find what you love
It’s the very last week of my blogs, for now. I am so thankful you all have ventured out of your comfort zone and stuck with me through these 8 posts. I know I never did a vlog, but I just couldn’t get my shit together, so forgive me.
Anyway, I am yet again going to be talking about two photographers I know that have started from scratch; Brandon Mills and Megan Zens. Unlike Courtney, Megan and Brandon are relatively new photographers, so it takes a full swing back to my purpose of this niche blog, beginning photography.
Brandon Mills is a Junior Liberal Studies major, from Richmond, VA. He is an ambassador and peer mentor at Longwood. I’ve known Brandon for 3 years now and have never not seen him with a camera in his hand. His personal brand is brandonpaulphotography. Doesn’t it just flow?
Brandon got his Canon Rebel T-5 at the end of his high school senior year and started taking random pictures around school freshman year. This eventually encouraged him to offer to take pictures of people around Longwood, which led to people asking him to take their pictures! What goes around comes around, amiright?
Towards the end of his sophomore year, people started to ask for head shots and then his friend, Emory Read, fellow Longwood student, asked Brandom to take her senior pictures.
This led Brandon to multiple people asking him to take their senior pictures, from his good friends to others.
Brandon has gotten so good, ADPi and Tri Sigma sororities have gotten their pictures done by him. He’s created some videos much like this one for his many Young Life College trips.
I went ahead and asked Brandon what his favorite part is about taking pictures and he said, “this is about to sound really cliche but capturing all of life’s amazing moments and doing what I love; taking pictures for others.”
The hardest part, for Brandon, is staging people in the right place to capture the best lighting but also the best picture of the object.
Safe to say, Brandon’s found what he loves and I might even ask him to take my senior pictures ;).
Megan Zens is a senior psychology major from Gloucester, VA. She plays club field hockey. Like I said, Megan just started taking photographs. She’s a newborn when it comes to it. But that hasn’t stopped her from chasing her dreams.
She’s about to get married to Jordan Albright, so she was smart and made her personal brand meganalbrightphotography, her future name. They have a sweet dog named Harleigh.
Megan got into picture taking when she started to plan her wedding. The truth of it, she saw how crazy expensive wedding photographers are so she just went for it, saying, “That’s insane. I want to try.”, because of the profit.
She did photography for yearbook in middle school, just candids and organizing all the photos. But with this, she is making it actually happen, outside of the classroom.
Megan got her camera because she knew her mom had a similar one that took good pictures. Her mom took simple sports pictures but Megan wanted to go beyond that. Her brother does videography for the Air Force, how cool is that, so he also helped her to pick out her first camera.
She literally is just beginning, starting about two months ago. She is going home to Gloucester this weekend to take some family photos.
She has also taken senior pictures for friends, couples pictures, dog pictures and portraits. Pretty good for a beginner, am I right?
Next weekend, Megan has the opportunity to take pictures for Longwood Ambassadors, which are the tour guides. Beginner’s luck?
She eventually wants to start her career in psychology and do photography on the side for fun.
Megan’s favorite part about taking pictures is when she randomly thinks of a good pose. “I take a picture and it looks really good and I’m just like, yesssss, I took that”.
Megan likes to look at other photographers she likes for inspiration. She sees these amazing pictures and know the hard work is worth it. She might have a shitty day one time taking pictures but as long as they aren’t all shitty days, it’s all good.
“I looking at the people that I want my pictures to be like and see what they are doing, I have to keep doing it if I want to get good like that.”
You heard it here first, just keep going. Whether photographer is your hobby or your passion, just keep pursuing it. It is an amazing way to look at the world and do something that you love. Just find what you love.
Thanks so so so so so much for helping me out and liking, clicking, sharing and just READING my blog. It’s been fun!
