Episode 3: Ravi Vora

When I first stumbled upon Ravi Vora, he had joined a discussion I was co-modding with a mutual friend on Mastery on the audio app Clubhouse. It was a small room full of big people. Everyone that participated in our gathering that evening had passionately pursued their calling and openly shared the peaks and valleys of their journey’s. Something about the tonality of his voice, the thoughtful pauses and gracious exchanges made me feel like there was an expansive wealth of wisdom in him. I looked at his profile link which led me to his IG account. When I came upon his work I was immediately blown away by how evocative and ethereal it felt. Probing more deeply I looked at his website which further supported what a creative gem he is. 

I wanted to learn more about who this person was and how he became so good at capturing these beautiful moments in time. Moments of reflection, tension, release, wonder, awe, love…

How does a person have the ability to identify, document and amplify the human condition so exquisitely? 

I think it’s very difficult to communicate all the emotions and big experiences we encounter in life for others, if we aren’t willing to go there ourselves. If we allow fear and the unknown to hold us back from the edge, how much are we limiting our capacity to be more??

In interviewing Ravi, I was inspired by his curiosity and desire to be moved to his limits, and how he is constantly humbled in seeking new heights. The story he’s lived and the story that continues to emerge is one that I am delighted to share and follow…

Full Transcript:

Emily Kwok:
Welcome to The Master & The Apprentice, with Emily Kwok, where we are exploring the path from apprenticeship to mastery. Today, I am super excited to be able to interview Ravi Vora. Ravi is a world class filmmaker and photographer. He's appeared in international campaigns, as well as on Netflix. He's also created campaigns for some of the most recognizable brands like Nike, Apple, Qantas, Microsoft, Land Rover, Ducati, the list goes on and on. He's incredibly accomplished.

Emily Kwok:
He also specializes in commercial work with a focus on travel portraiture lifestyle and above all, and what intrigues me the most, is story. Ravi, welcome. Thank you so much for being a guest.

Ravi Vora:
Hi, Emily. Thank you so much for having me. This is amazing.

Emily Kwok:
Yeah. I think I just want to set the context for the audience and talk about the fact that you and I had first met in a Clubhouse chat room. In that conversation, it sort of seemed to emerge and reveal itself that you've had a really unconventional path to doing what it is that you do. For anyone that's curious when they check out your Instagram or your website, there are some beautiful artwork on there relative to the photographs that you like to take, but also your very impressive campaigns that you've shot.

Emily Kwok:
I fell in love with your imagery and work, and I personally feel what I'm most drawn to is it feels like you really know how to capture the essence of a heart or a person or a place. I wanted to ask to start off, how did story become so important to you? And what is it that you would like to share about your story?

Ravi Vora:
Yeah, that's one of the things definitely. I hold story and emotion to be the highest form of connection. With a lot of my work, I'm not actually trying to create and capture that exact moment. I'm trying to capture the emotion and the feeling that happen during that moment, and I'm trying to capture how I felt through my lens.

Ravi Vora:
Because one thing that's really important that a lot of people maybe that aren't familiar with lens-based or some of the visual storytelling devices is that point of view and perspective is one of the most important things. My point of view in that moment is really important, whether it's just the angle or the camera move we do before I'm directing a film, whatever it is, but it's really how I'm seeing it. My audience is seeing it through my eyes as well.

Ravi Vora:
How do we capture the story and the feeling, and then let you know what's going on. With filmmaking, you have 24 frames a second. You have this long form or longer form version. With photography, you actually only have that one single frame, but you can still tell a story. You can still capture the in between moment, which is what's important to me, is you find this in between moment. And then on either side, the viewer has to do the assumption.

Ravi Vora:
There's now a connection where their imagination is engaged. It's the same thing with comic books. In comic books, they work best because between the frames there's white space and the viewer is actually filling in that white space and what happened in between one frame to the next. When you see that, for me, that's way that you can engage and you no longer become passive. You're actually an active part of the story.

Ravi Vora:
You imagine what happened right beforehand and what happened afterwards, how that story came to be, and what's going to happen after this moment passes. But the fact that we captured that perfect moment in between to tell both sides and capture and take you on that journey, not only are you now on that journey, but you're part of the story as it evolves.

Emily Kwok:
Holy smokes! As you were speaking, I was thinking back to some of the work that I've watched and taken in of yours, and it just gave me a whole new appreciation for why I enjoyed so much. I don't think I've really experienced hearing someone describe imagery and storytelling like that, or story making, if you will. The filling in the gaps part was fascinating to me. And actually it makes me... In some ways, I feel like it makes me understand why I am so drawn to your work.

Emily Kwok:
I think I'd said to you earlier as we were going back and forth planning this that I don't think I've ever loved a commercial so much. And when I was watching, I mean, all your commercials are incredible, but the Qantas commercial that came to mind was just... It just made my heart soar. Listening to you describe how you're setting up the frames and what it is that you're trying to capture, it perfectly explains why it feels so immersive and why it makes people feel or want to be in those places.

Emily Kwok:
Is this something that you learned, or is this something that you found emerged in your own process?

Ravi Vora:
Yeah. Just to quickly kind of talk about my backstory a little bit, one of the things that most people that know my story intimately would tell you is that I definitely didn't start off on a path of creativity. My initial path was that I actually met one of the lead scientists who cloned Dolly the Sheep and inspired me to want to help people by cloning body parts and people and things and helping people in need who maybe lost something in their physical body.

Ravi Vora:
I went on the path to become a geneticist. That was my goal is to be able to replace hearts, et cetera. And on that path, I realized that there was a lot of rote memorization. That was not something that allowed me to be creative and kind of follow my passion. And just in that time period, I realized I needed to do something that was more tangibly creative immediately and in the traditional sense of creative. My path really strayed from that.

Ravi Vora:
Even though I was taking these genetics and physics courses, et cetera, at a high level, I decided I wanted to completely do away with that and go into some sort of storytelling. And that became a point of contestment with the parents, of course, but as I decided this was what I wanted to do and I was going to prove that I had some sort of talent or success in it, it became my path. I did not really have any formal training. I've never taken a photography course.

Ravi Vora:
Really barely taken any art classes besides when I was in either high school or below. Everything was very much organically driven and it was in a way trying to discover how my voice could be translated through and find its way into the visual and otherwise filmmaking stories. Most of this sense of wanting to tell a story came from that there was always something more that I wasn't always finding in every photograph I saw or every piece of still visual storytelling.

Ravi Vora:
Most of my passion comes from filmmaking and music and long form books, things like that. I feel narrative storytelling holds a really, really long-term impact on people. When I ask people, "What's your favorite photograph," it's very rare that someone says that they have one. It may be one or two things that they remember and they think, "Oh, this is a great one. This is also one that I really love," but it's rarely a favorite. And if you ask somebody, "What's your favorite book?

Ravi Vora:
What's your favorite film," almost everyone has at least a few that they can name that they love and it really speaks to them. They carry with them or they read more or watch more than once. Those are the kind of stories and emotional connections that form us as humans. If we can do that and do that in a photograph or something else, those are the kind of stories I want to tell.

Ravi Vora:
Because at the end of the day, as we form as humans, when we try to story tell, if someone else is able to tell you, "I was inspired by this photograph. It made me want to go to this place, do this thing," whatever it is, now that story became more than just a photograph. It became a full on form of who that person is and also became part of their worldview.

Ravi Vora:
So now when they tell their story about that place, or it changes their perspective, it all ties back to them being inspired one time by seeing a photograph or a moment. And that to me is really fulfilling as a creative.

Emily Kwok:
That is an incredible story. Not anything like what I was expecting at all, because it's such a diversion from where you began. I mean, it sounds like the idea of making an impact and Dolly the Sheep and being able to create experiences for people, it seems like that is consistent throughout. Was that difficult for you to pull away from? Because I would imagine that the track that you were on previous to deciding to pursue your life creatively, that seems like a much more regimented career, as you had said.

Emily Kwok:
There were aspects of that as you were going about it that weren't as appealing to you. But I would say that it's really not that easy for us to establish ourselves in a certain way, and especially when that way is quite structured. To find a voice that would tell us to do something different and to actually listen to it and act upon it, not always the easiest thing to do. What was the calling or what was the trigger that made you decide to choose different path in life?

Ravi Vora:
Yeah, you're absolutely right. One of the things that is really different about visual storytelling and advertising and all these other things, these mediums that we use to kind of strike the heartstrings, is that it's much less tangibly and understandably objectively impactful. If you do clone someone's heart who needs a heart transplant, that's very one-to-one tangible. You put it in there. It works. You give them life. You're able to very viscerally see exactly what's going on and how it impacted someone.

Ravi Vora:
That structure is really important because we have to know that there's value there. When we go to visual storytelling or things that are less tangible, we tell a story. We have no idea what that could lead to. Art inspires science. Art inspires passion. Art inspires all sorts of things positively or negatively. We really don't know where it will take the people that are impacted by it because it's not our story. It's no longer just the artists.

Ravi Vora:
One of the things I really hold strongly is that art is really a communication between two people, or usually I like to think of it only as two people. Because whoever is experiencing it at the time, that's whose story it is. Regardless of if there's a hundred thousand people in an audience at a concert, or watching a movie, or whatever it is, it really is just one person who made the piece of art, whether it's the director or the person who is responsible at the end of the day for the story and the thought, to that person experiencing it and how it impacts their life and what experiences their drawn on to actually connect with it.

Ravi Vora:
Because a lot of us go through different things in life and whether or not dogs, we are scared of them or we love them, will be really a big difference in how we perceive them on the screen. How we see it play out is something that a lot of artists will always struggle with because we don't know. There's no way to say this is good or bad art, or is good or bad impact. We have a incredibly subjective world we live in when it comes to storytelling.

Ravi Vora:
That is definitely one of the difficulties overall. Personally, I had a very difficult time with my father being an engineer, my mother being a scientist, a microbiologist owning her own laboratory and all of these things. And myself as someone who was on a path of science, came to my parents and said, "I want to do art, and I want to do something intangible and unknown." And them not really fully understanding why I would want to change when they know it works.

Ravi Vora:
They have success already, and they know that I could have success there as well. But my mom actually had a lot of positive impact on that. She was supportive. My dad wasn't as supportive at the time just because he had my best interest in mind, of course. Unfortunately, there was actually... Briefly I'll talk about this story which was really impactful to why I create. When I was in college, I was still in engineering path and there was an art contest for the arts and crafts festival.

Ravi Vora:
The entire college could submit. Art students, whoever you were, it doesn't matter what path you were taking. It was $100 prize if you won the contest, submitted a concept, and they awarded it to you. They were going to put the posters all over, et cetera. I submitted knowing that I was up against these art students who dedicated their entire lives to art and painting, et cetera. I knew I didn't have really a great chance, but I would submit.

Ravi Vora:
Right at that same time, I told my parents I was planning to no longer be an engineer. The next year I was going to switch my major and do something in advertising so that I could be a creative. During that time, we had the conversations about how I probably should stay on the engineering path. And then unfortunately, my mom was in an accident and she passed, and then I found out a few months later that I ended up winning the contest.

Ravi Vora:
And although I didn't have a chance to tell my mom in person that I actually wanted to be an artist and I could find success there, that was a moment where for the rest of my life, I'll be chasing that moment and being able to tell her that I ended up winning the contests. My posters were everywhere. All my designs were on the mall and on giant posters and all these t-shirts walking around.

Ravi Vora:
It became kind of an identifying moment for me that I was on the right path and there was something to be chased there. Forever she'll be inspiring me to do better as an artist, and it's one of those moments where I want to be able to kind of prove to myself. And unfortunately, I'll never be able to tell her in person, but I know she's always watching.

Emily Kwok:
Wow! Ravi, that's an incredible story. I am really sorry to hear about the passing of your mother, but what it's sort of inspired and given you as a gift in some ways is... I mean, that's something that I think is so cherished and treasured to find that fire inside of you, and then to also feel in some ways that they're signals to say that that fire is burning in the right way.

Emily Kwok:
I think for a lot of us, when I decided to call this venture The Master & The Apprentice, I identify with the fact that a lot of us when we decide that we want to take something on, we'll often look to a teacher or look to a system or a set series of ways to do things, a structure, if you will, that will help us understand and learn how it is that we should do it, right? It's not necessarily a malleable path.

Emily Kwok:
And for many of us when we're taking something on, that feels like the right thing to do because we can see where we should be walking and we can see what it is that we should be climbing. When we decide to sort of take on an adventure or something that's much more deeply personal to us, the path is not always clear. And as you mentioned, we don't always know if there's a right way or a wrong way.

Emily Kwok:
But nonetheless, there's something, I guess, deep within our souls that charges us to take advantage of this opening or this path and to see where it might lead. Have you in your career as it sort of unfolded ever feared what that unknown is? Or is that something that makes you feel that you are moving in the right direction? Because in some ways, I think that that unknown or that place that has no boundaries is where our greatest expression lies, because we don't have anything that is dictating what it is that we should do.

Emily Kwok:
I think that that space can be really scary for many people. But when I see individuals such as yourself create the things that you do, I can't help but wonder if there's something that is really inspiring and something that is energetic about that space. I guess to bring it back down, is there any fear in sort of leaving structure, leaving system to find your expression?

Ravi Vora:
Yeah, I think that's such an important point actually, because for me, I think the most important thing a lot of times is that the fear is part of the motivating factor. Absolutely. I find myself to be motivated by fear of, in a very loose way, tied to fear more as exploration. I'm able to explore and find and do things differently. If I feel like I'm following in someone's path or doing the same thing, it almost does the opposite for me. It makes me feel less passionate.

Ravi Vora:
When I see all of these photographers doing the things they've done and the amazing, beautiful work, and I can look back at it and think, "Oh, these are masters," it makes me think those are masters. They mastered what they did. I don't want to do anything like what they did. I want to do the opposite. I want to go in my own way. And that will be my inspiration. How do I do my own thing?

Ravi Vora:
How do I turn the camera around, upside down, put something in front of it that ruins the shot in their mind, but to me actually makes something more beautiful and different. It's all about finding your own voice and who you are. And if they end up being aligned with another artist, that's totally fine as well. It's really about your own experiences, your own world that you lived, and your life that you lived through.

Ravi Vora:
It then is translated, and again, it becomes your POV, your point of view, of how your story is being told in that moment. Because anyone can potentially... There could be 20 people standing in a line experiencing the same moment in front of them. But because each of their stories is different, they're going to have a different perspective. They're going to have a different view. No two photographers would shoot the same shot in the same way.

Ravi Vora:
One of the main reasons that I became a travel photographer and a lot of these things are about putting myself in uncomfortable situations. I'm hiking these mountains, or I'm traveling from one country to the next in two days trying to set up a shoot where I've never been there before. I've never met these people. I don't know anything about... For instance, one of my biggest clients has been Nike. I barely play any sports. I've played tennis and golf.

Ravi Vora:
Other than that, I don't know anything about sports. I don't watch sports. I don't know anything about it, and yet I've worked with Nike for close to since, what, 2013. It's something where I'm putting myself in an uncomfortable situation and trying to do my best storytelling, regardless of the preconceived notions that everyone has when the perfect basket or goal or whatever it is looks like this. But what about the moment where the guy's hunched over and his face is dripping?

Ravi Vora:
We've got this moment where we know the passion is actually more on that moment when he's exhausted, when he's put his whole heart on the line. Not the moment that everyone had looked at and saw, but the ones in between. How do we tell the stories, the human stories, regardless of what the situations are? Our society made up this game where we throw a ball into a hoop and it counts for a point. But at the end of the day, that human could be doing something similar.

Ravi Vora:
And when they put their heart on the line, it doesn't matter what it was, but they all can relate to that emotion. There's a lot of different moments, I think, that are about feeling uncomfortable, trying to stray away from the norm and expected, and those are the magic moments that you'll find that elevate not only your own art, but also how you see the world. And selfishly, you want to become a better person every day and see the world in a new unique way.

Ravi Vora:
One of the ways to do that is to put yourself in someone else's shoes and do something that scares you every single day, if not more than once a day.

Emily Kwok:
Wow! I love that and I love that your... My background was originally in fine arts. I studied art for four years. That's what I have my undergrad in. I always joke that I traded in my license for making art with my hands, and now I sort of express my art through movement doing Brazilian jujitsu. But your comment about being uncomfortable really strikes me, because I tell a lot of people that in Brazilian jujitsu, which is a grappling art, that our job is to teach people how to be comfortable with being uncomfortable.

Emily Kwok:
It's fascinating to me that as an artist, as someone who sees and approaches life differently, that there is that sort of universal theme or concept of learning to be uncomfortable. Why do you think so many people fear or are averse to being uncomfortable?

Ravi Vora:
That's a great question. I think one of the things... Just, again, to quickly talk about my history in the field of photography, because I am one of the farthest from a traditional photographer you'd ever find. I didn't have a master that I could be an apprentice to. In fact, I would say almost the opposite of that. As I saw these people who were successful and had studio cameras and all these things and I said, "If I ever have a studio, I'm going to quit photography."

Ravi Vora:
I don't want that life. I don't love doing the same thing over and over. I want to be challenged constantly. I want to drop into a new location in the world that I've never been before, and I want to have that uncomfortability. I was one of the pioneers on social media in photography. I was one of the first "influencers" in the creative space and on Instagram. I worked with the Instagram team to help kind of facilitate what community meant there, why creatives were actually coming together, and why this was important.

Ravi Vora:
I think since then, Instagram and some of the social media platforms have definitely diverted from what the original kind of passion was. But now there's new passion, for instance, in the NFT space and others where creatives are coming together and wanting to form community, which is really important. I think the uncomfortability of putting yourself in this position where the excitement is that you did something that was against the grain.

Ravi Vora:
Again, going kind of back to the social media thing, one of the biggest trends and still is to this day is seeing people on the edge of a cliff or the edge of a building, things that I don't recommend anyone does. But for some reason, there's a draw to the human conflict that people see that and they think that's somehow beautiful, because there's a moment there that shows how brave someone can be or something, but it has an element of beauty as well in the danger.

Ravi Vora:
A lot of people that have done this and seen these things, they are drawn to it, but they would never do it themselves. Yet somehow inside of them, they're interested. It intrigues them and piques their interest. A lot of people watch movies for the same reason. They want to see the danger and the things people go through and the hardships, but they don't necessarily want to do it themselves. Because they know that if they follow a template, they will get to an end result.

Ravi Vora:
It may not be a high risk, high reward result because that's... The scariest thing is not knowing the end result. When we're in school and we're learning math, we understand when we're doing one plus one equals two, we're a lot more comfortable than X plus Y equals Z and then we have to figure all of this stuff out. Then we become reliant on ourselves and the insecurities come up. And our insecurities and fear drive us each in different ways.

Ravi Vora:
For a lot of people that is to say, "If I don't risk anything, I will guarantee that I will at least move the needle forward because time inevitably moves forward." It's almost like they're being pushed along. Whereas other people are trying to play this ahead and run as fast as they can. And they may fail, but in failure is often where you learn the biggest lessons. If you fail and that doesn't work... In photography, when we have social currency telling us what is and what isn't popular, we have these likes.

Ravi Vora:
And in the early days, they were very much tied to how good "aesthetically" a photo was or a story and how unique it was. We could actually see and start to delineate why a photo is actually doing better than others. And me as a scientist in my previous life, I was actually using it almost as a hypothesis and then kind of diluting into, why is this photo speaking more to people than this one? I could actually start to formulate a color theory. And this is working backwards, right, without having any formal training.

Ravi Vora:
Since then, I've read a lot of books on color theory and everything else, but I didn't know any of it. I was just like, why do people like these two colors? And why are these drawing people in? Why is this kind of... Understanding how light works and color and moments and places and all of these things. And I start to realize, for instance, with photography, in the early days, I would tell all of my friends who were just getting in the photography, just learning it, I said, "Try to have three things in your photos."

Ravi Vora:
For me that always performed better. And to me, I understood now why, but back then I said, "Three things always performs better." If you have a foreground, a middle ground, and a background, or if you have one element and a second element, and then you offset it with a third element, it's these rule of threes. And for me, there was always something about that. I started incorporating a subject into my landscapes, because it allowed me to have a foreground or an element.

Ravi Vora:
And then a subject was my kind of person experiencing it, and then something they're looking at. Often it'd be a mountain in the background or a beautiful lake or whatever it might be. Having that element of a human experiencing it ended up being one of my signatures.

Ravi Vora:
There was even a hashtag called #dotheravivora because I would often not have a subject with me and I would go stand in my own photo and put my phone or my camera on a rock wedge somewhere on a cliff, and I would go run and stand in the photo so that it would have a human element into it. And then my audience could put themselves in the shoes of the person, that happened to be me most of the time.

Ravi Vora:
Those performed so well, and it became a trend where other people were copying and hashing #dotheravivora because they wanted to have that same kind of aesthetic and mindset. It became this understanding where I went through a trial and error hypothesis, failing, and then I ended up with something that ended up being a signature almost. I think that that's where fear can take you if you allow it to push you and allow you to fail and no longer fear it and not do anything new and different.

Ravi Vora:
Try to do the same thing over and over and you'll end up making pretty good work. But if you fear and fail and then overcome it, you'll make great work.

Emily Kwok:
Wow! There was something almost scientific in how you expressed that at the end in terms of how you engage with fear and the feedback that all of these experiments would give you, and how that improved your process. Have you enjoyed creating your own process and letting things emerge from that? Do you think that's something to lean into? Have traditional processes almost. Do they pollute or get in the way of you really emerging more with your own creative voice?

Emily Kwok:
Because I think this is something that a lot of people will run up against, which is, well, do I just sort of fly by the seam of my pants and see what comes of it and refine, or do I follow to some degree some sort of template and will that actually help me move forward? When I was just hearing you describe that, it seemed like your intuition had already tapped into certain elements or things that were "traditionally" known, but you also kind of made it up as you went along and you looked at your feedback loops.

Emily Kwok:
I don't know if your scientific career also helped inform how you would take the emergent feedback and use that to then improve your process.

Ravi Vora:
Yeah. I think with processes and figuring out what works and what doesn't work, one of the things that I've kind of felt is really important is that if it's a low level kind of, I need to get this thing done a to Z and it works, those processes are invaluable. The people that figure out the best way, the most efficient way to do the thing that is almost uncreative, you just have to get it done, whether it's... One of the biggest questions with photography and everything is always, what gear do you use?

Ravi Vora:
What camera do you shoot with? What lens do you use? That is just to me always a question that doesn't really matter too much. Always the best answer that most photographer will give you is whatever camera you have with you is the best camera there is. And for me, that's very true. Anybody can create something amazing with anything they have on them. It's really about answering those really quick processes, having these amazing tools.

Ravi Vora:
We have technology that allows us to do so many things. Get the best or the most versatile camera bag. All these tools, get them and just move on from that. Where the creativity comes in and where the interesting part happens is the philosophical approach to your craft. And that's where you should not follow anyone's process. Actually, if you hear someone shooting only with a 35 mill and doing this, then great for them, but that's their process.

Ravi Vora:
If you follow that to a T, you're only going to be standing in their shadow. Instead, try to do something that is uniquely yours. Do the opposite of that. If you're shooting in a different situation and you end up using a long exposure and it's not sharp, that could be interestingly your process. It could be interestingly your vision. All of these things that allow us to be artists and creators are something that comes from being unique and having your own voice.

Ravi Vora:
The artist's voice inside you often comes from failure and doing something in a way that's different than what everyone else is doing. I would say break the system. Break the rules. Make those philosophical choices and changes in the way you approach your work, completely different. Whether it's all of a sudden, there's a photographer that only with their feet. I don't know. It could be anything.

Ravi Vora:
It's just that that makes it exciting because that piques someone's interest, rather than, "Oh, this photographer does the same thing that every other photographer does." That'll get lost in the sea of noise.

Emily Kwok:
What I'm really curious about learning from you next is this idea that a lot of people, when they consider wanting to take on something that speaks to them deeply, something that is more creative, something that it is that they want to pursue, people will hold themselves back from doing so because they think that the barrier to entry is too high. They'll say, "Well, I'm working as a director in a pharmaceutical company, but I really want to become a baker.

Emily Kwok:
How do I do that? Who would engage me? Who would support me?" You've mentioned earlier on that your trajectory has been very unconventional. You came from a science background, and now you are a creative, a creative that's probably not even near the peak of his career. You've still obviously got so much more to share and to give. How did you get started?

Emily Kwok:
And when you decided that you were going to become a creative, what signals or what type of engagements reinforced or gave you more conviction to feel that you actually had made the right choice and that you were doing the right thing? Because to be where you are now, to have amassed the client list and to have shared the quality of work that you've shared with the world, simply no easy feat. What did the beginning of that path look like?

Ravi Vora:
Yeah. Something that I was really lucky to have was all along the way, I've had people that have really believed in me, whether that was because they saw a potential, because they saw something that I wanted to do more. But I've been very lucky to have people I've come across that have believed in me. And whether it was just having conversations with me, they saw something that they believed could be more and we would be able to help each other out.

Ravi Vora:
Meeting the right people, whether that means just connecting with more people, having more relationships, that's really important. Being able to also try to help those people. Rather than just say, "Oh, this is what I do. Help me," it's never really been that. It's always been, what are you working on? What can I help you with? How can I help you go further? And in doing so, you can be talking to someone who's just starting in a company. And a year or two later, they have moved up in their role.

Ravi Vora:
Two more years later, they're running the company, whatever it is. And all of a sudden, you have these amazing relationships because you also are identifying people who in their careers have a great potential and a great mind to do things. That was something that I was really lucky with. For one of my clients, Nike, and also an agency here in Los Angeles I worked with quite a few times called Conscious Minds. The people there had...

Ravi Vora:
We were working on a Nike ad actually that I was writing and just happened to put some... That ad ended up getting killed, as they often do with a lot of awesome creative work, just because the company pivots or whatever it might do. And then they decided, hey, we want to check out this social thing. Instagram is just doing this thing where you can post photos. It was pretty early days.

Ravi Vora:
And they said, "We want you to come in and just help us concept some ideas for what our social channels could look like for Nike." And I said, "Okay, well, I'll come in," since as a writer I have some concepts and we'll do some writing. I just took some photos on my iPhone. I used those as examples of what the photos could look like attached to how the concepts could play out. Just rough drafts. They saw the photos and they ended up... At the time, I was not a photographer at all.

Ravi Vora:
They saw the photos and they said, "Oh, these are awesome. We want to actually hire the photographer that shot these," and I said, "Oh, these are my iPhone shots. I don't know how to use a camera, basically." They were like, "No, it's fine. These are awesome. We're going to give you this top of the line camera to shoot runners, which you've never shot before, at night, which you've never shot before, reflective two year old that we just came out with, which no one knows how to shoot."

Ravi Vora:
It turned out that I don't know if any of those photos were in focus when I have clients on set and creative directors and all these other things going on, and I was pretty sure I was getting fired. And luckily, the second day of the shoot, the creative director's wife went into labor and he had to leave the set, so it was just me and the client. I was pretty sure if he had stayed on set, he would have fired me. But if he wasn't there, I just ended up doing my own thing.

Ravi Vora:
I just shot my own way and shot what I shot. The photos turned out much better, a thousand times better than the night before when I had all this pressure and didn't know how to follow the protocols. I did my own thing. I ended up working with Nike from that. Eight years later, I'm still working with them pretty often. It just turned into following your own passion, having confidence that wherever you are in your career, your voice is going to be there.

Ravi Vora:
You're just refining it like a piece of marble. You're really discovering who you are more than you are trying to create a new version of yourself. That's an important part of how people do see potential in you, is that they're seeing the nuggets that you have and you're chasing those and you're just refining those. Another thing that's really important is that you need to put out more of the work that you want to do more of.

Ravi Vora:
If you want to shoot something or create something or write something, write something like that. Because as human, we are biased to when we see something, we can understand it more, and we can see the potential of that when we see ourselves already aligned with something.

Ravi Vora:
You can't make the feature film that you want to do on your own dime, but you can make something that feels a little bit like it with the couple hundred or a thousand dollars that you have saved up and make something that shows your voice, shows the precursor and the taste that you have. And then someone sees that and can extrapolate upon it. When you put out your website or your work or you talk to people, talk about the things that you're passionate about creating more of.

Ravi Vora:
I just did an art installation for the first time ever, a large scale taking up a full story of a building. I had never done that before. I had never done 3D or visual effects before this year. And within the last few months, I've gone from basically being a nobody and not knowing the programs or anything, to creating art at a very high level and having a lot of art sold at costs or prices that I would probably have not thought possible a year ago.

Ravi Vora:
And that's all because I wanted to put out more work and do more work in that field, and I wanted people to see my vision. I've been loving just the passion and following that passion. Because then if people see what you're passionate about, there is a draw to passion. There's a draw to vision, and there's a draw to what the potential is, because we understand also as humans, yes, it's a safe bet, but the ones who risk big, get rewarded big too.

Ravi Vora:
On your journey, you're going to come across people and the people that understand that most are the ones you want to align yourself with, because they're the ones that are also doing that for themselves and the relationships and others around them. Surround yourself in those circles and you'll have a lot of success, because those people understand that with the risk comes failure, and failure no longer becomes much of a fear. It just becomes part of the process.

Ravi Vora:
Just like getting up in the morning, brushing your teeth, having your coffee, the coffee is the failure potentially, it's just part of the process, and what comes next is the rest of your day. And then you're learning from that and you're creating and you're doing great things.

Emily Kwok:
Wow! Incredible. Incredible that you... It's almost like you created your career as you just went along. It emerged out of just these happenstance circumstances. I feel like so many of us walk into situations where we sort of want to define and expect and understand what it is that we're walking into. And so much of what I hear in your story is just being open to and sort of embracing the presence to the moment and putting yourself out there, right?

Emily Kwok:
The bit where you were talking about creating more work or putting more things out there in the light that you want to do your work, this is something that I'm personally relating to quite a bit, because I've often been defined in a very particular way through one perspective or one dimension. I've wanted to take what it is that I do and what it is that I know and open it up to a larger audience or a larger scale.

Emily Kwok:
There is that moment where you feel like, okay, can I take what it is that I know in this one context? Does it hold any weight, or does it provide any value in other ways? I'm not established in these other fields. What if nobody listens to me? What if it doesn't catch? What if people don't dig it?

Emily Kwok:
What if I fall on my face and I fail? It's funny that when you just lean into that feeling a little bit, and I don't want to say you lose the fear because the fears always is there, but you're willing to put yourself out on a limb a little bit, that I suppose the confidence or the conviction grows from whatever it was that you are evolving or leaving behind, right? That whatever you've learned already is almost automatically translated into this new field and that it emergent and it builds.

Emily Kwok:
I think that this is... I mean, I'm 40 now, and I think to myself, wow, imagine if I had really understood or been a little bit more aware of this dynamic earlier on in my life, if I would've been able to create more opportunities for myself. Going along with that, hearing you speak about how you've learned how to shoot, it sounds like you learned to shoot digital, as opposed to when I started photography, it was in the dark room.

Emily Kwok:
I don't know also with social media and the emergence of Instagram and all these different types of technologies that we have and even in the new art space that you're working in. Do you feel that there's ever been an easier time to be creative and to express art? Do we now have tools and do we now have outlets that people to experiment more easily with the side of themselves than they used to?

Ravi Vora:
Yeah, I think right now is one of the most beautiful times for a creative to be alive. I think that we've always had things to... As creatives, we've had mediums, but technology has really elevated creatives and made it so accessible. We have basically turned world building into a pencil. Everyone can have one and create and do whatever they potentially can if they have access to the technology.

Ravi Vora:
Obviously there are places in the world that's much more difficult, but I think as we grow as a society and have access and make things more easily disseminated amongst everyone in the world, I think as a creative, there are just so many opportunities, the open source nature of intelligence and all of these programs and things that we can use, down to the tablets and all of these very, very intuitive ways to create are coming up. We're only refining them and making them easier and better.

Ravi Vora:
The iPhones, the whatever you have in your pocket is better than the camera that I had when I was just starting out, when my dad gave me a camera and he said, "Here, do you want to use this?" And at the time, I thought photography isn't really a creative medium. Actually when I first got a camera, I thought, oh, you just stand in front of something and take a picture of something that's already been created. That's not creating.

Ravi Vora:
Creating is starting from nothing and making something out of your imagination. That was my 100% conviction. And yet, to now, fast forward, I realize that you are creating something from nothing based on your point of view. There just happens to be all these elements in front of you, and you actually have to do even more work sometimes because you have to create that story and that narrative. You have to kind of organize.

Ravi Vora:
You have to organize the chaos and the noise, and you have to create your story from that. A lot of times my work comes from the simplicity. In a world where I'm in the middle of a desert in Jordan and there's all these insane landscapes and structures of the rocks and the dunes and wind and everything else, and I have to find the composition that makes sense in a place that is made by nature and isn't required to make sense, but visually and compositionally, I need to find where it is that a human can see that and find beauty.

Ravi Vora:
For me, my story is being told on a chaotic canvas. You are creating something. When you say building, that's another thing that's really interesting because the building blocks of... For me, my passion comes from film and stories and music, and yet I'm doing photography also and visual effects and all of these different things. It's kind of like Tetris, where you have all these different shaped blocks, but they can fit together so many different ways.

Ravi Vora:
Once you understand different blocks, whether it's color and composition and story, and all of these things, you can start to rearrange them in different mediums. And with the accessibility through technology, you can start to move fluidly and become kind of a Renaissance creative again. And you can say, "Oh, I'm a photographer this day, and tomorrow I'm a visual effects artist. And the day after that, I'm writing a story, and then I'm making music that all ties it together. And now I've made a film."

Ravi Vora:
You can do that all by yourself, which previously was really difficult without the technology we have now. I think that we're only going to see more and more of this kind of artist view becoming this epic journey. Because of the simplification, we're going to see more and more of some of the greatest art in our time and of all our entire human existence emerging in the next 100 to 200 years.

Emily Kwok:
Wow! Who would've though? When I think back to what my arts education was in the late '90s, I would've never been able to have seen or predicted where we are today and how much more accessible being creative is. And not just being creative, but also being able to share your work with the world. I think that some of these avenues used to be a lot more restrictive or difficult to enter into.

Emily Kwok:
And now, I suppose, one of the positive effects of social media and all these different platforms is that you can sort of garner your own audience as you go along and you no longer have to be approved for entry, if you will. I wonder if you might be willing to talk a little bit about challenges.

Emily Kwok:
On one level, I'm inclined to wonder whether you consider anything to be a challenge at all, but is there anything that you find challenging about the space that you work in, or maybe if you've had a particularly challenging experience that's taught you a great deal about what you do?

Ravi Vora:
Yeah. As far as challenges, I think every day as an artist, it's a bit of a challenge. There's an identity crisis every single day. I think there's a unknown, because work and art is so subjective that you have to have the confidence that your work is who you are and the story you're trying to tell. That's not always the case when you see it. I look back at some of my early photos and I think, what was I thinking? Why was my camera pointed there?

Ravi Vora:
And yet, I know that at the time I thought that was the best photo that I saw, and that was who I was in that moment. If I evolve as an artist and my identity evolves with me, I have to understand that I won't always know the right or wrong. There is no right or wrong. It's always a gray area. Who I am as an artist is a gray area, and that can be really difficult. There's a lot of mental health obstacles that you have to get over and live with. There's a lot you will never get over.

Ravi Vora:
You just have to live with them, learn that they're your roommates in your head, and you're going to have to be around them forever. And a lot of times, if you can, you use them to fuel what your projects, what your passion is. And for me, that's been this kind of hole in my heart forever that I will always try to fill with creativity and other things and storytelling, and that's okay. I'm okay with never filling that hole.

Ravi Vora:
It's an endless black void of sucking this in, but that's okay, because the escape velocity of a black hole is the brightest part, right? It's all this light that's trapped there. That's kind of a beautiful way to look at how we can tap into that and use that light and create the most beautiful things, because we don't ever, ever actually enter the black hole. We can't. Light can ever get to the middle of it, supposedly.

Ravi Vora:
We're always living in this world where we're just extracting what we can and making the most beautiful thing. In the past, there's been this kind of thought of genius, right? All these artists are genius. But in the past, they've actually been kind of disassociated from the artist themselves, and they've been put into what they called genies. It's a genie in a bottle. That was where genius comes from, right? Something came up to us and said, "Here's an idea."

Ravi Vora:
That light bulb moment, whatever it is, came from somewhere else. And often I think that is just misattributed to somewhere else from just us discovering it within ourselves often, and that spark of inspiration is the thing that we have to learn to listen to more often and we'll find more and better work. But often that comes from the self-doubt and the things that we challenge ourselves with on the daily. We realize, I'm putting something out there that I'm uncomfortable with.

Ravi Vora:
I don't know if anyone's going to like is. And then social media comes in and says, "Oh, this is how many people liked this. We can quantify it," where that doesn't really make any sense, because it's still subjective. But now we have an objective value that we can associate with it. Or with blockchain NFT technology, now we can associate...

Ravi Vora:
With these marketplaces, we can associate a dollar amount, the actual currency we use in our daily lives, to evaluate what things are worth is directly correlated and transparent on the blockchain to what art is. Is this art worth this? It's a complete kind of associated value out of thin air almost because art is inherently subjective. All of these things happen and we have to be okay with it. We have to as artists and as creators and people that want to just believe that our next thing is going to be better.

Ravi Vora:
We're not judged on a one to 10 scale. We're judged on a million different things at the same time and, most importantly, ourselves. I know that a lot of artists, including myself, are their biggest critics. I could look at my own work. I could think it's one of the worst things I've ever seen, and someone else tells me it's the most beautiful thing they've ever seen and inspires them. I've learned to listen to that, and I've also learned that that's more important.

Ravi Vora:
It's more important that people who see my art and are connected with it and it inspires them, that's where I draw my inspiration to keep creating more than sometimes for my. Sometimes I do that for myself. I can create in a vacuum, but I think that a lot of times it is about communication. My dad, when I was younger, I would write him... My handwriting was not very good. I don't know if it still is, but I would write and he would look at it and he would say, "What is the goal of this?"

Ravi Vora:
And I would say, "Oh, it's an essay for my teacher," et cetera. And he said, "Okay, well, who's going to read it?" "My teacher's going to read it," and he said, "Well, then if you're writing it and you can read it, that's fine. But if someone else is reading it, you have to be able to communicate it. It needs to be legible or clear, and it needs to have a way that someone else can understand it." I took that with me.

Ravi Vora:
I think in a lot of times when I'm creating, I am thinking about another person and how they're going to perceive it, or how they're going to end up communicating with it. That's an important thing that has helped me get over a lot of obstacles with myself and realizing that I'm not in a vacuum always, that I'm part of a human society that is also going to see it. And yet, at the same time, I have tons of work that I will never release.

Ravi Vora:
Nobody will ever see that I've worked on that I think is maybe some of my best work, but it is definitely something that because it's my best work sometimes, I don't need anybody else to tell me that they are connecting with it. I've already had that connection, whether that is just kind of feeling an inspiration from it to create more work or whatever it might be. I think that's part of the...

Ravi Vora:
Also when I was growing up, I'm an only child, so growing up, I didn't have a brother or a sister or someone else to communicate with directly a lot. I actually had to work on my own work and doing whatever I was doing on my own. I've learned to kind of create in solitude. I think a lot of times greatness is created in solitude because that's where you have the most time to really focus on it and chip away at that marble and create something that you love.

Ravi Vora:
That's something that I think a lot of people, I think they need to bounce the idea off other people and have feedback. Sometimes it really is about the feedback of yourself looking at it, realizing whether you would engage with it if you were a third party, putting yourself in those, shoes and being able to have that feedback loop, because that will actually push you forward to be a better critic and then create with that intention going forward.

Emily Kwok:
Wow! That relationship that we have with ourselves versus the outside world is one that I think can be really conflicting, right? Because on one hand, the things that drive us to do what we do, how do we keep that instinct? How do we keep that energy pure? But at the same time, as you've pointed out, I think by nature humans are social and we want to be able to connect, and we want to be able to relate to others. But it's a tricky balance sometimes. A question that I've been exploring myself has been, how does one determine their own value? And as you were pointing out, whether it's...

Emily Kwok:
If you define yourself through external measures, whether it's how many Instagram likes you get on your new photo, or how much your work sells for at auction one day, if you take that too much to heart and you don't consider what value you get or what appreciation you get from producing your own art, I think a lot of the times we might find ourselves skewed and sometimes we start doing things for the wrong reasons versus finding and tapping into that joy or that place within ourselves that motivates us to keep going.

Emily Kwok:
I know that for a lot of people it's not necessarily something they consider that well in terms of where their orientation exists or where it's favored, whether they are more inclined to follow what speaks to them or what speaks to others. And that gap in the communication is something that I particularly quite enjoy engaging with. I think that some of the people that I've been able to work with or work around can have very abstract views and very abstract ways of approaching life.

Emily Kwok:
But that abstraction is what is beautiful about them and it's in fact their gift to the world, if you will. But noticing the gap between where they exist and where other people want to connect, sometimes that's where I tend to operate well is trying to figure out how to bridge the gap. Because I think to what you're saying, who we are as people and what particular ways and perspectives we have to share with everyone, what it is that we can learn from each other, sometimes that can be lost if it's not communicated well, to your point.

Emily Kwok:
That consideration, I think, it's a really delicate one. Being attuned to it, I think, is probably also another reason why someone like yourself and other creatives can find success because they understand that balance and they're able to also keep their own passion alive away from prying eyes, if you will. Couple more questions for you, Ravi, and one that I'm curious to think about here is whether you attribute the success that you've achieved so far in life, how much of the equation is talent versus how much is it hard work?

Emily Kwok:
The reason why I ask that is I think it's really easy for a lot of outsiders to observe someone who performs really well at something and say, "Oh, that person's just a genius, or they're an anomaly and they're not normal. They were just born with it." I don't think it's to be neglected that each human is endowed with some sort of unique gift, if you will. But I think also to just go there and say that it was something that was given to them takes a lot of value away from the amount of effort, concentration, and work that they put into honing their craft.

Emily Kwok:
Listening to your story makes me think that... I can't help, but imagine that some of it has to be talent or some of it has to be a gift because it's sort of emerged in all these unusual circumstances and other people have recognized it, but you've also been extremely studious and curious and gone about your own ways. What is it that you think about that?

Ravi Vora:
Yeah, the age old question whether talent or hard work is really the culprit. It's so hard to say. You can't really identify always what talent is or where that lies within yourself. I don't dismiss completely talent, but I do think it plays less of a role than a lot of people want to attribute it to say... It makes it easier to say someone's just talented. It makes it easier to than say for yourself, "Oh, they're just talented. The amount of hard work I do may never reach to the level that they're at," because then you don't have to put the pressure on yourself.

Ravi Vora:
You don't have to think, "Oh, I can do better." If it's something you're passionate about and you care about, I think that saying talent is almost also saying they didn't work as hard. Some people it does just naturally come to you, but we are just saying it naturally comes to you because we may not know what the source of that natural is. And that may be that when you were younger, you did something, or maybe you're just more passionate in the moment about getting better at something.

Ravi Vora:
I think that it really comes down to there's a lot of factors. We don't know what's going on for everyone, and we don't always know what their motivation is. As I mentioned earlier, I'm an only child. I worked on whatever I did and tried to get better at things and studied, et cetera. And yet now I feel like I've been very lucky because I've come across people who want to see more of that from me, but I worked really hard in solitude.

Ravi Vora:
All of these things, all the photography and visual effects and color and filmmaking and storytelling, all the things that I have been recognized for, I've done so much work that no one knows about or no one sees because I've been doing that in solitude. I formed that. I forge that sword, and then I go out and I have it ready to go. When someone approaches me and says, "Hey, I have this commercial. We want you to shoot, or we have this commercial coming up," and I say, "Oh, I've shot something like this."

Ravi Vora:
And they see it and they go, "Oh, well, you should shoot this commercial." From nothing to something, that in between comes from my insanely hard work ethic at the end of the day, because as my girlfriend and many others would two tell you, I can get very obsessive and start to just really... Whether it's color theory or anything else, I really, really dive deep into every single thing. I also love the idea, I think I have a very strong passion for just getting better at things and just being really good at things, because I think the challenge...

Ravi Vora:
I like to challenge myself, and I think that's a fun part of life is to go from not knowing anything about something, and then just getting really good at it to the highest level. I think that's exciting. When I do that, whether it's a bar game or something where it almost doesn't matter, it's the competition with yourself to go from I have no idea what this is, to I'm actually better than 99% of people at it within three days.

Ravi Vora:
That was something I actually was really passionate about when I was in high school and college was that I wanted to get to the top level of things within three days. That was my goal, and whatever that was. It was beer pong or whatever. I would go and enter tournaments and end up winning them and all these things that would just be completely not even useful to real life, but I was really engaged with the idea of getting good, becoming a master.

Ravi Vora:
For instance, something that a lot of people don't know about me is that I've played video games with my friends during the pandemic. And before that, I was interested in just connecting with my friends who I've made across the world. There was no real easy way to do that, especially just kind of this machismo mentality that we're not just going to jump on a call and talk to each other about our lives. We have to have something to do. That was the kind of changing point.

Ravi Vora:
Catching up was let's go play a video game together, and then we just happen to be catching up in the background while we're going around shooting our guns in the air or whatever it is. I ended up becoming like one of the top 25 players in some of these really competitive battle royals.

Emily Kwok:
This is amazing.

Ravi Vora:
I had no like intention to do that, and I'm entering tournaments and playing and winning money and all of these things that I do not need to be doing. I love it, right? It's just like, let's go be good at something, but it just happened to be a social event with my friends and turned into a tournament level of play. Whether that comes from if you say my talent at video games, I don't know if that was there, but maybe it has to do with we look at photography and it's a hand-eye coordination thing.

Ravi Vora:
It's understanding what's going to happen before it happens, because I do think there's a lot of these kind of Tetris building blocks that come from other areas of skill and they go into similar things. So now that I understand top level tactics and strategy in a video game, could come from the fact that I understand that when I'm watching pro soccer players, and that I have no idea anything about soccer or how it's played almost, I look at them and I go, "Oh, I understand that these three people are going to be over here and this ball's going to go here.

Ravi Vora:
I can capture this perfect moment if I stand here and just expect it," even though I have never watched a full soccer match in my life. And then I understand just kind of the human movement and nature. It's almost like a dance and you start to see how that plays out. And then you see that a few times and you start to develop these frequencies and these understanding of, again, kind of going back to science, these wavelengths of life.

Ravi Vora:
You understand that color, and the sun's going to just come over that in about five minutes. And if I wait just long enough and I have someone here and they're on a BMX bike and they do a trick off this, I'll catch them in the perfect shaft of light. All of these things happen and you start to dilute them into an understanding of the formula of life. I think music is a very big influence.

Ravi Vora:
If you follow and have a very strong musical background, a lot of times you understand story very well. You understand human emotion and timing and beats and how you go from one emotion to another, and tension, and all of these things. It's just sound waves, but then it also plays into light waves, and it plays into wavelengths of all these other things. And at the end of the day, we're pretty much just a bunch of wavelengths bouncing into each other at different frequencies anyway.

Ravi Vora:
But not to get esoteric, but that is an interesting way to look at the universe and realize that all of these things have a base understanding and level, and that we can then tie those into other parts of our life and become masters of things that we have no idea about, go from zero to a hundred. If we follow a lot of the same principles that the abstract way we approach and learn about things, we utilize that in new ways, and we become even better at things.

Emily Kwok:
Oh my gosh, 100%. Dude, that's hysterical to me that you sort of became a video game champ just passing the time.

Ravi Vora:
Exactly. And I still love it. It's so fun, but it's not a waste of time. It's definitely interesting. It's just a different part of life that you don't always see as an aspect when you're not in your teens.

Emily Kwok:
Well, video gaming has really gone to reach new heights, right? When I hear you talking though, I feel like so much of your ability in cross application is also just nuance. You've done some things at such a depth that when you... I call it cross-pollinating. When you try to take on a new venture, I don't want to say you've like hacked the whole system, but there's definitely some hacks that have been put in place because you sort of understand how you learn and you understand how to approach your learning process.

Emily Kwok:
In some ways, it almost expedites or allows you to build upon what you know much more efficiently, but it takes a certain amount of concentration and commitment and depth in something, I think, to then be able to apply it more broadly is sort of what I hear you saying. One question that I'm interested in asking you, because it's come up with a few other people who I would say have achieved a great deal in their careers, and it's the element of luck and whether or not you think luck plays any role in success or in helping you reach certain levels of mastery.

Ravi Vora:
Yeah. Kind of like what I was saying before about luck or rather serendipity, I think that's more along the lines because you can't plan for everything. You don't know where you're going to be born in the world or what circumstances you're going to be born into. All of that stuff is at the end of the day. Anything that's not in your control, I almost have no attachment to. I've never felt like someone that is proud of my heritage in the same way that someone else might be or anything else, because I didn't earn it.

Ravi Vora:
I didn't put myself in that situation. I didn't say I'm going to be born here. I want to be this. I want to do this with my physical body, whatever it is. All these things were given to me. That part 100% is what we might consider luck. Some people win the genetic lottery and they happen to be the aesthetic of the time and they end up being models or whatever else happens for them. That is attributed purely to something they did not choose. That is a lot of what I would consider luck.

Ravi Vora:
I've been very lucky in the way that I've had opportunities come across my path and people I've met. All of these things are absolute luck because I didn't choose them. However, there are certain things you can do in your life to set yourself up to be lucky, to have serendipity. And oftentimes that is that you work really hard on the things that you want to do more of.

Ravi Vora:
So that when that opportunity arises, you're ready to actually approach it and have it approach you and then end up continuing that path and doing something great with it. If the person that comes to you and says, "Hey, I have a $10 million film budget," and you don't have a idea how to make a film, but you want to be a filmmaker someday, there's very low chance that they're going to say, "Oh, I'll just give you these resources and have you create something for me."

Ravi Vora:
But if you've made short films, if you worked really hard on this and you're ready to do it, and that comes to you, there's success and now you're going take that opportunity. You're going to take that "luck," and you're going to continue to forge new paths and create more luck from that. And now you're in a path of what you want to do.

Ravi Vora:
Rather than looking at it like luck, look at it like trying to understand the basics of how people who have been lucky in the past, who have had those opportunities, what they did in the in between times to make themselves ready for that luck, and then put yourself out there in the new ways even that allow yourself to be lucky and have serendipity happen to you and opportunities arise. And a lot of times that comes from, for instance, leverage.

Ravi Vora:
If you're able to get a large amount of leverage, whether that's resources in social cloud, all these things that people kind of chase after, that is oftentimes a way to have a voice, and then put yourself in a situation where other people are looking. A lot of times, the resources could be money. It could be notoriety. It could be any of these ways that people understand that now not only are more opportunities coming to them, but whether they're ready or not for those opportunities.

Ravi Vora:
You can have all of that, and then it becomes kind of like vapor. It becomes hollow, because you have clout in all these things that people chase, but there's nothing behind it. There's nothing in the core of it. There's nothing to like really move forward. You have to work on that core. You have to be ready and hone that and chip away at that marble until you have something beautiful underneath.

Ravi Vora:
So that when somebody does approach you and sees you on social media or wherever else in life, and you talk to them and you can connect with them. And then they say, "I have this project, or I really would love you to do this," and then it's really about being a master already almost behind the curtains. And then you reveal yourself to be ready for that moment. And that sometimes can be even more impactful than trying to say you're a master, and then somebody asks you to do something and you fall flat on your face.

Ravi Vora:
There's a balance there. The best times I've found have been when I felt like I was about to fall on my face, I've been working really hard on being good at something, and I have an opportunity to rise, and I don't know if I'm going to fall on my face, or I'm going to knock it out of the park. Those are usually my favorite opportunities because you push yourself in the direction to be good enough.

Ravi Vora:
Right at that moment, you have the biggest scariest spark of inspiration that comes around and you go, "I'm going to do something new and different for myself and hopefully new and different for the space. I'm going to push this forward, and we're going to see where we land." And from those opportunities, I've often had my most success.

Emily Kwok:
I couldn't agree with you more. Much of my life I felt like been just repeated moments of converging serendipity in different places, and they've sort of helped me jump forward on certain timelines. But I agree with you more on the fact that I think I was only prepared to take the jump because of whatever efforts and work that I had put into being ready for that moment and then not being afraid to lean into it.

Emily Kwok:
The theme of this podcast being sort of apprenticeship and mastery, some people have a bit of like an aversion to this idea of being called a master, or that mastery is even something that can be achieved. Because as such, what shakes out in every conversation is that those who have performed at certain heights have also always been people who have enjoyed learning and who lean into learning and that that part never stops for them.

Emily Kwok:
What is mastery to you, and do you actually think that mastery can be achieved at any level?

Ravi Vora:
That's a really good question. I love this question. I guess when I look at mastery, I think about my career and how I've basically come to the level, the percentage of mastery, I would say, it's kind of a gray area, a gradient of skill set, when you're new to something, the middle of something, toward to the top, to maybe somebody who can... There are very few people that can do the same thing as those in the mastery level, if that's an actual thing, or at the time.

Ravi Vora:
I've been a creative director. I've done high level advertising campaigns that have won awards, et cetera. And then I would quit that life to pursue film. I went back to zero, and I started doing filmmaking. And then I ended up in photography. And photography, I pretty much would say I was at that same kind of height where I'm winning awards or doing giant campaigns again. I'm at this level where I'm having a lot of success.

Ravi Vora:
And within the last few months, I said, "Okay, I'm going to start back at zero and do visual effects. And then I'm going to learn 3D, and I'm going to do all these things in the fine art world," again, going from zero. I've had a lot of success there now. Furthermore, I want to do even more trying to push myself and find new creative avenues and do that again. The lifelong learning is definitely there.

Ravi Vora:
I love learning, and I think that is really important. I think that also stacking the deck against yourself causes you to move yourself in a way that you end up becoming a... You learn how to become a master at things. It only exponentially gets easier to understand the method, whether or not it happens. Let's say I wanted to be top level in athletic sport that's so different from what I'm doing.

Ravi Vora:
I don't know what that would entail, but I do know that I would take my learnings from everything else in life and I would apply it. And whether I would end up there... Like I said, with video games, I had no idea whether I would do well or not, and I ended up being toward the end of mastery. I don't know if there is an end goal because there are so many things that are subjective, especially in the arts and creative, being a master at something.

Ravi Vora:
You're a master at your craft perhaps, but you're also a master at your craft when you start out. You're just honing it and defining how you can best communicate it. Not every creative or every kind of venture you're working on is always the best for success at the time in society as well. You could also be very early. I'm sure there were incredible filmmakers thousand of years before film had been invented potentially, but they just didn't have the medium to do it yet.

Ravi Vora:
The storytellers were bards and people who sat around campfires, et cetera. If they were to fast forward in time travel, they could be the most incredible filmmakers of all time. We don't know which way we're going to be able to express ourselves yet until we're able to kind of explore those. That sometimes comes to what you're going to be a master at fastest or what you're going to find success with fastest is sometimes an unknown until you do try it.

Ravi Vora:
Once you try it and you develop your failures, and you overcome them, and you keep pushing yourself, that all comes down to how much passion you have and what the shortcuts end up being for you because of your passion, because of your perspective, because of the way that you've done things in the past. All of that will lead you to mastery of whatever that is you're approaching at the time.

Ravi Vora:
I also think it's really important to have multiple passions and be able to build together, so you're not just focused on only one thing always. That's okay if that's that one thing that you're focused on mainly, but also having other influences are what make a lot of the best or most successful people who they are is often these other influences that they were able to introduce into their passion. It's often the combination of more than one thing that becomes something greater than the sum of its parts.

Emily Kwok:
Love that. The way that you brought broke that down was exceptionally beautiful. I appreciate that. Ravi, I could probably continue to ask you questions for a very long time, but I'm fully respecting the fact that you have a life you need to get back to and continue creating. I want to be respectful of that and say thank you. Outside of this being a territory that I'm exploring, for an audience, it's also extremely... It's an extremely curious space that I'm digging into myself.

Emily Kwok:
Being able to have a window into your world and how you have created this place for yourself and created worlds for others, it's just really been uplifting and been just such a highlight of my week and also this series. It's been really wonderful talking to you. In closing, I just want to say, are there any ways in which people can engage with your work? Where should people go if they want to check out some of the amazing things that you've created?

Ravi Vora:
Yeah. This has been great, Emily. My social media's pretty much on everything. Instagram it's @ravivora. Twitter @ravivora. My website, ravivora.com. I know I'm a creative, but all of those things are just my name, so it's not very creative, but there it is. I'm on pretty much most social media platforms creating, trying new things. In the NFT space, I'm also doing a lot of work, trying to understand blockchain technology and connecting with people and doing more fine art, regardless of whether that's...

Ravi Vora:
Right now it's digital, but in the future, a lot more in person and real life things. I'm always pivoting, always trying to find new ways to do things. Definitely connect with me on social media to keep up to date. I love engaging with new people and finding new connections and developing those moments of serendipity.

Emily Kwok:
Yeah, I hear you. Before I ask you one final, tiny question, or actually maybe this is the tiny question, are you going to make feature length films? Are there any things like that on the horizon?

Ravi Vora:
Absolutely. Feature length films has always been kind of my number one passion and goal. I've been taking a very squiggly line from A to B, but I've definitely always kept that in mind. I've created short films, commercials, et cetera, in the meantime. In the future, there will definitely... I've written a few feature films. I've written them, and it's a matter of developing them, finding the right time to put the teams together.

Ravi Vora:
Yeah, feature films are going to be the goal right now and hopefully integrating a lot of the new technology that we have at our fingertips to help elevate that and integrate that into the storytelling, because I love... At the end of the day, people that have passion and find stories and keep them with them their whole lives, feature films have always done that for me and also books and other things that just tie us as humans together.

Ravi Vora:
When we find someone else that also loves the same movie we do, or the same book, a lot of times that's something that is just this intangible part of life that we can connect via story. That's definitely on the horizon.

Emily Kwok:
I can't wait. I'll be the first person in line to go check out your movies. I just want to close by saying that just in your closing, you had said reach out. I can't help, but want to acknowledge the fact that sight unseen, we had a chance encounter, and I reached out through a mutual friend. You were open and gracious and willing to meet me in this place and explore this opportunity. To that I say thank you so much for doing that, because I think that as humans, we never know unless we try.

Emily Kwok:
For a lot of people, they get discouraged, or they get downtrodden because the attempt that they throw out into the world isn't always received. I don't think I would be where I am in my life today if it wasn't for me trying with a lot of success, but also with some failures. You're certainly someone who has accomplished so much in your life. And to take the time and the opportunity to speak with somebody just because out of their own sheer curiosity is truly been a privilege and an honor.

Emily Kwok:
I thank you so much for helping me create a little bit more in my story by being generous with yours.

Ravi Vora:
I appreciate you as well, Emily. Thank you so much for reaching out. Having that brief encounter in Clubhouse and being able to speak with you on stage and hearing your thought process along with Mel and everyone else that had come up that day and the future Clubhouse rooms after that, it was just one of my absolute favorite rooms I'd been in.

Ravi Vora:
I've been at Clubhouse for a little while now in a lot of different rooms, but it was just one of those things where it was like-minded people pushing forward the way they thought about things and trying to learn more and trying to challenge themselves. And that just felt like my kind of people. I'm really glad that ended up happening, and this stroke of luck came about and we were able to chat.

Emily Kwok:
Yes. Thank you. Ravi, it's been a wonderful afternoon. I appreciate you. And again, best of luck. Cannot wait to see all your future successes.

Ravi Vora:
Thank you, Emily. We'll talk soon.

Emily Kwok:
Take care.

Ravi Vora:
Thank you.