My interview with Junebug is up today, in which they call me “one of D.C and Maryland’s best wedding photographers” The interview includes a lot of never before seen work from this past year.
I really love Junebug, so it was really fun getting a chance to talk with them. If you don’t already follow them — you should!
I’m not going to steal from the article. You should definitely read it. It’s about me! But I do want to focus on one little thing. Junebug asked what recommendations I give to other beginning photographers. Thinking back, I still stand by my answer; master your craft. And this doesn’t just apply to photographers, but to all of us, who invest our time and our energy into a job. I’ve done a lot of jobs outside of photography, some art, some definitely not. I’ve not been great at a lot of them, and most definitely do not call to me like photography does! But I think that mantra still holds true; master your craft. Understand what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. Experiment, fail, and experiment again. Whether you’re a cashier or a mom or modeling for a crazy lady with a camera, if you’re investing your time, you may as well invest a little bit of yourself as well, accept some risk of embarrassing yourself or messing up, so you can be the best cashier/mom/model you can be. Being a cashier/mom/model may not be your calling, but you can’t know that for sure until you really try it on (okay, being a mom is usually a pretty permanent state of affairs, so maybe try being a babysitter first for that one).
I see a lot of people who learn how to do a thing, and that is as much as they plan to put in. But just copying someone else is not mastery. You need to take risks. You must fail. It’s only by being ludicrous now and again that we learn what we can do. I can’t tell you how many times my husband fell out of his chair laughing as I wandered around the house holding a candle or a kid’s toy or some random object in front of my camera, or positioning the cats for a silly modeled cat shoot. But that’s how I learned not to put boxes in front of my camera (and that it’s okay to put kid’s toys and candles in front).
Anyway, I just wanted you, my loves, to know that I want you to be outrageous, to fail, to roll on the ground and flail like a muppet, if that’s what your road to mastery looks like. Experiment, know yourself, and set a course for your craft.
“it’s easy to take a flawless picture – but wrangling chaos and flaws into some sort of beauty can be difficult. I have to struggle against making everything perfect, personally. But I think the most beautiful images have imperfection somewhere.”
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