Who Is She? (A Getting To Know Me Post)

Let me formally introduce myself so that we don’t have to have this moment when brought up in conversation.

Brace yourself friends, there are many I's in this blog post.

3 Fun Facts About Me:

I'm an empath.

I am addicted to yellow plantains (I put that on everything).

I love to travel but hate to fly which makes for an incredibly bittersweet experience.

How we got to you being here reading about me on my photography website.

I went to school for Communication Arts, for a few reasons including not being sure about what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. So I decided that being the next Shonda Rhimes could be a step in the right direction. I loved to write, loved to control, loved to plan. Being a show runner and getting to combine all of those things was exciting.

When I graduated with my Masters my Uncle Aubrey gifted me a great DSLR camera, I think show runner felt to him more like a DP which I did not question. I took the camera and ran because it would be useful heading into this business. Working with cameras was apart of my curriculum so I understood the basics but I usually tapped out whenever it got complex. I wanted to hire someone to run the cameras back then.

I set it under a shelf under my tv, knowing that there would come a time where I’d need it.

Long story long, TV took longer than I was expecting to pan out and you need money to survive. So I got a job. “Joined the real world.“

It was the age old twenty something conundrum where you really want to be responsible for yourself but your dreams take time. As much as you want to keep trying, you feel responsible to make it on your own. I chose the comfort of being responsible over star gazing.

Corporate life made me really unhappy. I like to make the rules not follow them and there are so many rules once when you step into someone else's office.  I didn't know that it was the job that caused my sadness and anxiety at the time, but I can see it so clearly now.

I was not committing to being creative in my after work time like I promised either. Instead I Netflixed and Chilled because of the exhaustion of working a 9 hour day.

I gave up.

It wasn’t all bad. I was able to enjoy the perks of stable income and began to travel. We decided to go to Bali.

As I researched the best thing to do while there, I found some great YouTubers with the most amazing travel vlogs. My pride awakened, “I went to school for this how can I not take my camera with me and get some amazing photos of this beautiful place. I’m pretty sure I’m just as good as any of them'”

The DSLR, now dusty would finally be put to use about 4 years later. (There was a lot of dust.)

I dusted it, watched a few videos and thought I would return with some premium content. It couldn't be that hard, right?   

In Bali I pointed that thing at everything including myself. I woke up early and took self portraits as the sun rose. I walked up the paths to catch the rice fields near our villa. I learned how heavy it was as we walked all over Ubud, and up and down mountains. We bonded through my frustration because it was hard.

Bali was incredible, my photo skills however were not.

It’s very different from video and if I’m being honest I was rusty. I bit off more than I could chew. I didn't come back as the next Lost Leblanc, but I did have a new fire to master photography.

I got home and made the decision to photograph other people, starting with my people.

I started by taking a friend to a park and I tried to recreate something I had seen on IG. I learned through these early sessions how many women have trouble just being in front of the camera. It was something I had never paid attention to but when the point is to take a photo and the camera goes up you can literally see the wall rush over their faces.

I didn’t know how to deal with that because I was focused on mastering the technicalities. Was the composition good?, how’s the light? What are we going to do with the pose? IS IT IN FOCUS? After trying to figure out all of the zillion of things running through my mind, I would ask them to smile a few times and call it a shoot.
I'd go home to look through all of the photos, find 1 out of the 800 that I liked and then zoom in to find out that the focus was off.  But worse than that was how uncomfortable the person in the image was.

Who did I think I was? You’re just not getting it, let it go! I would think as every fiber of my being screamed for me to quit. But there would be a quieter voice observing my tantrum. Asking me if I thought my second shoot ever would end up like something Annie Liebowitz had thought up.

It was right. It was melodramatic and also normal.

I kept shooting. I found a mentor whose catchphrase was that it isn’t the subjects job to be photogenic. It was the photographers and it all clicked. I absorbed everything she did because she has this super power of sitting someone in front of her camera and focusing in on them so intuitively that they relaxed. She would snap their photo before the wall would come up, if it ever appeared at all.

That is what I wanted to deliver.

I took her tips and I kept practicing. I went from having 1 good photo to 3, 10, and now I have a hard time narrowing them down to less than 30. I set up a studio in my home (all indoor sessions on my site are shot there) and have been creating ever since.

I went from being focused on my skill set to being focused on my subject and that’s where my transformation occurred.

I love sitting someone down who is in their head about all of the ways that they are not good enough for this portrait and prove them wrong. Because it is not their job to pose themselves, what cruel world would make you pose yourself when you have no idea what you look like?

Instead I’ve learned to be their mirror. To reflect for them what they want to see in themselves.

I create fashion portraits accessible for all. I told you that I liked to make the rules right?