How I Started My Professional Photography Journey

After three weeks of blogging about photography, I realized that I never actually told you how I started my photography journey at Ohio Northern University. While I’ve grown up going on photoshoots with my siblings and being the designated photographer on family vacations, I never did “official” photography work until I came to ONU. 

When I started ELM Photography last spring, I could not have imagined it having such a great impact on me. What started out as a few simple photoshoots with friends quickly transformed into a freelancing business where people I’d never spoken to on campus were reaching out to hire me. To further diversify my portfolio, I even attended sports events and would post those photos on social media too.

It was after posting the sports photos that I got an ominous message from Ohio Northern’s sports Instagram. I received a DM asking to know who I was and whether I was getting paid for my photos. Afraid that I was getting in trouble, I nervously responded back to clarify that I was only an ONU student looking to build my portfolio.

As it turned out, the Sports Information department was in need of another photographer, and they liked the work I was posting on my Instagram. Before I knew it, I was offered a job! I was overjoyed that my hard work had paid off and I got a job doing what I love for my university.

The following fall, my position as a Sports Information photographer was official, and I was scheduled to take photos at a variety of sporting events, such as soccer and volleyball. A part of me was nervous because I wasn’t used to the pressure of taking “good” photos. If the photos didn’t turn out well in the past, I simply wouldn’t post them. But now that I was hired for my photos, suddenly I was worried that my photos would turn out horrible and my supervisors would be frustrated with me. The stakes were high, but that didn’t deter me from following my goals. 

I will admit that mistakes were made and not every photoshoot turned out the best. Rather than letting those disappointments stop me, I have acknowledged my mistakes and asked for help. I learned so much in the past year of being a photographer, and I am looking forward to the many years to come. 

See you next time, 

Evie

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Practicing My Craft

Image
With all of the craziness that you have seen me blog about these past couple of weeks, I'm sure you are probably expecting an interesting blog I can. I have bad news to tell you. Nothing interesting has happened to me this past week. At least nothing exciting enough for me to share on this blog.  This isn't to say that I've just been sitting around in my dorm room for the past week,  being bored to death. I have been extremely busy with school work and  keeping up with my jobs. In fact, it's been a little bit overwhelming to keep track of everything. I've been trying to relax and have some down time so that I don't completely overwhelm myself with stress. I guess one piece of good news is that I recently learned that I only need to take 15 credit hours next semester. I have been doing 19 credit hours pretty much every semester here, so it'll be nice to just be able to relax and enjoy my final semester at Ohio Northern. Besides, I am probably going to be work...
Read more

Thanksgiving Break Festivities

Here we are, getting back in the regular school routine again! It seems like Thanksgiving Break went by way too quickly. I am not ready for school again, nor the end of the semester. It is crazy how the weeks go by so slowly while the semester just flew by.  Overall, the Thanksgiving holiday was very nice. It was pretty quiet since my grandfather was the only family member we hosted. I did a good amount of the cooking and baking this year with my mom. I am not really good in the kitchen, but practice makes perfect! My mom says that the only way to learn how to cook is by continuing to do it. I am honestly not sure how much of a help I truly was, maybe more of a hindrance, but my mom was incredibly patient with me. She showed me how to prepare all the meals and make sure all the consistencies and measurements were correct. A good amount of what my mom does is from memory or learned by experience; there isn’t exactly an exact recipe to follow for some of these things. In the end, the...
Read more

A Quick Weekend Trip

I decided to take an unplanned trip home this weekend. this probably doesn't seem like a big deal, and I'm sure that people do this all the time. For me, however, this is quite uncommon. This is actually the first time that I have gone home on my own when there wasn't any formal break. This is my first semester having a car on campus so I have never had the flexibility to do this before. It was honestly a lot of fun to make such a spur of the moment decision. Going home was not without purpose though. First, my family had a nice Halloween bonfire in our backyard. It was just my siblings and my parents, but it was fun to play some cheesy Halloween songs and drink apple cider on our back porch. Well, I did not drink  much of the apple cider because I may or may not have spilled it all over myself when I tripped. Another reason why I went home was because I needed to vote. I honestly forgot about absentee voting, but I prefer to go in person anyways. This was a pretty big elec...
Read more