Will Sardinsky ’13: One Year at CRMS Sets Course for Photography Career

For Will Sardinsky ’13, his one pivotal senior year at CRMS served as a launchpad, shifting him away from a standard academic path and toward a life defined by creative risk, community, and the lens of a camera.

Today, Will is a celebrated, award-winning freelance photographer and filmmaker whose name appears alongside the industry’s most prestigious institutions. But if you ask him how he got there, he points back to the Roaring Fork Valley and the lessons learned as a CRMS student.

Will arrived at CRMS as a senior, and though his time on campus was brief, the impact was immediate. “I hadn’t felt a sense of community like that in an academic setting,” Will reflects. His teachers, Bobby Rosati, Matt Norrdin, and Dan Pittz, were supportive, helping connect him with opportunities to pursue his emerging passion for photography. 

His Senior Project became perhaps the most formative moment. Supported by faculty member Tracy Wilson, Will secured a spot working with Sweetgrass Productions on the feature-length ski film Valhalla.

“It opened up a new idea of how to live life—working on projects, working creatively with a tight-knit team,” Will says. “I’m not sure I would have had the idea that that was how you could live your ‘adult life’ if it weren’t for my experience on senior project.”

Since graduating from CRMS and later Colorado College, Will has built a career that reads like a National Geographic adventure log. 

• Documenting agave restoration and bats in New Mexico with the BBC 
• Chasing baseball-sized hailstorms in Texas with New Scientist 
• Filming “Field Recordings” in Aspen with NPR
• Documenting the Lake Christine Fire of 2018 “My Fires” for New York Times portfolio review
• Award-winning documentary “A Few Acres at a Time,” following 500 goats as they travel the Western U.S., bringing life back to the land
• “Take it off the Table,” a film documenting the Wild & Scenic designation for the Crystal River in Carbondale, Colorado 

His talent hasn’t gone unnoticed. Will recently won the Colorado Press Association’s Best Photography Portfolio award for his work with Carbondale’s own Sopris Sun newspaper. Even more impressively, he was one of only 80 photographers selected for the New York Times Portfolio Review, where he networked with editors from The Atlantic, The Guardian, and Smithsonian.

While his work takes him across the country, Will remains deeply rooted in Carbondale. He has found his “reason for being” by balancing high-stakes freelance work with local community leadership. Whether he is running the local ultimate frisbee league (a passion sparked at CRMS), throwing pots at the Carbondale Clay Center, or training his dog, Veronica, Will embodies the CRMS ideal of a well-rounded life.

At the heart of Will’s practice is human connection. “The most rewarding part of my work is the connections that I get to make with the people I document and work alongside,” he explains. “Whether I get to hear their story or be creative with the team I’m working with, we get to share a bit of ourselves and our lives, and I always learn something new from that exchange.”

Will is currently wrapping a three-year mentorship with the New York Times, guided by experts in his field who have inspired connection, growth, and confidence in his freelance business. Another outcome is a deeply personal long-term project exploring his own family dynamics.

This photojournalism project on family relationships started when he moved back home. The work explores re-establishing parental relationships and finding value in people, even as relationships shift and evolve. “Relationships and social dynamics are really interesting,” he notes. “Some are easy, some are hard, but still really important.” Through his camera- which offers both a buffer and a tool for deeper understanding- he’s creating a narrative that’s “poetic and creative,” incorporating journal entries, letters, thoughts, and mostly photos.  

Will Sardinsky has chosen the freelance path because it allows him to build a life rooted in curiosity, community, and meaningful human connection—values shaped early by his time at CRMS. As a freelancer, he pursues long-term personal projects alongside commissioned work, using photography not just to document but also to explore relationships, social dynamics, and personal narratives in a poetic, reflective way. 

“Freelancing gives me the flexibility to say yes to unusual, deeply enriching experiences.” 

Though the independence of freelance work comes with challenges, Will sees it as a trade-off for a richer, more intentional life with the freedom to shape his work around the goals and values that matter most to him.

Will’s advice to current CRMS students is to fully appreciate and take advantage of the unique opportunities and community. Say yes to opportunities, lean into their interests even if the path forward isn’t clear, and trust that the “through line” will make sense later. Will reminds students that relationships matter deeply: the friendships they form at CRMS may last a lifetime, and learning how to collaborate, reflect, and grow within a community is just as important as any technical skill. 

Most of all, he urges students to be present, explore creatively and intentionally, and recognize just how special this moment—and this community—truly is.