Hang on to your tube socks, this is a long one…

A few years back I had a new, but steadily growing business on my hands. During the holidays due to time constraints, I found myself having to turn down a few jobs. I didn’t want to just say no and not give the client a good alternative. But I didn’t know any of my peers here in town. In fact, I was kind of afraid of the other photographers in town. I had photographer friends in other cities, but the ones here in town were my direct competition. I was afraid they would be super competitive. I was afraid they were all already in a some kind of clique. I was afraid they didn’t like me, even though none of them had met me. At that point I had only met one photographer in town when my daughter was about 8 months old, Cindy Strickland. And she didn’t know me at all. She was photographing a bunch of other babies at a new moms event at one of the hospitals and Lucy and I happened to be there. She seemed really nice, and I knew she was a great photographer, so I began referring a couple of these inquiries to her.

What followed was a thank you email from Cindy and an invitation to breakfast where she urged me to join the Tallahassee Professional Photographers Guild. We sat there for hours and chatted, I told her my fears about joining, worried that people wouldn’t like my work, etc. She insisted that I’d be completely welcome and that not only would I meet everyone and see that it was no big deal, but that I’d be able to continue my education with the monthly speakers that came through and through print competition.

After that, ANOTHER photographer, Christie Meresse asked me to lunch and told me all the same things. She invited me to visit a meeting and see what the group had to offer and promised to sit with me so I didn’t look like the new girl in the cafeteria. So I went. And it wasn’t at all how I envisioned it. Everyone introduced themselves. People who I had long time respected and admired were incredibly cool, not catty. And there was beer! Why in the world had I not been coming to this all along??

So I joined! And though competing with others in town in print competition completely freaked me out, I gave it a shot. I repeatedly failed every month. It was really discouraging. But what was helpful was when I decided to start letting my stuff get critiqued at the end of the meetings, either by peers or by the visiting speaker. They pointed out things that I hadn’t thought about at all or that maybe I was too attached to the photo to see. The critiques were always constructive, never dismissive. It made me try harder the next time. It made me be more present in my image making. It made me a better photographer.

And then came 2013. In 2013, a year after first joining our guild, I started winning. I started winning a lot. It was awesome. I not only was winning in at least 1 category almost every month, but I won our annual Salon competition first and second place. And by the end of the year, I came in 2nd overall for Tallahassee Photographer of the Year. It sounds like I’m bragging, and yeah, I’m a little braggy (but in an adorable way). What I’m trying to say is that I did so well this year because I learned so much the year before. And I owe that all to joining this guild.

It wasn’t just what I learned, but it was the friendships I made. For the first time in 3 years, I once again had what felt like coworkers. It turns out this job is kinda lonely. You meet tons of awesome people, but at the end of the day it’s just you and your computer working on photos for hours and hours. It’s not like before when I worked with a team of web designers and though we didn’t chat all day long, we were friends. We went to lunch together. We joked around at the office. It was social. I am social. I needs the peoples or I start to get a little weird. And now I had people to go to lunches with, to hang out with, and to talk about work with. I have people that I can refer work to. When equipment breaks or I don’t have something for a shoot coming up, I have a handful of people that would let me borrow things on a moment’s notice. (I’m talking to you, Kate Bellflower, Linda Long, Terri Smith, Matt Burke, Ashley Daniell, Christie Meresse, and Kylene Gay!)

And now it’s a new year and a new year for the guild. I’m now heavily involved in the behind the scenes, serving as VP to President Kylene Gay. We’ve got lots of fun stuff planned for the year. I’m excited to be involved and to help this guild grow and hopefully to share this same experience with other photographers here in the city. So if you are a photographer in town and you’ve been hiding under a rock like I was, afraid to meet other people in your industry, this is me urging you to come see us in January. We are a fun bunch who all just want to get better at what we do, and possibly get some good food and drink while we do it.

And now I can show off a little project I did together with Linda Long of Long’s Photography. After nearly a year of not seeing my brother, he came and stayed with me for the whole month of December. I was determined to photograph him. He hates being photographed. But he has to do what I say because I’m older. I called Linda and asked if I could borrow a bunch of her lights because I wanted to experiment with a lighting set up I had been studying, but instead she said, “Why don’t you just come down to our studio and do it all here and I’ll assist?” And that made more sense. So I took Eian over there, showed Linda the way I wanted to set up the lighting and she helped me put together the look for these photos. It was a great collaboration with one of my closest friends and I’m so proud of the way this turned out. Linda taught me so much and I’m incredibly thankful she was a part of this project.

It couldn’t have happened at all if I hadn’t of joined the Guild. Come see us at Backwoods Bistro January 23rd at 6pm! It could just change your life. 😉 [blogshow id=408e player=1 autoplay=1 toolbar=1]