We recently connected with Cami Turpin and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Cami, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

I have a personal project I sort of fell into called The Thousand Words Project. I was looking for a way to work on my photography skills without actually having to take on a large shooting project in addition to all the other things I was already working on. I was also frustrated with how quickly we move through viewing and even creating work in the Instagram era, and wanted a chance to linger on some images and really analyze and take them in. My original idea was to take a work of art (a painting, a photograph, a poem, etc.), learn about it, write about it, analyze it, and then condense my thoughts into 10 words. After 100 works of art, I would then have 1000 words summarizing what I’d learned. I’d been wanting to do more writing as well, and this felt like a great way to get the pen moving again.

The problem ended up being in the selecting the art. I knew this would be a major undertaking, and since this was supposed to be a sort of break from a heavy-hitting project, I decided instead to use my own photographs instead. Not only would I be spending time with some of the decades of work just hidden in hard drives, but I might really notice some patterns and threads that could direct my future work. I printed about 150 photos from my backlog, and around twice a week, I selected one to write about.

In just about a year, I had a notebook full of beautiful and often overlooked images, a thousand words that not only validated and encouraged my life and work as an artist, but also gave me insight into hidden and buried desires, dreams, emotions, and even traumas. I was not only able to find incredible visual and thematic connections throughout my work, but the value of allowing art to uncover our subconscious thoughts. I was able to plan the beginnings of even more important and valuable future work, just by allowing myself the space to see and articulate my strengths and passions.

I was so moved by what I found that I began teaching this project to others, which then helped many artists in the same way it helped me, and gave them new life and direction in their work.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

As a young mother, I was irresistibly drawn to photography. Beyond the beauty of the details of life captured in these frames, I saw the potential of images as storytelling powerhouses. In my experiences of being thrown into the completely unfamiliar, moving across the country from my native Utah to Maryland, isolated from my family and all I had ever known, and by having two special needs children very close together, I was looking for as many ways to understand and make sense of the world as I possibly could. I had always been a writer, but my flexible time was short, as was my ability to focus in the chaos and solitude that surrounded me. With a camera, I could almost work on instinct, and somehow create something even more clearly indicative of my experiences than I could in writing. I threw myself into learning the art and science of photography. In a few years, I was taking clients and photography projects in addition to my freelance writing and music teaching.

After spending many years as a family portrait photographer, and a few as a real estate and brand photographer, I grew tired of the hustle and inconsistent schedule and income of private clients. I decided to start a school portrait photography business, mostly working with special needs schools. As a mom of two autistic boys, I knew how difficult it was to get photographs that not only took the comfort of the subject into consideration, but also really captured their personalities. Within a couple years, I had 3 large schools, which provided a consistent and sustainable schedule along with a much more predictable income. It also allowed me to give a valuable gift to a community I truly cared about.

Because I no longer had to concentrate on finding clients, and because school portrait work is seasonal, I was able to start concentrating the rest of my time on creating work I was passionate about. I had begun only working with analog film outside of my school portraits, which really connected with me. I especially love any tactile experience I can get, which has led me to working with Polaroids, cyanotypes, large format, and tintype photography, as well as cutting and combining prints and negatives and doing other experimental techniques. I love leaning in to the unknown, finding comfort in the risk of chance in creation, and enjoying the surprise of the truly unique.

This freedom also gives me time to teach classes and workshops, host retreats, and take on speaking engagements. I am always searching for new ways to connect with and learn from other artists. It has allowed me to use different parts of my creative work in different ways, so that I don’t only rely on my artistic work to bring in money.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

I went to school to become a literary editor. Although I loved writing, I had an even bigger passion for helping others be understood in the clearest and most beautiful way possible. Once I started photography, I realized my goal was exactly the same! There is plenty of creating in photography, but you always start with an existing subject or story. The way I choose to present that subject or story is just my way of presenting it to the world in the clearest and most beautiful way possible. When I realized that feeling misunderstood is something I specifically struggled with in my life, I realized that I was just trying to find a way to show all sides of myself as well. It all ties into to showing who people are and trying to understand them with empathy and kindness. Even though I do this with symbolism and creative techniques in my personal work, I am really doing the same thing in my personality-driven school portraits as well.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

When I finally entered the social media world as a photographer, I found a few communities and paths already laid out for me to achieve “success” in this field. My biggest mistake was trying to follow these prescribed paths, even if it meant doing work that wasn’t driven completely by my curiosity and passion. Each time I achieved a new level of accomplishment, I was immediately met with the inevitable let-down that comes afterward when nothing truly changes. I realized over time that I had to create work only for me, and let the audience be secondary, if not completely inconsequential. I had to find my own path, and do what made sense for me and my work, rather than trying to fit in where I didn’t belong. My motivation behind all I create, all I teach, all I do became love–love of the work, the stories, the curiosity, the risk, the adventure, the art! By allowing myself that freedom, I started truly connecting with my audience in a much more meaningful way, which led to opportunities I’d been chasing unsuccessfully before I shifted my motives.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.bluehillimages.com
• Instagram: @bluehillimages

Image Credits

All images are created by me.