Today we’d like to introduce you to Evan Lambrecht.
Hi Evan, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
For as long as I can remember, the outdoors has been a major part of my life. Growing up in Colorado, my family spent much of our time hiking and exploring the mountains, and as I got older I often hiked the trails near Chautauqua with my grandpa. Those experiences deepened my appreciation for nature and eventually inspired me to start documenting the world around me.
My interest in photography began with my dad, who has always enjoyed abstract photography. As a kid, I would walk around cities with him searching for creative perspectives in everyday scenes and objects. In 2015, when I was around 10, he gave me a Canon PowerShot to bring along. It wasn’t a professional camera, but that wasn’t the point. For the first time, I had a way to capture the world as I saw it, and I was immediately hooked. Looking back at those early photos now, it’s incredible how many of the things I was drawn to then still influence my work today.
A few years later, I asked for a Canon Rebel T7 for my 16th birthday. It was a big step up and let me capture the world with a level of detail I hadn’t experienced before. I took it on nearly every hike, trip, and adventure for the next several years. I didn’t necessarily consider myself a great photographer. I just knew how much I loved taking photos, and that was enough to keep me going.
By my senior year of high school, photography was becoming much more than a hobby. I had also been passionate about graphic design, but photography increasingly felt like where I belonged. I was fortunate to have an incredible digital art teacher at Monarch High School, Ali Martini, who recognized how seriously I was taking my work and encouraged me to keep shooting, editing, and developing my own style. I would often finish class projects weeks early and use the extra time on personal photography projects, asking for her feedback. Having someone recognize my potential at that stage gave me the confidence to keep going.
The summer after I graduated high school, I also started recording videos on my iPhone. A photograph freezes a space in time, but I discovered that video could capture something more: a feeling. Having a camera in my pocket meant I could capture fleeting moments as they happened: snow blanketing the trees, the sound of rain, fog rolling across a landscape, light breaking through the clouds for only a few seconds. I became fascinated with capturing the atmosphere of a place through weather, movement, natural sound, and quieter details. Fog, rain, snow, storms, and moody light became defining elements of my style. Ironically, the conditions most people try to avoid became some of my favorites to create in.
I started sharing those videos online as @stuckkonearth with no expectation that it would become my career. Then the third video I ever posted to TikTok, a clip I had captured walking down my street during a blizzard, reached 30 million views within days. Almost overnight, I went from a small audience to more than 100,000 followers. It was an incredible blessing, and the first moment I realized this could become something much bigger. I kept experimenting and refining a visual style that increasingly felt like my own.
As my audience grew, I started to understand why the videos resonated. We spend so much of our lives indoors, looking at screens and following the same routines, that I think many people crave immersive time in nature, even if they can’t experience it firsthand. I wasn’t just trying to show a beautiful landscape. I wanted people to feel like they were actually there. The slower pacing, ambient sound, dramatic weather, and moments of solitude became a brief escape. Sometimes the places weren’t even extraordinary, just a neighborhood street in a blizzard or a trail I’d walked dozens of times. What made them special was the atmosphere and the way I chose to capture it.
That connection grew into a community of more than 2 million people across my platforms and gave me the opportunity to make content creation my full-time career, collaborating with brands across the outdoor, travel, photography, and automotive industries. Today, I’m still based in Colorado and spend as much time as I can traveling, hiking, camping, and creating. My work has evolved tremendously since that PowerShot, but the reason I create hasn’t changed much. I’m still searching for the beauty in the world around me and trying to capture not only what moments look like, but how they feel.
If my work can give someone a brief escape into nature, encourage them to slow down and notice something they might otherwise overlook, or inspire them to step outside, then I feel like I’ve accomplished what I set out to do
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It hasn’t always been smooth. From the outside, especially with how quickly my social media grew, it can look like everything happened overnight. In reality, getting views and followers was only the beginning. Turning something I loved into a sustainable career came with a whole different set of challenges.
One of the biggest was learning to treat content creation as a business without losing the reason I started creating. As my audience grew, so did the pressure to constantly post and make something that would reach millions of people. It’s easy to let numbers dictate what you make, and I’ve had to learn that not every video needs to go viral to be meaningful. Some of the work I’m most proud of isn’t the work that performed best.
There was also a lot I had to learn on my own. Suddenly I wasn’t just a photographer or filmmaker. I was negotiating contracts, working with brands, managing deadlines, planning shoots, traveling, editing, and posting across multiple platforms, essentially running a small business. There’s no clear roadmap for turning a social media account into a career, so much of it has been learning through experience and mistakes.
This past spring was a major lesson. As I worked toward going full-time, I started looking into agencies that could help with brand outreach and collaborations. I found a large agency that represented several creators I knew, and I hired a lawyer to review the contract before moving forward. The deeper I got, the more I realized how careful creators have to be on the business side. Some of the terms would have given the agency far more control over my career and business decisions than I was comfortable with. After more research and conversations with other creators, I decided not to sign.
A few weeks later, I connected with a fellow creator who works full-time making UGC, partnering with brands, and building his own social presence. After briefly talking over DMs, he offered to meet for coffee that Friday. We talked about where I was in my career, and he offered to consult me as I learned to navigate the business side of social media, which still felt like murky water at the time. We quickly became close friends, and having someone with firsthand experience in my corner has made a huge difference as I’ve learned to negotiate partnerships, pitch brands, understand usage rights, and recognize the value of my work.
That confidence led me to make content creation my full-time job in May. It still feels surreal that something that began with taking photos on hikes is what I get to do every day.
The challenge now is to keep evolving creatively. Social media makes it easy to find something that works and repeat it, but I never want my work to go stagnant. I’m constantly pushing myself to travel somewhere new, try a different perspective, appear more in my own content, or tell a story in a way I haven’t before, while staying connected to the atmosphere and emotion that made me fall in love with creating.
The challenges have been just as important as the successes. They’ve taught me to be patient, trust my creative direction, and advocate for myself. At the end of the day, I want to build something that lasts, not just chase the next viral video.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
My work centers on outdoor photography and short-form video, with a focus on capturing the atmosphere and emotion of the natural world. Through @stuckkonearth, I document everything from the mountains and forests of Colorado to places I visit while traveling across the country. I’ve also expanded into camping, overlanding, and adventure content, but nature and visual storytelling remain at the center of everything I make.
I’m best known for my darker, atmospheric style. I’m drawn to conditions many people consider “bad weather”: fog, rain, snow, thunderstorms, overcast skies, and low light. A trail you’ve walked dozens of times can feel unfamiliar when it’s covered in snow or disappearing into fog, and those are usually the moments I’m most excited to capture. Rather than making every location look perfect, colorful, or larger than life, I try to show what it actually felt like to be there. Natural sound is a huge part of that. Rain hitting leaves, wind moving through trees, footsteps in snow, or distant thunder can tell as much of a story as the visuals.
What sets my work apart is that I don’t chase the most famous viewpoint or the “perfect” shot. I look for the smaller moments people might walk past: a beam of light through the trees, fog moving across a road, snow collecting on a branch, the way a landscape changes just before a storm. That curiosity goes all the way back to those walks with my dad, and even as my equipment and abilities have changed, it has stayed remarkably consistent.
What I’m most proud of is building a community of more than two million people around something that still feels true to who I am. Some of the things that mean the most to me are messages from people who say a video encouraged them to spend more time outside, reminded them of a place they used to visit, gave them a moment of peace on a difficult day, or inspired them to explore somewhere new.
I’m also proud of turning this into my full-time career without losing what made me love creating. At its core, my work is the same as when I first picked up a camera: I notice something that makes me stop, capture it from my perspective, and hopefully share that feeling with someone else.
What does success mean to you?
For me, success has become much less about numbers and much more about the freedom to build a life around something I love. Reaching millions of people and watching my platforms grow has been incredible, but I don’t think follower counts or view numbers are what make someone successful.
I define success as waking up excited about what I’m working toward. It’s having the freedom to travel, spend time outdoors, create work I’m proud of, and make a living from something that started as a hobby. At 21, I’m grateful to call photography and content creation my full-time career, and I know I’m still at the very beginning of what I want to build.
Success also means creating something with an impact beyond myself. Social media can become so focused on numbers that it’s easy to forget there’s a real person behind every view. Knowing that something I made might encourage someone to step outside, see a familiar place differently, or simply slow down for a few seconds means far more to me than watching a number go up.
Ultimately, I think success is having the freedom to choose how you spend your time, surrounding yourself with people who inspire you, and continuing to grow without losing sight of why you started. I don’t know exactly where this career will take me, and that’s part of what makes it exciting. If I can keep creating work that feels true to me, experiencing new places, and building a life I’m excited to live, I’ll consider that a success.
Pricing:
- Short-Form Campaigns start at $1,500
- UGC $1,000
- Longer-form scopes: custom pricing
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stuckkonearth/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61578895604848
- LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/evanlambrecht
- TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@stuckkonearth
