I remember back when I first started getting into photography three years ago; I used to be so amazed at the technical and aesthetic perfection of other people’s pictures.  I used to browse blogs for hours on end trying to identify what it was that stood out to me as a unique and appealing photograph.  Ultimately, I had concluded that really great photographers were people who could come away with amazing images under any circumstances.  And by any, I’m also including 2pm in direct sunlight {gag!}!

As a self taught photographer, I’ve spent many hours up late at night – while everyone else was fast asleep – learning the inner workings of my camera, experimenting with editing software or reading about the rules of business.  But last year, I decided to invest in learning from others face-to-face.  I decided to learn not just from tutorials and textbooks, but from the experience of others.  So that’s what I did!  I contacted some of my absolute favourite photographers, asked them if they would be willing to spend some time with me and teach me what they had to offer.  Luckily for me, photographers are a pretty great bunch of people and by the end of last year, I felt more confident than ever in my choice of careers!  It also completely changed the way that I took photographs…and for the better…

By the end of last summer, I had experienced a total shift in the way that I viewed photography.  Throughout the entire time that I had been teaching myself this art, I believed that great photographers simply superseded all conditions of the external environment…and this frustrated me to no end!!  Because no matter how hard I practiced or how much I learned about my camera, I was never able to work with conditions that were any less than ideal…and create a beautiful image.  Yet everyone else around me seemed to be able to do so.  I was wrong {which certainly wouldn’t be the first time!}!  By the end of last season, I came to learn the eye-opening truth that great photographers weren’t people who created brilliant images under any circumstances…great photographers were people who created ideal circumstances in order to make beautiful images!

{I will now take a slight pause here for you to insert your own “Eureka” moment!!}

Seriously…this changed EVERYTHING for me!  I came to learn that great photographers really make an effort to seek out the right light…shoot at the ideal time of day…find the best setting…and at the end of it all, create what you need to make what you envision.  Which, believe it or not, means that all great photographers I know…don’t actually shoot at 2pm in direct sunlight!  Amazing!

I’m so glad that I learned all of this when I did because this spring has been less than cooperative when it comes to “ideals”.  It has rained and rained and rained some more…all.season.long.  We’ve had the cold, we’ve had tornado winds, we’ve inch deep mud, and like I mentioned…rain.  But last season has made me better prepared for all of Mother Nature’s unpredictability.  It’s made me more confident, more patient, more willing to wait for the right moment so that we can create the right images.

But there is another component to this equation that certainly cannot be overlooked.  Clients!  Amazing ones at that!  Clients that are willing to wait with you.  Clients who are willing to stalk the weather network and be patient and change locations as many times as needed in order to make the moment come to life.  Clients who are willing to cuddle in the rain and sneak into places that we may or may not actually be allowed to go!  In a nutshell….clients who rock!

Every odd was stacked against us when I met Yanying and Adam in the lobby of the Westin Harbour Castle in Toronto last weekend.  The Toronto Marathon was in its final preparations {aka. major road closures}, an Usher concert was about to take place, traffic was bumper to bumper for miles on end and {this may come as a shock to you…} it was pouring rain!  And not even the light drizzle that can make shooting in the rain bearable…but POURING rain!  But we persevered!!  We sat in grid lock traffic in hopes that my location would work out…only to get there and find it all locked up.  Then, we found the tiniest little window of opportunity and seized it with a vengeance…until we got kicked out!  We endured the pouring rain as long as we could…until I was drenched and they were cold!  But we did it!  And when I say we…I really mean them, because I can be as patient and particular as I want to be…but without their willingness to see this process as more than just photographs…then none of these would have been possible…

Yanying and Adam, simply put, you guys are total rock stars in my eyes!  And not to mention in my camera’s eyes as well!  I can’t wait to see you back here later in the year!  I do have to say that I think Mother Nature owes you a nicer day on your wedding though!

The post YANYING & ADAM: ENGAGEMENT appeared first on Fifteen:Fifty-One Photography | The Blog.

Back in high school, I wasn’t really much of a “science girl” {or a “math girl” or a “history girl” for that matter!!} but much to my disappointment, high schools don’t really care about that and end up forcing you to take those classes anyways!  So when it came time to choose my annual curriculum, I did what any girl would do…I chose the classes that had the cutest teachers!!  In turn, Biology 101 it was!  One full year of dissecting frogs, memorizing cell anatomy and staring at our very handsome biology teacher!  Needless to say, I made the best of it!

What I remember most about biology, even now – almost two decades later – is learning about cells and feeling terribly bad for the nucleus!  That poor cell nucleus had such a big job; maintaining the entire integrity of that cell and basically acting as control central to keep things in check and balance.  Geesh, that’s a lot of responsibility for something so tiny!

After a little over thirteen months of being a new Mother and a business owner, I’m starting to feel like I can relate immensely to the nucleus that I sympathized with so much.  Somehow, seemingly overnight, I feel like I {just like nearly every other woman I know} have become control central…the command post of our household that needs to keep everything in balance.  It’s as though from the moment we wake up until the moment we go to sleep, ten thousand things need to happen and they all need to happen in a specific order!  The cat needs to be fed, the baby needs to be changed, the car needs to be taken in for its oil change.  Emails need to be returned, appointments need to be made, blog posts need to be written.  My husband deserves my time, my son deserves my time, my clients deserve my time, I deserve my time.  That, my friends, is a whole lot of time!  And I’m just tiny, little me.

I bring all of this up because lately, one of the most common questions that I receive {and felt the need to answer} is…how do you balance it all?  How do you find the time to make it all happen?  Well, the truth is, that its taken me close to the better part of a year to figure it out and even then, it only works until my son decides to throw a stick in the spokes and then we go tumbling head over handlebars one more time!  There was a time {aka. last summer} when our days involved being up at 6am everyday and not going to bed until 1am or 2am the next morning.  It was ridiculous and most definitely should be the exception and not the rule.  But it was a lesson that we needed to learn in order to stop doing it!  I think that life in general can be tricky to balance at the best of times…but life with a young child and a business can be extra hard, and please allow me to be the first to say that all of it kicks my ass a lot of the time!

I am very, very lucky for two reasons; 1.) my husband is incredible and helps so much with everything!  He works so hard during the day and then comes home and plays with the baby, cooks dinner, helps to clean up and then does all kinds of work for the business.  Bottom line, my husband deserves a gold star every single day and none of this would work without him.  2.)  I am fortunate not to be living in the 1950s and this sort of ‘domestic distribution’ is considered perfectly acceptable!!!!  We live in a time when women are encouraged to have careers of their own and men are encouraged to play their part at home…so all in all, this works in my favour!  And part of it is my husband’s own fault because he’s just better in the kitchen than I am!

There is still one very significant difference between my husband and I though…and that is the fact that my husband is a ‘mental note taker’, which – as far as I’m concerned – is code for “I’ll do my best to remember the date, time and place of where we need to be…but there are no guarantees!”  This, simply does not fly with me!  I am the complete opposite of my husband, which means that I’m a neurotic perfectionist that writes everything down eighteen times on post-it notes and in two different daytimers.  It’s just how I roll and I kinda like it that way!  It’s also that neurosis, once embraced, that finally helped to make our household function rather smoothly!!!

And it looks a little something like this…

I have a hard cover weekly calendar that sits on my desk so that I can see the entire week ahead of time.  Each day of the week has its own post-it note {yes, cut to size…because I’m that awesome!}.  The post-it notes have each day’s to-do list, and when I say to-do list…I mean to-do list.  Everything!  From scheduling meetings to grocery shopping to showering.  It has to go on that list.  My mind likes lists…if it sees something on a list, it reacts as though we’re in third grade and someone just triple dog dared me to get it done.  Basically, if I see something on a list…it’s ON!  If something on the daily to-do list doesn’t get done…it goes to the top of the list on the next day’s…and so on and so on.  This ensures that everything gets done in priority.

Then there is our highlighter…my beautiful, sacred, yellow highlighter!  The highlighter marks times on the calendar when any member of our family is expected to be somewhere.  Whether Steve has class or Hudson has a doctor’s appointment or I have a shoot…every time one of us is out of the house, it’s marked with our yellow highlighter {with the exception of Steve’s work day}.  This not only helps us to keep track of who is where at any given time…but it also ensures that our house functions with one car!

And lastly, we backtrack!  If anything has a due date in our house {and most things do…from delivering images to a client or sending a birthday card on time}…we backtrack to give ourselves enough time to get it done by marking each necessary step on our to-do lists and then adding two extra days of margin {for all of the fun and unexpected stuff that comes up…like the flu!}.  If we’ve learned anything over the past year…it’s that our child runs the show these days and in turn, we need to leave margin in everything we do because things seldom ever go as planned.

I’m not going to lie…it’s not glamorous or sophisticated or spontaneous.  Heck…it’s not even electronic..but it works for us.  It gives us the time that we need together as a family, while getting everything done on time {for the most part!} and still ensuring that we don’t burn our candles at both ends.  I’m sure that a cell nucleus uses an iPhone or something totally rad like that but, come on…a nucleus has genetic material to keep in order {there’s an app for that, right?!?!}…I just have our household to keep from falling apart!!!  And besides, a phone just doesn’t triple dog dare me the way a post-it note does!!!

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It usually tends to happen the same way every time; I meet with an amazing new couple, we sit…have coffee…talk about their upcoming wedding…and then it comes.  The question.  How did you get into photography?  Or, it can be found among the first few lines of an email that I get from either a peer or someone interested in becoming a photographer; what led you to photography?  As far as answers go, this is an easy one.  God.  God got me into photography.  My God and my faith led me to this life.  But as far as delicate topics go…it becomes a little less simple.

I had an interesting conversation with someone last year about the topic of blogs and what should or shouldn’t be discussed within their parametres.  The opinion that was being shared with me was that blogs are like any other “casual” conversation, which means that religion and politics should be strictly off-limits.  This seems like a fair enough view to me except for one major issue; I don’t believe that God and religion are the same thing so, as far as I’m concerned, I’m not violating blog etiquette in any way!!!

Now, since I have just thrown the giant “G-word” out there for all to see, I think that this is as good a time as any to explain myself before we delve into this much deeper…

My relationship with God is my faith.  It encompasses every moment of my day…every breath of my life.  It existed long before I was even really able to understand what I was a part of.  Religion, on the other hand, is the institution in which I choose to share and celebrate that faith.  As far as my convictions go, I don’t believe that these two terms are interchangeable as one does not require the other in order to exist.  Many people go to church without truly knowing God, while many sincerely spiritual people have never stepped foot in a church in their entire lives.  This, in my humble opinion, makes faith and religion two very different things.

So, having said that, I am here, bringing faith to the table…not religion.  I’m not going to lie…God’s my friend and I kind of like Him!  We get along pretty well {most of the time!} and to discuss my life or my views or my passions without including His contributions to it wouldn’t really be sincere…or true…or genuine.  It wouldn’t be telling the whole story.  Hence, it’s only fitting that you would also find God living here, among the pages of this blog,  just as He can be found intertwined among the moments of my life.  Because it’s really His story that I’m telling and as a photographer who gets a wee bit upset when people post my pictures without proper photo credit, it seems rude to tell a story without acknowledging the original author!  You get where I’m coming from…right?!?!

Which brings me back to my frequently asked question…

I kind of wish that I had a really cool story or tale of triumph that preceded my journey into photography, but the truth of it is…it was God!  His plan was bigger than mine {thankfully!}, which might explain the numerous photography books that I’ve had on my shelf for many years and the torn out magazine pages that I haven’t been able to part with since high school because I love the pictures too much.  God’s funny that way; subtle, nudging, gentle.  And other times He’s not!  Which, ultimately, is what is required sometimes when you find yourself trying to lead a really stubborn girl like myself in the right direction!!  I can be a lot like Jacob at times…always wrestling with God in the desert, only to find myself walking around with nothing to show for it except my war wounds.  But eventually God won in the end…He always does.

I’m a lot less of a fighter now {He’s made His point perfectly clear!}.  Instead of sitting in the desert and wondering what happens if I poke a lion with a stick…God and I hang out…have coffee…play scrabble from time to time.  We negotiate a bit more.  I’m more open to His plan and He promises to ease me into them slowly.   He promised to talk more if I promised to shut up and listen more!  I follow Him on Twitter and He’s one of my biggest fans!  What can I say…He’s my BFF!

And that, my friends…is how I got into photography.  Nothing romantic.  Nothing fancy.  Just me…battling it out with the big guy.  And losing!

The post THE MAN WITH THE PLAN appeared first on Fifteen:Fifty-One Photography | The Blog.

In 1989, the National Gallery of Canada purchased a painting by American artist Barnett Newman for 1.8 million dollars.  The painting – entitled The Voice of Fire – consists of a red stripe painted on a blue background and was originally painted in 1967.  Its acquisition created no end of the controversy for the National Gallery who even now, over two decades later, still hears about it from time to time.  After having worked at this amazing institution for six years, I was able to hear first hand how people felt in regards to its purchase and further more, what people considered to be art.  Please believe me when I say that – when it comes to tax dollars – the public, by no means, felt the need to hold back on their feelings!  And as the person on the other end of the Gallery phone, it often left me in the middle of an emotional crossfire!  But having said that, I did learn something extraordinary from it all…something that I believe is partially to credit for why I am here…today…on this blog…running this business…

I can’t tell you how many times I heard the following statements in regards to the credibility of The Voice of Fire; “I could have painted that!” or, better yet “My five year-old could have painted that!”  Of course, with the implication that we should have paid their five year-old 1.8 million dollars to have done it instead {I mean really, who wouldn’t?!?!}!  But here’s the thing…you didn’t paint it.  Nor did your five year-old.  And that is more the point than one might believe.  It’s like those people who go to craft shows and then say “What…$20.00 for a pair of wool socks?  That’s crazy…I could make those myself!”  Right…but you didn’t and let’s be honest, you probably won’t!  And that’s why that woman is sitting there surrounded by eighty pairs of handmade wool socks {selling for $20.00 a piece!} and you’re not…because she did do it!

I bring this up because I get asked quite often for tips on how to get into photography or how to start your own business and I believe – at the end of the day – that if I were to be very truthful, then I would have to say that the real difference between those who succeed and those who don’t has far less to do with talent and far more to do with following through.  Of course, taking beautiful images or painting beautiful pictures is important {especially because it becomes the foundation and passion that ultimately drives you} but let’s be honest…artistic merit is rather subjective at the best of times.  What you consider inspiring  and exemplary will likely not be what I consider to be inspiring and exemplary.  And that’s okay.  It’s great even because that’s what opens up the door to all artistic creativity.  There is room for all of us.  But a big part of the reason {in my humble opinion} why Newman’s painting is hanging on the wall of a national institution with 1.8 million dollars in his pocket is because he didn’t just paint a red stripe on a blue background…but he saw potential in what he had done.  He saw art…he saw creativity…he saw an opportunity {whatever it may be} and then he pursued it.  Regardless of whether or not we share his opinion on what constitutes talent or art…Newman continued on where most of us back down.  And I think there is something huge to be said for that.

Believe me, by no means am I trying to compare my body of work to that of any other…but the point I am trying to make {and the advice that I am offering to all those that asked} is there are many, many, many incredible photographers out there.  Not only that, but, there are many, many, many photographers out there who could rock this industry like nobody’s business!  But the reason, however, that I am here and they are not, is simply because I didn’t stop after putting down the camera.  That’s it!  I followed through when perhaps someone else didn’t.

The bottom line when starting your own business is just that…it’s a business!  The wool socks are merely the first step…from there, the rest is hanging on the follow through.  You have to be willing to separate yourself from your craft enough to be able to see it as marketable…to sell it!  You have to create the website, make the logo, sign up for the craft show, approach the art agent, start the facebook page…not just stop at the beautiful images and hope that the rest will take care of itself.  There is nothing easy about starting from scratch and building something out of nothing.  And that’s likely the reason most people back down and don’t do it.  But business is also creation…just another aspect of it.  If you hold on to that vision…the rest will fall into place.  And it’s not to say that it’s guaranteed to be successful {nothing is a guarantee in life}, but at the very least, you’re giving it a fighting chance above and beyond what most others are.

So, long story short {I bet by this point you’re regretting having asked!!!}…see the potential in what you are doing.  Extend the process beyond what your are creating.  Do what most others aren’t; follow through…

Hey…it paid off nicely for Newman!

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