Who is Jeff Lombardo? That’s a great question. Unfortunately, I don’t have a great short Instead, I can tell you my story and allow you to form your own opinion.
It all started around the time I was 5 years old. Every year my Mother would take me to Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida. The special effects, explosions, big cameras, behind-the-scenes access, and locations left me in a state of awe. I thought it was the coolest thing in the world.
Several years later and after several more visits in the can to Universal Studios, the original Batman came out with Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson. It was larger than life. My father and I waited in line for 2 hours to see the opening in Times Square. During the movie I remember the batwing flying up to the moon and all you saw was its silhouette. That moment brought a rowdy New York City crowd out of their seats, cheering.
The energy inside that movie theater was insane. It was a life-changing moment for a 9 year old. Little did I know, the two experiences I just described would set the tone for my entire career.
At the time I was 14, my mother purchased a brand new Pentium 100 computer with 16MB RAM, 1GB Hard Drive and a 33.6K Modem for our house. We grew up in an Italian neighborhood of Brooklyn, NY in the 80’s. Every Italian stereotype that you’ve seen in the movies applied to the life around us. My Mom hoped that buying a computer would provide a future for me and would get me to spend more time inside and less time outside where I could become a problem child in the streets.
We were in the era of AOL 2.5, Prodigy, and Juno where I could be found regularly in various AOL Chatrooms and part of hacker groups. These groups consisted of programmers, designers, pirates, and servers. I noticed a few positions available in one of the groups. I became the designer. I didn’t have an ounce of art history at this point.
Upon joining, I got my hands on a copy of Photoshop 4.0. I was 14 with a lot of free time on my hands. I became very interested in Photoshop and it led me into web and graphic design. I began creating business cards, flyers, and websites for money through friends of the family. The Internet was brand new. People paid so they could say they had a website. They didn’t even care about the design at that point. Having a new computer and a new skill set put me ahead of my time. No one knew anyone that was doing what I was doing and I became the go-to guy for anything computer/design related.
At 16, a family friend noticed the passion I had and connected me with his brother at a company called DIGI-ROM, which Def Jam outsourced their short-run CD duplication and artwork for their radio promotions. I ended up running the production department and designing the radio promotional CDs for JAY-Z, Mariah Carey, LL Cool J, DMX, Foxy Brown, 112, etc. This was during the Hip-Hop era in New York in the 90’… prime time.
Trouble started to find me at home and I decided to leave Brooklyn and attend an art college in Tampa, FL. College didn’t last very long. I was already self-taught and I couldn’t imagine all the student loan debt that was piling up. I owed $14K after 2 semesters. I would have owed $98K after 4 years. Once I realized that, I left after 8 months (2 semesters).
After leaving college, I was connected with another family friend who was in the “merchandise business.” I started designing t-shirts for all the major sporting events and concerts while we traveled the country to sell them at different venues. We worked Superbowls, NBA Finals, World Series, NHL Playoffs, Nascar Events, and 80,000 seat stadium concerts, festivals, you name it.
It was an eye opening experience that allowed me see different cities, suburbs, cultures, food, music, lifestyles, learn the road, and see new financial opportunities. Up until that point I’d only been to Florida. I thought every city was like New York, until I left New York. I also realized travel isn’t as difficult as everyone makes it out to be. It’s actually pretty easy if you know how to play the game. I covered 39 states in 3 months at the age of 19.
After summer concert season ended and doing numerous laps around the country, I went back to New York. I found a freelance design job on Craigslist to design a DVD Box for an Adult Movie company in Los Angeles. The client I did the job for invited me out to LA for the LA Erotica convention after the job was complete. I took a portion of the money they paid me and purchased my flight.
I always had an obsession with California and I finally found a way out there. Once I got to LA, I already had a buzz going with the work I created. Now I had something relative to the industry to shop around as a portfolio piece. My only piece! When I got back to New York I received a call asking if I wanted to work for Larry Flynt’s Hustler. They offered me $65K a year at 22 years old. I did what any 22 year old single guy would do, I worked for Hustler… in their art department. I moved out to California, something I always dreamt of. Hollywood was the land of special effects, explosions, big camera’s, behind-the-scenes access and locations that left me in a state of awe as a kid.
6 months went by and I quit Hustler. It wasn’t for me, but it served its purpose. It got me to LA, allowed me to make connections and make some money. I used it as a launchpad. I then found a creative agent in LA and took a placement test on Photoshop. I passed with flying colors and began getting placed at top ad agencies, NBC, MGM, FOX, Disney, EA Games, Warner Brothers and Universal Studios. At this point in my career I was 25, an independent contractor with titles ranging from Graphic Designer, Production Artist, Web Designer, and Art Director. I was designing movie posters, billboards, outdoor ads, DVD packaging, and websites for The Dark Knight, Twilight, New Moon, SAW IV, Yogi Bear, X-Men Wolverine, Yogi Bear 3D Valkyrie, and countless others over the course of 4 years. My work was on billboards, bus stops and train stations all over the country.
After a while I started to realize that you’re only as good as the last title you work on. No one seems to care that you worked on The Dark Knight when Dark Knight Rises comes out. No one seems to care that you worked on SAW IV when SAW V comes out, or Twilight and New Moon when Eclipse comes out. Movies are dated, therefore so is my portfolio. When I designed the Twilight MySpace takeover (in MySpace prime), the movie studio paid $150k for a day worth of advertising on the MySpace homepage so 300 million people would see it leading up to the premiere. 300 million people saw my work in 1 day. That was crazy.
On one hand I felt a huge sense of self-accomplishment. On the other hand, I found myself having to convince people that it was my work because artists in studios never receive credit.
When you add it all up, billions of people have seen my work but no one knows it’s mine. Giving up my intellectual property was part of the contract going in, so I’m not mad at anyone for that. I agreed to it. Without agreeing to it I would have never had the chance to do the work. But upon signing it you can’t imagine the success it’s going to have.
I never even heard of Twilight when I signed the paper. 2 months later it was the biggest thing in the world. I felt like the low man on the totem pole looking for recognition while everyone was looking past me. The only thing you can do in that situation is make it work for you on a freelance level and use your portfolio to your advantage.
After working on all those titles at the ad agencies, movie studios, and television studios, I felt like there wasn’t anywhere else for me to go. I had reached my peak. I felt like I was stuck in a hamster wheel, chasing movie titles to stay relevant in my career.
The Dark Knight was the 2nd biggest movie of all time. Twilight set all kinds of records and Watchmen was the biggest IMAX release of all time. I also designed Hustler’s highest selling title at the time.
When I was younger I always knew what I loved but I pictured doing what I love in my 40’s or 50’s, not at 25. When you’re 14 years old searching for “Special Effects” mentors online under “occupation” in the AOL Member Directory (laughs), everyone was in their 40’s or 50’s. I figured it was an older man’s game. They had a home, a wife, kids, the whole 9 yards. But here I was out in Hollywood for 2 years and I had worked at Universal Studios and worked on the Dark Knight (Batman).
Those experiences as a kid came full circle. I never planned any of it. I woke up every day and did what I wanted to do without much of a plan and doing what I wanted to do everyday led me to do what I was meant to be doing. I was already living the biggest dream I ever had as a kid. My projection of how long it would take me to reach my goals were off by a 20 years. I said, now what?
I decided since I didn’t have anymore career goals at the time, I was just going to focus on living a good life. I decided I wanted to get back to traveling.
Photography all started to come together when I decided to put everything I own in a storage unit and started to travel, designing as a freelancer on retainer to support myself. During my travels I documented my trips and took pictures of different landscapes all over the world.
I was doing so with just an iPhone and a few apps that allowed me to point, shoot, edit, and share pictures on Social Media without any delay. The apps appealed to me from a design and editing perspective more than anything else. On the flip side, I still had to take pictures in order to edit and post them.
Once Instagram took off everyone started sharing their own photos and my competitive spirit took over and I began to take photography more serious. It forced me to take better pictures and I got into “iPhoneography.”
One night I was on a flight and realized I was in love with the life I was living. I was on permanent vacation. I wanted to travel and take pictures forever. I asked myself what kind of profession allowed that? Travel… photography… travel photography? Is that real? I wasn’t sure, but I said I’m going to be a travel photographer.
When I landed I took all my photos and built a website, broken down into all the places I’ve been, and called it Jeffsettin.com. It was a travel blog. I applied the “if you build it, they will come” mentality.
Years later, I'm still traveling. 47 states, 27 countries, 6 continents later, I found SteemIt. Now, I'm about to head out on an epic adventure across 30 countries and 6 continents starting in late July and I will be STEEMING ALL OF IT! Why? Because STEEM didn't exist before and this is the best social network ever created and I love you guys for helping me get off to a kick ass start! I'm looking forward to sharing the world with you.
Instagram: @jefflombardo