content companies could post daily on social media. Many companies that did not have any content for their social media pages (such as Instagram), came to ad agencies like VaynerMedia in search of this type of content. When the clients liked the work being done for them, they’d give a bigger budget for production, which in turn means higher quality work is being produced. One client Dante mentioned was Budweiser, for whom he shot a “35mm campaign” that the company loved. Dante mentioned a lot of this work he was doing had to do with “creating characters to be the face of the brand”.
Dante eventually decided to pursue producing video. He directed an advertisement for a client WEYV, which currently has Over 1.7 million views on YouTube. He shot the entire video on a low $75,000 budget. He said that money went to setup, talent, paying the voice actor and the song composition. The success of this ad is what proved to others that Dante was capable of shooting video successfully.
Dante has also done work for Comcast. He shot a video ad for the Winter Olympics that was intended to be digital, but ended up being used on TV for the opening ceremony. He also shot video ads for Right to Dream, which actually made me cry when he showed them to us. Dante mentioned to us that this type of work showed the importance of being compassionate and sensitive when working with people. He said that the story is more important than what it looks like, and once you learn to craft a simple story the images come together after. He was travelling a lot for these ads, and it gets very physically demanding. He said, “if you feel you HAVE TO do something, you WILL make it work”.
Dante is now freelancing and still working with VaynerMedia. He said he hopes to start his own production company in the future. Dante’s story is one of success and inspiration. As I mentioned, commercial photography has always been my interest. Shooting product advertisements for social media, or even designing social media campaigns for companies is something I would absolutely love to do. ad I think I would be good at it, too. I don’t know if I will ever be as successful as Dante, or if this will even be the line of work I’m able to pursue. but being able to meet someone who does this work was a great experience. Dante was great to listen to and I think his work is awesome.
If you'd like to check Dante's work, visit his website here!
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