Joey Lawrence is sound asleep on the floor of an Atabai Clan house, surrounded by members of the Mentawai tribe. Inches from his head, a pig is sacrificed to honor his arrival, but Joey doesn't stir. He's exhausted from carrying 50 pounds of photography gear on rain-slickened mud trails, and trudging through rock-strewn creeks that slice their way across the jungle-like forest floor.

It's August 2009, and Joey, a 19-year-old Canadian based out of Brooklyn, NY, is visiting the Mentawai tribe on the island of Siberut off the coast of Padang, West Sumatra, Indonesia. The Mentawai believe in animism and are connected to the spiritual world by the leadership of shamans. Their way of life is disappearing, as the predominantly Muslim country is focused on assimilating the Mentawai into the broader culture. "To have these people away in a rain forest practicing their own beliefs that they've practiced for a really long time is special," Joey says. "It may be something that's not going to be around for a long time."

It's a personal trip--the photos he takes here aren't destined for a client or business--but it wouldn't be possible without the cash Joey makes as a commercial photographer. That milelong client list includes Summit Entertainment (posters and promo material for Twilight) and FX Network (promo material for It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia).

Joey, now 20, grew up in the small town of Lindsay, Ontario, Canada, 528 miles northeast of Brooklyn. "It's a rural town: when I walk out my front door back home it's farmland, farmland, farmland," Joey says. Today, he lives in the Puerto Rican/ Dominican Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn. "I moved here because every day is like one of my trips. It's all Spanish every time I leave the door," he says. It may be the urban jungle, but there's no bedside pig sacrifice. From the private rooftop above his two-floor apartment, there's an unobstructed 360-degree view of New York City and the Manhattan skyline across the East River.

Thousands of dollars worth of camera gear is scattered around his apartment: A Canon body sits on a tabletop covered in clothes and empty food containers; a $6,000 Profoto studio light power pack is half-covered on the unswept floor by cardboard box scraps from his new HDTV. Empty bottles cover the kitchen countertop and clothes are piled in the living room. Contrasting with the detritus of daily life are fine-art prints of his portraits of Mentawai and tribal Ethiopians hanging in measured rows on the soft-white walls. Above the brown leather lounge chair in the living room hangs an Ethiopian hunting spear adorned with bird feathers. The apartment is a portrait of a life in constant flux.

Joey is in the middle of packing for a trip to Varanasi, India while handling work-related phone calls from his agents and doing this interview. He's scheduled to leave tomorrow for his third trip there in three years. "It's the most inspiring, beautiful city I've ever been to, and that's why I want to go back again. What attracts me to Varanasi is the spirituality, the vibe… the atmosphere, as well as it's extremely photogenic," Joey says.

"I've been photographing the holy men of India, which are Brahman priests. They are ascetic; they live as hermits away from the rest."

Despite his personal interest in the trip, Joey ended up postponing it to take a commercial job in Dubai, which he was offered just hours before his scheduled departure from New
York. "Because I'm a freelancer, doing my commercial photo shoots gives me the time and the money to do my own personal work… I never really turn down shoots unless I absolutely have to, because I just love shooting," Joey explains. "If I can do a couple of commercial shoots a year, that's enough. If I can do one a month, that's flying high," he says.

The proceeds from his commercial work allow him to pursue his personal photography. "Clients prefer to see my own personal [work], like, what did you do when you weren't being paid? They see, 'Oh he's passionate, he goes out, even his vacation is taking more photographs.'"

Joey's photography, whether commercial or personal, is approached with the same mindset. "My shoots abroad are more like my commercial shoots," he says. "We bring studio light, all this camera stuff and a laptop. It's rugged and it's desolate locations. In Ethiopia and Indonesia we were charging stuff on a solar panel." Rather than being a photojournalist--whom he views as someone that stands back and observes subjects almost as museum pieces--he approaches each shoot with the perspective of photographing "people in a more dignified way." He packs his studio equipment to their locations with the desire to "come back with something unique." Joey's subjects are not photographed for the sake of what they do or represent, but for who they are. "I observe on my own time and just watch, but when I take a portrait, it's of somebody, not of what they are doing," he says.

Joey started doing commercial photo shoots with local bands when he was in high school. "When I first got started, I was using a point and shoot camera and cardboard coated in tinfoil as a reflector," he says. "I would show up with this crappy equipment and people would see me and be, 'Oh man, what's going on?'"

Despite his lack of gear early on, Joey approached every shoot with a professional mindset. "I treated everything as a professional," he says. "I didn't want to do things well, like 'Wow, this is good for a 17-year-old. Wow, this is good work for an 18-year-old.' I wanted the work to stand on its own." It did. By his senior year of high school, Joey was a commercial photographer going on tour around the U.S. with bands, taking photos and selling them to magazines. His profits were invested back into professional gear. "Every single piece of equipment I bought myself; all my professional equipment that I have today, I've bought or earned myself."

Joey's client list expanded along with his stockpile of professional equipment. At 18, he shot the promotional material for teenage vampire movie Twilight. He also photographed G-Unit for Vibe magazine--his favorite shoot to date, because of his self-professed love for gangster rap. With the commercial work, which now includes shoots as varied as promotional ads for Kawasaki and cast photos for the History Channel's Pawn Stars, came increased demand for him to share his knowledge. "I get asked to do a lot of workshops around the world," Joey says, "and a lot of the time I can't commit to it because I have a commercial job or a trip or something. [So] I make Photoshop DVDs--which are like a tutorial--and I sell those through my website [joeyl.com]."

In addition to his commercial work and tutorials, Joey also sells fine art prints of his portraits in New York galleries. "I'm a photographer yes, but I have many different streams of income," he says. "Maybe 5% of my job is taking photographs, the other 95% is working, meeting people, going out to the appropriate things, networking, showing my portfolio in different meetings." This diversification of revenue streams allows the money to keep flowing between commercial jobs. It gives him the autonomy to make his own decisions and live life as he wants.

"[You have to be] in control of everything so you don't compromise your integrity," he says. This control, in turn, leads to personal and professional growth. "The hardest person to impress is myself, because I'm my own worst critic. A lot of the time, I do a shoot and I look at it and think of things I could have done better," he says. "But I think that's ultimately a good thing… I hope I'll never be happy with anything, because then I'll just keep getting better and better."
 

Sources: nativeplanet.org; thenational.ae; joeyl.com; bhphotovideo.com; ninemsn.com