We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Amanda (Ammo) Morgan. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Ammo below.

Ammo , thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

Treefort Music Festival has been the most meaningful project I’ve worked on as a concert photographer. It is a home-grown festival based in my hometown of Boise, Idaho. What started off small has grown exponentially into a full-fledged art explosion! Over 500 bands played at the last TMF, from all different genres, countries, backgrounds, and experiences. Being exposed to that kind of variety of sound is so impactful, and the fact that I get to wander around for 5 whole days, bouncing from stage to stage, venue to venue, just gets me so excited! The photo team is a tight knit group of highly talented people, and we all encourage, support, and celebrate each other. It’s really amazing. I look forward to it all year.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

My 6th grade teacher gave me the nickname Ammo (it’s the first two letters of my first name and the first two letters of my last name), and that’s what my friends have called me ever since! For the last 14 years, Ammophotog has been my photography persona and the name of my company. I’ve always been a fan of photography, and part of my business is doing family portraits, headshots, and events. I have one rule though: no weddings or babies. Haha! I also dabble in conceptual art, where photography is my medium. But shooting live music is my passion! Can I confess something? As an audience member, I think concerts are boring. I guess I’m spoiled, because shooting a concert and being up against the stage with the band singing right to you, capturing THE shot, is the biggest rush! It’s like a game, a competition with myself, to get an even better shot than the last show. When I’m in “the pit” (photog-speak for the area between the crowd and the stage) I am genuinely giddy! I’m always trying to get sharper, more colorful images while still trying to embrace my artist’s heart and experiment with new techniques. I love capturing energy and emotion on the stage. Can I confess something else? I do not care at all about the technical side of photography. Don’t get me wrong, being educated about your tools is important (f-stop, aperture, angles, blah blah) and I’ve worked hard at that. But I am an artist first and what is most important to me is creative passion. Honestly, I take some pretty cool pictures with me phone… you don’t need the brand name camera or the most expensive lens if you have a good eye.

Can you open up about a time when you had a really close call with the business?

There is absolutely no shame in admitting mistakes. I love mistakes! I was creating a photo series called Weightless, in which the subject is me… floating! It’s a surrealist self portraiture series that I’m actually really proud of. One evening, I had arranged my tripod, dialed in the settings on my camera, and got into place. For this series, I used a remote shutter so I was 20 feet from the camera and it would have taken forever to run back and forth after every picture to check things. I took a few photos using a sheet of fabric that I was kind of tossing into the air. Well, I was out in some woods by the river and didn’t really think about the sun going down. As I conducted my shoot, the light was slowly fading but my settings remained the same. When I got home and looked at my images, many of them were blurry! When there is less light, you need a faster shutter to make the picture sharp… but I hadn’t set it up that way. Guess what? I actually ended up choosing one of the blurry images for my final cut! Because the shutter was slow, movement was blurry … but that made the fabric I was tossing in the air look like wings behind me! It was a mistake, but beautiful things can come from mistakes.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?

What some people might not understand is that a creative journey is messy. There aren’t any rules, there isn’t a right way or a wrong way. There’s a lot of experimenting and failing… but it’s not actually failure because you learn as you go. There’s no set path to success. You build and adapt, and sometimes you take a 90 degree turn in your style to see if it fits. I’m not sure there are “non-creatives”… I think people are inherently creative. Some might stifle it though, or feel like they’re not good enough. But that’s the thing about creating… sometimes people won’t “get” what you create. Sometimes they won’t even like it! I find it fascinating to hear what people don’t like about my art, and why. In my opinion, success in the art world means evoking a response. Lets say there’s a painting hanging in a gallery, and people walk by it and think “that’s beautiful”. The next exhibit is a hideous sculpture… but people stop and examine it, and walk around it several times trying to “understand” it… I’d say that is far more successful than the perfect painting.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.ammophotog.com
• Instagram: @ammophotog (portraits and art), @ammophotoglive (concerts)
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ammophotog
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ammophotog/

Image Credits
©ammophotog