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Meet Eric Phillips

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Today we’d like to introduce you to Eric Phillips.

Eric, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, Illinois. During high school, I fell in love with cameras and took all the camera electives I could. I also was heavily involved with the boy scouts, where I developed a love for the outdoors. After high school, my family and I moved north to Wisconsin were I began community college and also started working as a snowboard instructor at my local ski hill. After a year at community college, I transferred to the University of Wisconsin – Green Bay to pursue a degree in environmental science. While at UWGB, I still wanted to pursue being a snowboard instructor and therefore was driving 90 miles, one way, to the closest ski hill. Halfway through that winter, I had a big realization. I realized that I cared more about progressing my education as a snowboard instructor than any of my classes at UWGB. I knew I needed to make a big change with my life path. While looking into taking a semester-long NOLS course (national outdoor leadership school) related to becoming a better instructor, I found that you could get college credit for these courses at a school called Western State Colorado University in the Recreation and Outdoor Education Department, located in Gunnison Colorado. 

Instead of taking a semester off on a course, I immediately applied to Western. I didn’t do too much research before making this decision. I just knew this was the place I needed to be. That August, I arrived in Gunnison to start my new degree in Recreation and Outdoor education, and hopefully continue to work as a snowboard instructor at the local ski hill (crested butte mountain resort). After my first week in Gunnison, I knew I was in the right place and on the right track. I felt like I was finally home. But I also knew that my i phone, which I had been taking photos on for years, was not going to cut it anymore. It was time to get a real camera. By December of that year (2016), I had gotten that camera (a Nikon d3400) and started taking pictures of literally everything I could. One of my field-based courses for Recreation and Outdoor Education involved going on a river trip that spring down the yampa river and I took my camera on it. I ended up taking like 3000 photos on the five-day trip and both the guiding company that ran the trip and Western’s marketing department wanted to use the photos. This was the first time I realized that I could sell/make money off of my photography.

Shortly after this trip, I was hired by Western’s marketing department to take photos for the school’s social media and marketing materials. It was my first real job as a photographer. After shooting for western for a year and progressing my skills as a photographer, I reached out to a company called Travel Crested Butte and asked for an internship. My dreams were made when they said yes. I spent the summer as one of 4 interns working to market Crested Butte and had the best summer to date. That august, the rest of the interns went back to their respective schools and their two full-time employees(who had been with the company for a few years) both decided to move on to the next chapter in their lives and leave Crested Butte and the company. Suddenly I had gone from one of a few interns to the only employee doing just about everything. I was in my last semester of college and moving into a full-time role at travel CB, my dream job.

That fall, being so short-staffed at travel cb, we needed more help and I had the pleasure of bringing my friend and fellow photographer Connor Scalbom on as our new intern. I finished my degree that December and launched my career as a professional photographer/videographer. I had just graduated and already was working my dream job in a dream location. Shortly after graduating, I was introduced to my partner Morgan Tilton, who had just moved to Crested Butte. We were both initially looking for friends to share activities with like splitboarding, but after a few splitboarding adventures with Morgan, I realized I had found my life partner. Morgan works as a professional Journalist in the outdoor industry, specializing in outdoor news and adventure travel.

After we started dating, it was uncovered that the year prior, before we knew each other. She had written a story for REI Co-Op Journal about Western Recreation and Outdoor Education program and western had provided her with my images to accompany her words. This would be the start of our professional collaborations. I’ve now had my photography published in countless print and online publications with the words of my partner Morgan Tilton. While I’m still working for Travel Crested Butte, Morgan and I have recently launched our own creative company called Quality Stoke, where we can combine our talents to share stories in the outdoor industry.

Has it been a smooth road?
The biggest challenges for me were in Wisconsin before I transferred to Gunnison. The people in Wisconsin were very lovely and I had great friends but the culture just revolved around drinking and partying and the outdoors and outdoor activities were not part of it. I felt like I was going down a path in life that I did not want and had to make a big change of going to a new place, sight unseen, and starting over.

We’d love to hear more about your work.
I like to call myself an adventure photographer/videographer or a content creator. I create content in the outdoors, specifically to be used as marketing on social media platforms. In a world with so many different social media platforms, it’s important to utilize each platform to its fullest potential. I take pride in making very high-quality content for these platforms. I’m most recognized for the photos I create for Instagram/Facebook on either Travel Crested Butte, or My own accounts. But now that I’ve been working with my partner morgan Tilton I’ve been creating content to specifically go with her stories. For me, I think its passion and determination that really set me apart from others in this field. I’m always taking a camera with me wherever I go and always pushing myself to get up for sunrises or sunsets or take all the camera gear on that 14-mile hike to get the shots.

How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
I think social media is going to continue to play a larger and larger role in our lives and more and more marketing is going to be done through social media. For me, I see the next big trend is vertical video. While long-form video, the normal 16×9 is beautiful, most people are watching it through their phones and holding them vertically. If you want to make the biggest impact, you need to know how your content is being consumed. A 16×9 video doesn’t fit a vertical social media platform like Instagram or Instagram stories very well but most of the advertising I see on these platforms is like that. We live in a vertical world with cell phones and its important to understand how people are consuming content and what’s going to stop someone from endlessly scrolling on their phone and grab their attention.

Contact Info:

Image Credit:
Picture of me taken by Nick Couts

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