My Journey with Photography
Let me start by saying - I did not have a camera in my hand since I was 10 years old. But seriously, I think that most photographers I know or read about have had an undying passion for capturing life around them from an early age. In my case, I really only had a camera to take pictures of myself and my cousins when they came into town, then heavily edit our skin tone and whiten our teeth in picnik. (I just tried to go back and login to picnik to see if I could find any beautiful examples of my work but I saw that picnik literally ceased to exist over 7 years ago HAH).
So, I’ll get to it. (and I’ll sprinkle in some fun recent family pictures, because I’m awful and have not done a good job of keeping any of my early work!). I literally only have two images from the “night photography” segment in school, and I have to say in hindsight the first one is pretty darn good for being handheld at about 1/60 shutter speed. Anyway, back to the story.
The majestic CNU campus, Spring 2015
My parents house, Spring 2015
Spring 2015 I had to take a creative arts course to satisfy my college’s liberal learning curriculum. (We all had to take a variety of sciences, maths, histories, english courses, and so on…). Well I had really put off my art course until almost the very end. I was stressed because frankly I just didn’t want to do it. (There was some type of fairytale course that always filled up super quickly because apparently a lot of other people also did not want to do a traditional art course.) Don’t get me wrong - I don’t hate the arts. That’s obvious. I am quite a perfectionist at heart, and would get really disappointed doing art in elementary school when it didn’t turn out perfectly, so I gave up trying. Back to spring 2015…
I enrolled in a digital photography course! I liked photography enough and it seemed a tiny bit more cut and dry than painting or ceramics. Put in the right settings, get the right result. I loved the class! Midway through the semester we had a pretty big project that we had to tell through a photojournalistic perspective. I took my camera with me to the Dominican Republic on a service trip, but instead of photographing what we were doing, I focused very heavily on the landscape, architecture, and just generally “urban style” photography. Again, very sad I cannot find these pictures anywhere because they were actually halfway decent! [Super side note: I’m a pretty firm believer that if you’re doing missions/service work, it’s amazing, but doesn’t need to be put up on display for recognition. I think we in the West already struggle with a saviorism-mentality, and I just really firmly believe that taking pictures while we’re working should be done with a lot of discernment OKAY ANYWAY].
After the semester was over I found that I really enjoyed photography, knew how to fully shoot in manual, but simultaneously was just kinda like “alright cool, now I know how to take a decent picture” and moved on.
Fast forward to Summer 2017. I had just had a little baby girl (Riley!). I found myself breaking my camera out alllllll the time to take pictures of her. I wanted both the convenient phone pictures but also nicer ones that I could look back on years from now and appreciate the slightly higher quality. I’d still break out my little canon rebel at family gatherings, and I picked up a 50 1.8 to give myself a little better images than the kit lens could produce.
Riley May June 2017
Jump to Summer 2018. I was at a nonprofit organization working as a Housing Locator. My day to day would be extremely stressful, to say the least. I had heard that people didn’t last in that position very long, and in hindsight, I completely understand why. My job entailed helping people who were experiencing homelessness (for a variety of reasons including mental health, lack of financial resources, domestic violence, sexual assault, and human trafficking) stable, longterm housing. The problem is that a lot of these individuals had significant barriers to getting them stably housed (income source, outstanding judgments/debts, transportation). And my average timeframe to get them housed was 30 days. So…yes, stressful. I would find myself getting very down and borderline depressed occasionally, and sometimes would hop on and scroll my discovery page on instagram (not saying this is necessarily healthy, but it was a nice little distraction!). Endless pictures would pop up of couples and families in beautiful locations with radiant light and just overall excellent composition. Initially, I would just scroll and admire. Then I started following some of the accounts just to appreciate the beauty. Then one day (for some reason) I had remembered hearing about coursera and skillshare, and decided to sign up for free trials of each, and see what they had in terms of photography courses. On Coursera, I took Peter Glendinning’s MSU Digital Photography Course. I would watch countless skillshare videos on photography education, posing, editing, and composition. I decided I was interested in actually starting to do something with this information.
Fall 2018 I put out some model calls on my instagram, letting friends know that I was interested in taking some pictures of them for free in exchange for being able to use them to build my portfolio. I took on ten different couples/families and knocked them out within the span of September-November. I was ready to start charging for my work. My first paid session was $75! I shot a family session in Williamsburg, VA. I had almost no idea what I was doing, but I was enthusiastic, and my friend/first client was so encouraging and truly seemed to appreciate the images. I felt comfortable pricing myself low, because to me, that meant the expectations were low, and I was terrified to disappoint. I had 2-3 more sessions through November and December, and then I decided I was truly ready to do this part-time as an accompaniment to my full-time job.
January 2019 - we went to the courthouse and I filed for a business license! I had watched my husband, Drew, build a successful & thriving business over the past 3 years and at this point, I was ready to hop in. Afterward, I went straight to Navy Federal after that and opened a business account. I was super serious that I was going to do this and make it profitable…eventually. Over the next six months, I didn’t pay myself a dime. I had initially “loaned” my business $500 and saved the rest up to buy my first full-frame camera. After that, I bought my website, domain name, some better lenses, got a lightroom subscription, got a honeybook subscription, a couple hardrives, a zillion SD/CF cards, and probably a whole bunch of other stuff I’m forgetting at the moment. But the point of that is: I decided in the beginning that if I truly wanted to be successful, I was willing to take the initial hit in order to invest in gear, software, and eventually, education.
Riley, Dec, and I September 2020
February 2019 - I photographed my first elopement and booked 2 weddings for the upcoming summer!
I won’t give you the ongoing month-to-month breakdown from there, but I wrote this post as an encouragement to others who may look around and think “I can never get to xyz” level, or that because you haven’t been a photographer for 10+ years at the age of 20, you’re not worthy. My work started out pretty heinous (remember the picnik orange skin / fake white teeth?"), but I challenged myself to continue working and learning and improving because that’s what was important to me - to do something well. Since February of 2019, I’ve photographed 21 weddings, with half of that time being a part-time wedding photographer. I’ve found we are usually the biggest critic and barrier to our own success. If you’ve made it this far, props to you! Thanks for reading along :)
Glacier National Park, September 2019