Investing in me - Albury Wodonga Family Photographer

Those who know me, know that I have this thing with doing photography workshops… I might have done a *few*.

I work from home. I spend 90% of my working time alone, sitting at my desk (and yep, the reality of running a photography business is there is very little time spent actually taking the photos). So each year I invest a decent amount of money attending workshops, which I absolutely adore doing. I love meeting people, and learning, and shooting alongside photographers who I admire and respect. I find it fascinating finding out how other people run their businesses and how they set up the photo, what they are seeing before they take the photo and what the end product looks like.

I try to do at least one a year… who am I kidding. I usually do several a year. But they are worth their weight in gold. Investing in workshops and learning has been the best thing I have done for myself and my business. I have made so many amazing friends and networks through attending workshops, and although the cost is sometimes a pretty big financial cost, and the time away from my family to attend, they have always proven to recoup more than their initial investments.

So after attending quite a few in-person workshops with small and large groups of people, I decided it was time to do a one on one mentoring. There are a lot of photographers who offer these types of sessions, but out of the pool of hundreds, I chose Lauren Phillips from Love Her Wild Photography. And the main reason being that I bloody love the connection and humanity and the warmth of the images that she captures and I was hoping to find out her secrets for getting these types of photos. What I wasn’t expecting was for Lauren to break through my hardened and tough exterior and expose me so much (figuratively of course). She had me in tears in the middle of a cafe in Kiama and it’s exactly what I needed. It’s the missing part of what I’ve been searching for for me to be able to find the raw, and exposed and human parts of what I do.

It’s not going to be an overnight and instantaneous change in how I take images, but she’s give me the building blocks to start the foundation of being able to create the images that I yearn to create.

So after our chat, we headed out to this awesomely cool location near Kiama with Sarah and Koa and took some photos!