Pierre T. Lambert

Pierre T. Lambert is a photographer, filmmaker and a popular YouTuber.

He has 708K subscribers on his YouTube channel, Pierre T. Lambert.

Introduction-

Pierre T. Lambert was born on 12 October 1987 near Paris, France; he grew up there.

At a young age, he started photography with disposable cameras; later his grandfather gave him a film camera.

Pierre used to take disposable cameras on class trips and save the photos in photo albums; he also loved taking photos with the film camera along with his friends.

Initially, photography was just a hobby for him, and he wasn’t interested in its technical aspect but after getting the film camera, he got serious.

At 8, Pierre attended a photography workshop where he developed black and white photos on paper by hand in a dark room using a lamp and tools; he loved this process and learnt the concept of photography.

He loved the work of Yann Arthus-Bertrand, a French environmentalist and photographer.

Travel & photography-

Thanks to travelling, Pierre became an avid photographer and started sharing his explorations through photography.

As a kid, he was inspired by the places shown in documentaries like Planet Earth and this inspired him to travel. He was also inspired by the travel adventures of Mike Horn.

Up until 18, Pierre travelled along with his family to many countries.

After studying Japanese for three years in high school, at 18, he travelled to Japan, and this was his first solo trip.

Pierre fell in love with solo travelling and his favourite countries are Nigeria and Japan.

His first memory of a good photo was on 13 August 2006, when he took a macro shot of a tiny frog in Japan with his Nikon Coolpix 3200 camera.

Pierre travelled to more than 50 countries and lived in the UK, France, Germany, Italy and the U.S. (New York and Chicago).

Education & career-

He holds two master’s degrees, one in project, quality & risk management from Universität Kassel and another in mechanical and industrial engineering from French National Graduate School of Engineering; he graduated in 2010.

Pierre worked as a project engineer intern at Entrepose Contracting in Port Harcourt, Nigeria from March 2010 to August 2010.

Then, he worked as a contracts engineer at Subsea 7 in Nigeria, UK, Italy, Brazil and France from November 2010 to December 2015.

Then, Pierre quit this job and became a full-time photographer and later, YouTuber.

In January 2015, he founded KYMA, in the Greater New York City Area, which he ran until January 2018.

Currently, Pierre is a full-time photographer and content creator.

The life-changing book-

While working as an engineer, his job involved a lot of travelling and this was the only part of his job that he loved; he hated the corporate environment and felt his senior colleagues to be uninspiring and didn’t want to end up like them.

At the time, Pierre used to work 12-hour shifts on a boat off the coast of Angola.

During that time, he stumbled upon The 4-Hour Workweek book; he started reading this book while on a night shift at work, on a boat.

This book inspired Pierre and he realised that he could make a living by following his passions rather than following a traditional career path and working for long hours.

As photography has been his passion, he decided to become a professional photographer; at the time, he observed other photographers and learnt that it is possible to make a living with photography.

Pierre started working as a photographer from January 2014, and in 2015, he quit his job to become a full-time photographer.

His first shoot with his wife and one of her friends wasn’t good; so, at the time, he decided to train by doing photography for free.

At that time, Pierre was in Paris and felt the landscapes around the city wouldn’t work out; so, he didn’t try landscape photography.

He decided to shoot couples and do portrait photography as he felt it to be commercially viable; so, he started a portrait & wedding photography business.

He started training by shooting people for free and once, he requested his friends to recommend him to their friends; he got recommended to shoot a couple.

Pierre told the couple that he would shoot them for free, but they are free to pay him whatever they feel like; as the couple liked his work, they paid him, and this was his first paid gig.

His second paid gig was when one of his friends recommended him a gig where a French fashion brand opened a new shop in Brussels and needed a photographer to shoot the shop.

It took Pierre a couple of years to start earning from photography.

He also started learning coding and founded KYMA, an online startup which helped people find and book photographers.

Thanks to this startup, Pierre was able to better understand social media.

YouTube-

After he moved to New York City in June 2016, he listened to a Casey Neistat’s podcast and got interested in YouTube.

Initially, Pierre didn’t know that making a career with YouTube is possible; but later he learnt that otherwise is possible.

In July 2016, he hit a creative block with photography and wasn’t shooting much.

So, Pierre picked up a camera and set himself a 30-day challenge where he would film a vlog every day for 30 days.

And on 8 July 2016, he started his YouTube channel, Trina & Pierre; on the same day, he published his first video, “This is when it all changed!”

At the time, YouTube was just a hobby for him, and he used it as a medium to show his family his activities and New York City.

Pierre extended the 30-day challenge to six months and was inspired by the vlogs of Casey Neistat and videos of DamonAndJo, Lost LeBlanc (read the story of Christian LeBlanc, the founder of Lost LeBlanc), Ben Brown, Making it happen Vlog, Mark Wiens (read Mark’s story) and Kara and Nate.

At the time, he was YouTubing on the side and was focusing on his startup and photography career.

As Pierre was daily spending a few hours on YouTube, he decided to either ramp up his channel and start earning from it or work on it once in a blue moon; he chose the former.

He changed the niche of his channel to travel, and his informational travel videos started picking up and getting decent views.

In 2017, Pierre and his wife were on a world tour and both of them used to work on the YouTube channel.

As of May 2024, he has 35.7K subscribers on Trina & Pierre; but he stopped working on this channel in 2019.

Photography channel-

In 2018, Pierre wanted to share his photography adventures; so, he started publishing photography videos on his channel, Pierre T. Lambert.

He published his first video, “5 Photography Ideas you MUST try,” on 20 February 2018.

As Pierre had previous knowledge of working on a YouTube channel, he was able to gain 10K subscribers on Pierre T. Lambert within three months.

As of May 2024, he has 708K subscribers on this channel.

He earns from a variety of sources like advertisements on YouTube, affiliate marketing, sponsorships; he also does brand collaborations, photo and video content for brands, sells presets, prints and a photo course.

Pierre has a website, runs a podcast and has a French photography YouTube channel, Pierre T. Lambert – FR.

His main camera is a Sony Alpha ILCE-1 and in one of his videos, he interviewed Manny Ortiz, a popular photography YouTuber.

CaseyNeistat and Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell are his favourite non-photography YouTube channels. (Read the story of Philipp Dettmer, the founder of Kurzgesagt).

Personal life-

Pierre is married to Trina Chaimongkol, an American.

This couple has a daughter.

Pierre met Trina in Nigeria while working as an engineer; at the time, she too was working in Nigeria.

He is a polyglot as he knows English, French, German, Japanese and Spanish.

So, how are you inspired by the success story of Pierre Lambert?

Share with me in the comment section below.