We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Chelsea Terry. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Chelsea below.
Chelsea, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Looking back, do you think you started your business at the right time? Do you wish you had started sooner or later?
I vividly recall the season of my life when I took the leap and decided to go all-in on my photography business. For years leading up to that point, I had been toying with the idea of photography as a career. However, life at the time was throwing curveballs my way; I didn’t have a clear vision of where I would be in the next year, let alone five years – hardly a solid foundation to start a business, I’d tell myself. More than anything, I was terrified. I was afraid of putting myself and my art out there for others to critique. My work up to that point felt deeply personal, and it felt wrong to allow others to voice potentially negative opinions about it. Ironically, what gave me the most joy within that space were the responses of the people I photographed. I loved showing others another side of themselves that they didn’t get to see in their every day lives. I loved challenging my creativity and exploring light, emotion, and relationships through photography. So, I was at a standstill. I held off on going full-time for years, because I had the mentality that if I could just wait and perfect my craft, then no one could pick it apart. I stalled out of fear of failure, letting this notion of perfection be an excuse for inaction.
The catalyst ended up being my unhappiness at my then-job. I was filled with inspiration whenever I held my camera, but I dreaded taking the time away to go to a job that I didn’t love. The time came to confront my limiting beliefs head-on, to accept that maybe this would fail, but it would be better to try than to remain unhappy and unfulfilled. So, almost out of necessity, I did as much as I could to fine-tune my website, my process, and my social presence, and I made the leap. Within 24 hours, I was shedding tears of happiness – for my newfound freedom, for relief, and for the joy of this new adventure I was beginning; and maybe a few for the sheer emotional exhaustion I’d unnecessarily put myself through.
From that moment on, I’ve never looked back and never doubted my decision for a second. I only wish I had allowed myself the space to try and to fail back when I first began to consider a career in photography. I know now that I was never going to get to the point of readiness that I was waiting on. You have to start now, with what you have, and figure out the rest as you go.
With any creative medium, you’re always on a journey of improvement. There’s no finish line; the beauty of creating is in the process. To have held off for so long, thinking that there was some starting line I needed to reach before I could run, was just fear thinking for me. The minute I accepted that, and decided that all I needed to do was something as simple as hitting publish on my website, the bigger picture opened up before me. One small action was all it took to begin this beautiful, messy, and yes – chock-full of failure AND success – journey that I’m on now. I’ve learned that the more afraid I am of an opportunity, the more reason there is to take it on. Say yes, and figure it out later. That’s where growth happens.
If I could go back to that season of life, I would remind myself that our biggest accomplishments all begin with one small step in the right direction, and you might as well start now. The sooner you take a step down that new road, the further you’ll go.
Chelsea, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
Of course! I’m a wedding and elopement photographer based out of Seattle, Washington. I specialize in outdoor wedding ceremonies, adventure elopements, and a handful of other types of portrait work (e.g boudoir, maternity, lifestyle, etc).
I got my start back in 2011 as an assistant shooter. I immediately fell in love with photographing couples during one of the happiest moments of their lives; the emotions drew me in, and I was hooked. My story started even before then, when I was gifted an old polaroid by my grandmother and became obsessed with documenting all the small, meaningful little vignettes of my childhood. As a college student, I took my first DSLR camera along with me as I studied abroad in Europe, and found an even deeper passion when I combined landscape work with portraiture; every beautiful sunset or vista was made better in my eyes by placing a friend or a stranger within it.
I’ve been running my business full-time since 2016, and each year I hone in more and more on my style. These days, my greatest priority with each couple that I work with is to create images that feel like them. It’s easy to pose a couple and shoot for the best angle, but it’s a challenge to add emotional intimacy on top of that. I still feel most at home shooting out in nature, and taking couples out into the wild for these big, heightened emotional experiences is the cherry on top of an already-dream job. I can’t wait to see where the next ten years will take my business!
Are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?
Second shooting has been an invaluable source of education for me throughout my career. Seeing how others interact with their clients, handle their post-processing and client experiences, and go about an average wedding day is so helpful! I’ve also found social media groups to be important, mainly Facebook groups. I’ve found second shooters this way, as well as clients looking for photographers. There are tons of groups where you can ask questions and get feedback from hundreds of other professionals. Lastly, podcasts! If you happen on one you love, most of the time they’ll also have a Facebook community you can join to connect with others.
Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?
I absolutely love Ira Glass’s speech on creativity. The first time I read it, it resonated with the imposter syndrome that I had felt at many points in my career. It also eased the tension I would feel when my work fell short of my expectations. His words reminded me to trust the creative process, and to stop vilifying my feelings of dissatisfaction around my work; rather, to accept those emotions for what they actually were – the catalysts to improvement. They are the fire that I count on to keep me pushing boundaries and exploring outside of my comfort zone.
The best thing I can do for my craft is to do it A LOT. Expertise comes from repetition. Malcolm Gladwell wrote an entire book about it, called Outliers, that is well worth a read. The less I have to think about the technical aspects of my career (the camera, the lighting, etc), the more I can focus on connecting and collaborating with my clients, which is where the magic actually happens.
Words by Ira Glass:
“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”
Contact Info:
- Website: www.chelseaterryphotography.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chelseaterryphoto/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ChelseaTerryPhoto
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chelseaterryphotography/
Image Credits
Chelsea Terry Photography