Meet Luc Sabatier | Photographer and Filmmaker

We had the good fortune of connecting with Luc Sabatier and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Luc, we’d love to hear about how you approach risk and risk-taking
When I think about risk, I am reminded of the story of the legendary musician and activist Henry Rollins. Before he achieved any kind of notoriety, Rollins was a broke, young person like many of us in the creative space. He felt that he was wasting away working as an ice cream scooper at Ben & Jerry’s. A fan of punk music, he traveled many hours to a show one night for the band Black Flag, despite having to be at work very early the next day. He was noticed for his vibrant energy and picked out of the crowd by the band to sing a song right before having to drive back home. Within a week, Black Flag’s singer quit and the band called Rollins asking him to audition. This was the beginning of an impressive career full of risk taking examples, from breaking 80’s punk traditions to forays into acting and activism. Risk taking is essential, especially in creative spaces. To avoid risk like the plague is to forgo the vast majority of development and learning the world has to offer. I believe embracing risk is a universal truth when it comes to success no matter your ambitions. This is, however, a nuanced concept; I am not saying we should recklessly charge into unknown situations and tarnish our reputations, perhaps before they even form. Embracing risk is not synonymous with acting in ignorance, which is why proper risk assessment and doing an abundance of research is so important. Luck is a factor, but with proper preparation, we can put ourselves in a better position to capitalize on risks. In fact, that preparation allows you to capitalize on the inevitable failures as much or more than the successes.
For me, risk taking unknowingly guided the course of my career and education to this point, beginning with BMX. I am an avid BMX rider, and started riding when I was twelve. Risk is inherent to the sport, as you can imagine, and the skills I have learned in BMX over the last decade came gradually as I assessed risks and prepared myself to take them. Sometimes I succeeded quickly, but more often I failed and studied what went wrong for the next attempt. I have the scars to show for it, but those lessons stuck with me. Photography and videography are an integral part of BMX and skate culture. Though I didn’t recognize it at the time, the lessons of BMX had bled over into my documentation of the sport as I experimented with camera angles and methods of recording myself and friends. Unsatisfied with the STEM subjects that had been the majority of my primary education, my experiences in BMX inspired me to pursue film production when I went to college at Georgia State in 2019. This felt like a major risk, having limited examples in my life of successful creatives, but one I felt prepared for because I enjoyed it. I was able to take courses at Georgia Film Academy on the lighting and art departments. There I learned the skills and equipment I would need to experiment more thoroughly with imagery, and I also met incredibly talented people who continue to be valuable resources. Those people are the reason for my involvement in several independent films. While I felt intimidated and nervous by the idea of actually working on the crew of a film, I knew I had done the leg work to be prepared and that the risk was appropriate. They proved to be professionally and intellectually fruitful experiences, and one of those short films, “Black Butterfly,” has been seeing some success in the festival circuit this summer.
More recently I have taken major risks as I shift my sights more specifically to photography. These risks have come in the form of marketing myself in new ways, meeting and learning from people with valuable insights, and starting a job as a school photographer. As I look back over the patterns of my life, I have no doubt I will continue to take risks and learn from the experiences and people I meet along the way.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
My art continues to develop, and I doubt it will ever have a final form. In recent years I have been especially enamored by photographic expression. Sometimes I align with the common idea that your image should be more than an image, that it should tell a story. Other times I am just interested in creating an aesthetically pleasing image. I think this broad outlook and appreciation for photography on the theoretical side has bled over into my work, as I have yet to be confined by a single discipline. I find as much joy in automotive and nature photography as I do in portraiture and candids. I am still early in my career, which is a factor I appreciate. Perhaps down the line I will focus on a certain type of image, or move to another medium of expression entirely. For now, however, I am interested in going with the flow, as cliche as that saying is. Whatever I want to shoot on a given day is what I try to shoot. While I can certainly show you images of mine that are my favorite, I have more so fallen in love with the process as opposed to the product. Learning more and more about methodology, equipment, processing workflow, and subject interaction has been an artistically and intellectually fulfilling experience that I don’t see stopping anytime soon. At the beginning of my photography endeavors, the hardest pill to swallow is exactly what I have come to love: the process. It was so frustrating to shoot for three hours and have no images that I was satisfied with. Especially at first, you will take probably a hundred times more uninteresting or straight-up bad images than good. That is probably an underestimate, however getting over that became easy the more I shot. The crude math on that is easy; once I had taken a few thousand images, I had a handful that I was actually really stoked on and wanted to share. That leads me to another obstacle I had to get over, which is kind of in line with what is known as imposter syndrome. Once I produced some images I thought were actually good, I became anxious about putting them out there, or even calling myself a photographer. I thought, “no one is going to care about these images in the endless sea of digital images out there,” and “how am I any different than every other photographer, or person with a smartphone for that matter?” After a while I realized why those thoughts were misleading. For one thing, it is the thought that counts. I am not just taking pictures to take pictures. Whether it is an aesthetic image I am trying to create or a story I want to tell, I am thinking about the subject in front of me and thinking even more about how to capture it. That is what differentiates me, and anyone who calls themselves a photographer for that matter. Your images are an unfiltered expression of your perspective of a subject and the photographic medium. When people see my work, I am confident they are experiencing something they can get nowhere else: they are experiencing my own artistic perspective, and I will continue to refine that forever.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
With new folks to Atlanta, of course I would briefly let them know of the tourist attractions. However, the reason it would be brief is I don’t know too much about them, so I would be much more enthusiastic about other spots. The strip of bars and restaurants on Edgewood ave. like Mombo Zombie, Joystick Gamebar, and Church are a must, as well as the East Atlanta Village businesses. I feel like those places give a good idea of the breadth of culture that actually makes Atlanta so unique. A few places I grew up eating that I would definitely recommend are LaFonda and Fox Bros. BBQ, but there are so many good options in this city that as long as you avoid chains it should be good. I really like Planet Bombay if you want some Indian food. Of course they would have to hit a wing spot like Wing Stop or Lucky China to get those famous Atlanta wings, the bones of which litter the streets. Aside from places to eat and drink, I’d love people to experience some of the natural wonders around Atlanta. Lionel Beecher Park near the West End is a beautiful park with minimal traffic, and really shows why they’ve always called Atlanta the city in the forest. Watching a movie at the Plaza or Tara theater is also such a great time that is unique to this city.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
Someone I want to give a shoutout to is Chilly-o (@chillyolovesyou on instagram). Chilly-o has been a fixture of creativity in Atlanta and a mentor to many young creatives for a very long time now. My first experience manipulating real lighting equipment was through an opportunity he gave me to assist on a photo shoot when I was eighteen, and I will forever appreciate the support and love he has shown me since even before then. He has shown unwavering support for the real Atlanta culture as a whole, and deserves all the attention in the world for the positive impact he has on underserved communities and counteracting the gentrifying and culturally sterilizing trends that have been on the rise as our politicians continue to sell out our city.

Instagram: @sabatier_media @luc_sabatier

Other: Website and Official portfolio in progress. They will be accessible form my instagram pages when published. The photos I attached that represent me and my work are all examples of my photography except for the bmx photo. That one is a photo of myself, pulled from a video I recorded of myself.

Image Credits
The personal photo of me was taken by my girlfriend and fellow photographer Hannah Corley. Her Instagram handle is @Hannahwcorley