July 2, 2019

It's a Vibe: Creator Chronicles

Lindsay Zeltzer

I’m sitting in my courtyard just a block away from Biscayne Blvd being serenaded by the enraged symphony of at least three different car horns just before 9 am. My first thought is, well maybe you should have left for work earlier. My second thought is, that horn might be the only common language shared by each of those vehicles. My third thought is… wait a minute, this is Miami. Nobody works around here, well… except for me. Finally, I silently say to myself, “I love it,” and take another sip of my Café Bustelo.

I’m sure that if more people were around me at my little table, a similar stream of thoughts would have crossed their minds. It’s what we’ve been conditioned to expect living in Miami after a certain period of time. The same conditioning would be true for somebody who has been anchored in LA for a long time, or San Francisco, Dallas, Chicago… It’s not cynicism or jadedness, it’s quite the opposite: we learn to embrace pretty much everything wrong and right with our cities, also known as Anchored Markets to Threshold 360 and the Anchored Creators who reside there.  

Threshold 360 Creators Lizzie and Beau on the road

For example: if you’re an anchored creator in LA, there will be weird run-ins with actual or quasi-celebrities but it never rains. If you’re in Chicago, it will be freezing during the winter but the city is shiny and bustling. If you’re in San Francisco, good luck with those hills! We expect certain conditions, varying levels of reception in different neighborhoods; and we know when, where and how to avoid traffic. But what about our traveling creators, seemingly dropped from the sky into a new market, with no knowledge of the city other than where it exists on Google maps?

Thankfully, our amazing customers at Threshold 360 are partnered with the best of the best in their city: hotels, restaurants, shops, parks - all of the must-dos for anybody planning a visit. Whether an anchored or traveling creator, it’s impossible not to become thoroughly acquainted with a brand new market - and fast. The list of partners becomes a map for the creators to follow, but what happens after is magic. It goes something like this...

Creator breezes into town (we'll skip the less-glamorous logistics involving rental cars and living arrangements), creator sections out all of his or her locations to visit and captures each day, and then the creator sets foot... well... Creating. Capturing. Exploring their market, crossing threshold after threshold - sometimes 30 of them in a day! And across every threshold is a person greeting our creators, and occasionally a remarkable exchange happens: gratitude is expressed for capturing their location and providing beautiful content to go on the destination's website, or sometimes there is confusion as to what the heck we're doing, why we're there, or who sent us... Although these interactions happen less frequently, thankfully.

This series chronicles the experiences and impressions of our creators' time in a market, both anchored and traveling. As photographers, they will not only describe their thought process while capturing some of their favorite locations; but also how the collection of their locations captures the vibe of the city as a whole. And as always, we hope that their stories will help you choose which thresholds to cross on your own.