The Magical Touch of Finn Beales

Author: David Perell URL: https://www.perell.com/blog/2015/5/16/the-magical-touch-of-finn-beales One-line: A profile of landscape photographer Finn Beales as the archetype of a new kind of internet-native artist — one who lives in rural solitude yet builds a global brand and business through Instagram, proving that in a connected world location and connections matter less than how you engage an audience.

Key claims

• Solitude feeds the work. Finn Beales lives in the Black Mountains of Wales near a town of only ~1,500 people, giving him time to read, think, and explore the relationship between wildlife, people, and nature through his camera.
• Bad conditions make great photos. Beales seeks out misty mornings, gale-force winds, snow blizzards, and driving rain — poor conditions create dramatic, un-recreatable scenery that produces his signature images, and force him to connect with the world around him.
• Break the rules the craft taught you. Beales deliberately centers his subject and defies the rule of thirds / golden ratio, on the logic that those rules lose their power inside Instagram’s square frame. When you learn a craft you should treat its “best practices” as artifacts of the existing way of doing things — doing something new means constantly reinventing the medium (cf. Investing 101 2.0).
• The internet collapses geography. With the internet it doesn’t matter where an artist lives or who they know — only how they engage audiences. Growth becomes viral as recommendations compound into exponential reach (cf. Digital Creators).
• Supply went up, prices went down — but the platform saved the model. Dramatically better iPhone cameras let anyone shoot magazine-quality photos, increasing supply and depressing prices for landscape photography. Beales stays bullish because Instagram lets him connect directly with brands and businesses while reaching a global audience (cf. Platforms).

Notable quotes

“By choosing to live in relative solitude in the Black Mountains of Wales, Beales enjoys reading, thinking and exploring the world through his iPhone camera lens.”

“Poor conditions create dramatic scenery that can be used to create the exquisite images that Beales is known for.”

“Enjoy today. You’re not promised tomorrow.” — Finn Beales

“When you expect nothing from the world — not the light of the sun, the wet of the water, nor the air to breathe — everything is a wonder and every moment a gift.” — Michael J. Sullivan

“Beales defies the standard rule of thirds taught in photography classes. His reasoning is that the rule of thirds/golden ratio loses its power with the square frame that Instagram requires.”

“With the Internet, it does not matter where an artist lives or who they know. Instead, artists must focus on engaging with audiences in a way that is only possible with the Internet.”

“iPhone cameras have improved dramatically giving anybody the opportunity to take photos that could appear in magazines or newspapers. Thus, supply has increased causing the price for photos to decrease.”

How it connects

• David Perell — another early-career (2015) Perell piece, here profiling an internet-native creator; prefigures his later writing-on-the-internet and personal-brand themes.
• Finn Beales — the subject: a Welsh landscape photographer who built a brand and business on Instagram.
• Photography / The Luna Landing — the craft and the project context Perell filed this under.
• Digital Creators / Platforms — the internet collapses geography and lets a creator reach brands and a global audience directly; the platform offsets commoditized supply.
• Investing 101 2.0 — Beales breaking the rule of thirds as a case study in not being over-tied to a craft’s inherited best practices.