Amateur Photographer Finds Passion and Dream Job with Coca Cola

Everyone has heard of them before…those who just up and quit their job to pursue their passion. In Joel Robison’s case, his passion landed him in the big leagues. The Canadian conceptual photographer started out at a job where he found no satisfaction driving him. One day he came across Flickr and was inspired by other people’s creative photographs and so he bought a used DSLR from Ebay and decided to pursue taking pictures purely as a hobby.

Inspired by Disney movies and the fantasies they evoke, he was fascinated with blending the real and unreal and playing with sizes in his photographs. One day, the self-proclaimed daydreamer posted a picture of him with some Coke bottles in the snow and a friend of his encouraged him to send it to Coca-Cola. A year later, Robison got a call asking if they could use his picture on Twitter and three weeks later, the company came up with a plan for him to moderate their Flickr account and to encourage other people to submit photos. After a year and a half, Coke made it official by giving him the title of Photographer and Voice of Social Media and the rest as they say, is history.