Babis Chatzakis

Five and a half years before becoming a Canon Ambassador, Babis Chatzakis was an electrical engineer with no professional photography experience at all. During the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, after scrolling through images on Instagram, he felt inspired and bought a Canon EOS 80D and started teaching himself how to use it.

"After three months with the camera, I realised how much I loved it," he says. "When I'm doing this, it doesn't feel like work."

Originally from Crete and now based in Athens, Babis threw himself into learning, spending four to six hours a day watching tutorials and studying technique, then using the rest of his time to shoot and edit. Small jobs for friends gradually became paid commissions, and after around 13 months he left engineering altogether to pursue image-making full-time.

Creativity is the thread connecting his different genres. For travel work, Babis researches heavily before arriving, saving locations, studying reference images and building shot lists, but treats that preparation as a foundation rather than a set of rules. Once on location, he finds that instinct and encounters with local people can take the film somewhere unexpected.

His relationship with Canon has developed alongside his career. After beginning with the EOS 80D, Babis upgraded to the EOS R System and later began collaborating with Canon Greece, initially taking a Canon RF 50mm F1.2L USM lens on a trip to Vietnam. Further opportunities followed, including participating in a European camera launch, judging a Canon video competition and creating the teaser for Canon Vision 2025, which was shared by Canon teams internationally. His commercial career has also included work for global brands such as Four Seasons.

Today, the Canon EOS R5 C remains his go-to body for travel because it lets him cover both stills and video without carrying a second camera. He also uses the Canon EOS C80 and keeps a Canon EOS R50 V for specialised shots where a very small body is an advantage, such as rigging the camera to a car with suction cups.

Canon colour science is another important part of his workflow. Babis particularly values its reliable skin tones and the option to use Wide DR when a client needs a fast turnaround with minimal post-production.

Becoming a Canon Ambassador so soon after buying his first camera is, he says, "100% a milestone". Yet his next goal isn't simply to make more work just for the sake of it. After years of taking on a high volume of commercial projects, he wants to make fewer, more ambitious films, such as five-to-10-minute documentaries, personal travel stories and projects with enough time and budget to leave a lasting emotional impression.

"I want to make fewer projects, but make them bigger and better," he says. "I'd rather make something people still remember a year later than hundreds of projects they forget after a month. If a film is good to me and I love making it, I don't care about the money."

What do you want a viewer to feel before they start thinking about how a film was made?

"I want a wow factor at the beginning, something that makes you think, 'Where is this?' or 'What just happened?' You need to catch people very quickly now, especially on social media, where you might have only three seconds. But I don't want a film to be only fast and impressive. I also want people to feel something. That's why I like to change the rhythm, slow down the edit and give an emotional moment space to work. I want the viewer to be astonished but also moved."

What makes branded content feel like a genuine story rather than simply an advertisement?

"For me, a lot comes down to choices around image and sound. Colour grading is important, but so are the angles. If you use the same angles everybody else uses, the result can feel generic. I'm always looking for a perspective or transition that makes the film feel more like my work. Sound is a huge part of my films too. If the colour, angles, music and sound design all work together, you can make something that feels like a story rather than simply showing a product."

When you're working somewhere unfamiliar and things don't go to plan, what do you rely on most?

"Instinct, probably 60 or 70 per cent of the time. I prepare a lot before I arrive, but a production day never unfolds exactly as you imagined. You might start before sunrise and everything is moving slowly, then suddenly you're running out of daylight. At that point, I trust that I know how to do my job. If I'm working with a crew, having good people around me is essential too, so I can keep my mind on the film."

What piece of Canon kit can you not live without, and why?

"The Canon RF 24-70mm F2.8L IS USM is the lens I couldn't live without. Before I bought it, I had a wide-angle lens and a 70-200mm, so I was always missing those focal lengths in the middle. Once I got the 24-70mm, the other lenses started to fade out. I can do almost everything with it."

What else could we discover in your kitbag that helps you elevate your work?

"ND filters are essential because motion blur is crucial to my work, particularly for the transitions I create. That's also one reason I chose the Canon EOS C80, because it has internal ND filters. Audio is equally important. Some of my films can have 15 or 20 different layers of sound, sometimes even more, so good microphones and sound design are a huge part of the finished film."

"Try and fail, all the time, because that's the only way you learn. And I mean fail big. You can study as much as you want, but eventually you need to go out, try something, get it wrong and understand why. That practical experience is how you improve."

Website: bchatzakis.com

Instagram: @bchatzakis