Are you looking for a New Life this year too? Bossier Fine Art Photographer
I've always been pretty good at writing my story. I've journaled since I was about seven or eight years old, but what I've never been good at was sharing my story. I have only shared it with very close friends. I haven't always felt my story was worthy of being shared, like what good would it do. Over the past few years I've realized that it is good to tell your story. It's not that you're bragging, or showing off, or you're better than others, usually it's the exact opposite. Usually it's that you are the person struggling, you're in the middle of the muck, working on overcoming something, and you know other people are going through the same damn thing.
It doesn't mean that it's the exact same struggle but maybe something similar. Sometimes it's just that somebody has a struggle of their own and seeing someone else’s struggle, how they work through it, and progress will help them in their own path. That's what's bringing me to start writing this blog from a new aspect and new goals.
It’s that “New Year, New Me” time~the moment when we all make plans to be and do better. 2020 was a train wreck for most people, and it definitely brought me down too. Most of all I realized I wanted some changes in my life. I enrolled in a Masters of Fine Art in Photography program back in March, got accepted in June, and started in September.
What finally brought me to this idea is that I need to tell my story. I guess it's probably been a long time coming. It's been something on my mind, but it wasn't until I decided I really wanted to go back to school and get my Masters in Fine Art in Photography that really gave me the final push. If I'm going to take the time to tell my story in the images that I create why am I not just telling my story? Why am I not walking people through my process, through my struggle, through what I'm going through every day with running a business and building a body of art work? Figuring out who I want to be and doing what I want to be doing.
I guess to explain a little bit I need to go back to about probably 15 years ago. I had moved from Italy back to Montana and had a serious desire to open a scrapbook store. I'd been teaching scrapbooking classes for three years and it was something near and dear to my heart. I love to teach and having a scrapbook store allowed me not only teach others to preserve their history, their story. I probably never should have opened the store, I had all the reasons why I shouldn't~My husband was military. We moved a lot. We didn't really have the financial means to get set up. I've never really run a business. I was going to have to build it from scratch where you've got to design your own logo your own marketing. Figure out what you want to say, that was big and scary. I was afraid to do it and I had been actually at a retreat scrapbooking and telling a friend that I'd been friends with for years about all the research I had done into the benefits of having this business, but basically that I was scared to do it, but I didn't think I could and all the reasons probably why I shouldn't.
About three months later I was approached to teach classes at a scrapbook store that was opening. They'd heard about me, what I was teaching, and my knowledge of the industry. I was so excited to get to teach somewhere new. I jumped on the opportunity and the very first day of this lady's grand opening somebody asked her, “What made you decide to open a scrapbook store?” I was standing right next door and she pointed at me and goes actually was Jenn's dream, she outlined the best way to do it, and so I just thought I'd do it and make the money. I was crushed! Somebody else was living my dream because I was too afraid to do it myself. At that moment I decided I could not stay working for her. Within 30 days gave her my notice that I would finish out the quarter of scheduled classes and that I would not continue to work there. Instead I made the steps, Big Scary steps, to open my own business.
My mom decided to join me in this venture. We started super small because that's all we could afford and basically we built the store around the aspect of me teaching what I knew~sharing my knowledge, my excitement for the craft. At first we were only open a few days a week centered around when we were teaching these classes and it grew and within less than nine months we had to move from the location that my dad let me borrow in the back of his warehouse to our own location. We doubled in size and we went from being open three and four days a week to being open six days a week.
We continued to grow and expand taking on some staff and realized we were quickly outgrowing that space too. Within less than a year and a half, my parents, my husband, and I bought a huge commercial location so that we could have a 3,000 square foot store with a 3,000 square foot basement for storage. We continued to grow that business. I truly loved it. My husband got orders and I couldn't keep it. It was already getting to be time. I was kind of getting burnt out, but knowing that I'd have to leave it in the hands of someone else was kind of the nail in the coffin for that business. At that point is when I went back to what I true my original love which was photography.
I started doing photography in high school and since we sold my scrapbook store I went back to school to get my Bachelors of Science in Photography. It was a long journey. It helped me to learn to tell other people’s stories. That's what I did in scrapbooking, I helped other people learn to preserve their memories, be creative themselves, and I loved to teach those things. Once I went to school, I didn't take the time to learn to tell my story. I did that in a few class assignments over the years and I've maybe done so sporadically in my career. I have done some personal work, but most of the time I was working for a client. Telling that client’s story, sharing that clients family images, creating a work that was for them with my spin on it.
I slowly realized that the whole reason I started in this art was because I had a story too, but I've been scared to share it. I'm still scared. No one's going to want to hear my story or look at the images I create. They're not going to understand the symbolism in the work or they're going to hate it. What's even worse is if they don’t even care. You know, I mean its some thing to hate the work, but to have apathy and just not care~that's even worse. To know it might not even be worthy of any feeling is a fear I think most artists share.
Do you create something from your heart? It's a piece of you and you have to know when you put it out there to the world there will be people who don't like it. There will be people who do care, but I guess I finally realized it's more important to be able to reach that one person who connects, who needs to hear my story; the person who needs to see that image and needs to know that somebody else has gone through a similar struggle, or struggle at all, and they've felt that same emotion. If I can climb that mountain they’re on, and I’m on the other side, they can do it to. Maybe you're in the thick of it, stuck, and worried you can’t rise above, get out of this hole. You can!
That brings me to where I'm at~I want to create and finally realized I need to create for myself. I've got notebooks with lists of ideas of shoots I want to create, and for a long time I've been so scared that I'll create them and they won't look like the vision of my head. I won't do it justice. I don't have the skills, or maybe I won't be able to find the right model or what happens if I just screw it up in general. I guess I'm realizing that even if I do that I'm going to learn and next time maybe what it's the picture in my head will be a little bit closer to the image that I create.
These are fears I think some artists have and I need to finally overcome. When I'm worried I can't create the image as I see it, it drives me to learn more. Maybe I don't have enough skills. I need to expand to learn and to grow. In doing that I want to teach other people to do the same~to use their voice to create, stop being afraid. It doesn't mean the images I'm going to create are going to speak to anyone other than me. I want to tell the story of my journey of this furthered education. Maybe if I can show you what I do to create an image, work through a process, how I take something I see in my head and make it equate to something that everyone else can see. Maybe if you see how I work, maybe you can realize, learn, and grow along with me.
That's where this blog comes into play. I've enrolled in grad school. I have one semester down probably about seven more to go. I know that I'm going to have class requirements and various assignments. I'm going to learn. I'm going to have to grow and maybe it'll help you, maybe it'll be just interesting to see what grad school is like for a fine art photography student.
Maybe it'll be a chance to make you decide if you also want to take this journey or go a different path, but either way I'm beginning.
