So it is 7pm and I’m sitting on my couch, snuggled up with my favorite fuzzy blanket trying to keep warm in this weather, and I’m trying to write this post. When first opening my laptop to write this post, I had NO idea what I wanted to write about. So I took a few minutes to let my mind relax and I began to reflect on my business. I thought of the journey that I had gone on in order to get to the place that I am at today, and I started to think about all the bumps in the road. Starting a new journey in your life will always come with bumps in the road, but I wanted to talk about one of my biggest bumps I’ve ever gone through in my business.
For some photographers, finding your style can come easy. For others it can be an on going battle. For me it was an on going WAR! This was something that I struggled with the MOST out of all aspects of my business. When I first started I thought I had the whole “editing thing” down pat! I had my “style” I knew how I wanted to edit my pictures and that was that. As I grew, and started to shoot more, my style began to mature and I realized that I wasn’t happy with the way I edited my images. This is where the real struggle began.
After I decided to explore my style as a photographer, I started to get REALLY confused. I didn’t know what the heck I wanted, and I would look at other photographers images and say, “well what if I edited like her?” or “my work is never gonna look as good as that.” I was completely discouraging myself without even knowing it. That’s where it started to get even worse… I became addicted to comparing myself to other photographers, and because of that I completely lost who I was as an artists. All I cared about was trying to figure out how to get my photos to look like a certain photographers, and I began to fall out of love with my work.
Instead of being excited to jump on my computer to edit a session, I started to delay my editing. I started to not care about my work and I fell completely out of love with my work. It wasn’t until one day where I met with one of my good friends, Brooke Michelle, and we were talking about this and she told me that I needed to sit down and block everything out of my head and just focus on what I wanted MY WORK to look like. Not any other photographer, but my work. So that is exactly what I did. The second she left my apartment I sat down and just played around with lightroom. I made Josh take my phone from me and every time I got stressed or wasn’t happy with how it was looking, I got up and took a breather.
Changing you style can be a really scary thing. Especially when it is a dramatic change. But you have to remember that you have to LOVE your work. Your work is a piece of you. It is a piece of your imagination, it is a piece of your art. For those of you who may be struggling with your style, I challenge you to push yourself out of your comfort zone and just do what YOU want to do. Because at the end of your day, your work is a representation of you, and you have to be totally in love with your work!
From my very first wedding to my latest wedding!
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Awe! So honored to be mentioned in this!