We were lucky to catch up with Brittany Redding recently and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Brittany thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. If you could go back in time do you wish you had started your creative career sooner or later?
I do wish that I would have started my creative career sooner. I started my photography company about 4 years ago. I have been a business owner prior to that. I started my own dog hiking company, which I still do part time. I was just sick of working for other people doing things that I wasn’t passionate about. Or that I was passionate about but the career track I was on just did not align with me and what was best for me. So, I started my own dog hiking company. I was in an office for a while and was just looking to get outside more and spend time in nature. To be my own boss. My company was very successful and so I knew I could succeed at doing any business if I really wanted to pursue that business. I have always loved photography. I took film in high school and told my photography teacher that I wanted to pursue photography in college. Her response to me was that she didn’t see me doing photography and that it wasn’t a good path for me. Being young and 17, I listened. I figured she knew better than me. Now I know that is not the case. If I could go back, I would’ve not listened to that teacher and did it anyway. I would have a lot more years and experience under my belt than I do now, but photography found its way back to me.
Brittany, 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?
I was born and raised in Indiana and I have been in Colorado for about 15 years now. I studied Elementary Education with a minor in Studio Art and have a masters in Clinical Counseling. For the last 7 years I have been running my own dog hiking company, but that has become more part time for me as I work towards making my photography company full time. Over the last 4 years of running a photography company I have done lots of different work. I have shot weddings, done family shoots, maternity shoots, events, and brand work. As I start to narrow down what I really want I am working towards becoming a brand and lifestyle photographer. Those are my favorite things to shoot and I love the creativity that comes with that. Coming up with new ideas for different products. I am proud that I decided to pursue this career and that I didn’t allow myself to stick to one thing because it was comfortable or because I got a degree in it. As people we are always changing and as we learn to know what we want and need through experience, we find what it is that we really want to do. For me, that is brand photography. I love working in different areas and finding from clients what they are hoping for and then turning that into a visual representation of their work or product.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
I think if you’re going to start your own business, whether that be a creative journey, or something else, you have to learn to be okay with the ebbs and flows of owning your own company. Instead of giving up when things get hard, or business gets slow, it’s important to just keep going. There are going to be times when you’re getting a lot of business, in my case photography jobs, that you will feel almost overwhelmed at the amount of work you need to get done. Then at other times, business is going to be slow and the clients aren’t coming in like before. For me with doing a lot of family work, that is pretty seasonal. Summer is busy and fall is exploding, then I have really slow winters. You have to learn to plan for those slow times or learn and figure out ways to grow during those slower months, which is still a work in progress for me.
Is there mission driving your creative journey?
My goal is to expand. Expand my business. Expand my creative ideas. When you are doing brand work, especially with brands within the same industry, like distilleries for me. You have to come up with new and different ways to represent each bottle or each product that is different from the last. That can get difficult. Just like writers having writer’s block. I feel as though I can have a creative block or even imposter syndrome. Looking at other photographer’s work and saying, “that is so much better than the work that I am putting out there.” I think a lot of creatives do that. Especially in the world of instagram where you see all of these beautiful creative images on a daily basis. It can be hard to not get stuck into a comparison game. My mission and goal is to move past those blocks. To, even when it gets tough and I don’t feel good enough, to keep pushing and trying new things.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.westernpine.co
- Instagram: @western_pine and @whiskey_and_woods
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brittany-redding-2944a3b4/
Image Credits
All images done by myself. Brittany Redding