Caleb Meranus ’26 recently transformed his passion for photography into a business venture, creating a website and an Instagram account focused on showcasing his talent.

Meranus works primarily with his 2011 Canon EOS t3i, which he also uses to produce content for The Gator, along with the newsroom’s Canon EOS RP, his “dream camera.”

As a Creative Arts Diploma Program candidate focusing in photography, Meranus has also taught himself basic video editing. Moreover, he has expanded his cinematography skills while working on video segments for The Gator, including The Education of Our Educators and Nolan’s Soup Review. He also edits the videos, sometimes alongside producer Nikka Souza’26.

The Gator sat down with Caleb to dive a deeper into his work and new business.

What about photography has interested you most? 

I think the freedom to constantly be gaining skills and experience interests me most. No matter what I learn, there is always more I can do, and can learn. Because of this, I find myself wanting to spend more time shooting and working in the darkroom.

What is a part of photography you’re still working on?

I’m definitely still working on my confidence shooting on film. Sometimes I’ll take a picture that I think is amazing, and have another 20 shots to go before I can develop it. That can lead me to shoot some not-as-good pictures and forget that I’m wasting precious film. Worst of all, sometimes the original picture that I think is amazing doesn’t turn out very well. I need to work on remembering that if I take a picture that I think is amazing, I should take the same picture at least 2 more times, or wait until I’m hit with that excitement around a scene again to take another picture.

What are your goals? Business wise? New purchases? 

I don’t even know if I can call myself a business, but per request, I’ve been shooting sports games, and my main goal is just to produce sports content that people enjoy and find purchase worthy. In terms of new purchases, I’ve been spending a lot of time at my local camera store to buy film, and checking out some new lenses while I’ve been there. So far, I was able to pay for a new 50mm, f/1.8 lens fully with money made from camera work, and hope to buy a used 80-300mm lens in the future. 

What caused you to start a business and how is it going? 

Actually, it wasn’t my idea. My first paid gig was serving as a photo booth at a friend’s Sweet 16, but I don’t really consider that a first business move. Back in March, I went on Winterim to Portugal with junior Julian Park, who noticed my passion for photography, reached out to me when the Lacrosse season started, and asked me to take pictures of the practices and games. He offered to pay, however, I had no reference work for sports photography, so I told him and the team that I would do the first game for free, and then individual players could pay me for the following games to focus on them. The team’s first game was yesterday, and of course, I was standing on the sidelines the whole time and took around 700 pictures with great approval from players.

In the future, I hope to be able to expand into portrait photography and offer portrait sessions as a product. I would like to be able to incorporate my passion for film photography into the business, but being an outdated process, I don’t think there is any demand. 

Editors’ Note: Caleb Meranus ’26 is a Multimedia Journalist for The Gator and was not involved in the editing of this article.