Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Cicily Ashcraft. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Cicily, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?

I started my photography business out of a dream I had when I was a young girl, where I spent every summer at home making “music videos” with a spare camera my sisters and I found laying around the house. The first summer that we started doing these, we started with a laptop that was bought for me for Christmas, and we would literally carry the computer around to use the camera to capture whatever we were doing. It was quite literally, the most awkward contraption to use, but it gained popularity among some of my cousins and friends, as they also joined in on the fun, creating things with us in our spare time.

I come from a very creative family, including two musically inclined and gifted parents, and so ideas for storytelling and crafting ‘masterpieces’ out of thin air were always floating about our house. One year, my dad came home with a fully produced song he had personally written both the lyrics and the instrument parts for, recorded in his office at work, and then mastered using the programs he had access to there, and gave it to my mom as one of her Christmas presents – her love language is words of affirmation, and this was quite literally one of the biggest things he could have done for her. It sounds like the song would be cheesy and lame, but my dad does nothing that isn’t excellent.

I learned a lot from him. He introduced me to the “higher quality” editing programs that I use to this day, and allowed me to experiment with my yearly music videos with his access to the programs, so that every new production of mine became more elaborate with each new release.

And then I grew up, and my summers became full of work days that led right back into school days. I had some creative outlets throughout high school – choir, theatre, and church programs – but it never was as rewarding as what I had during those free summer months until I took a position as the media director at my parent’s church many years later. There, I was over all social media, web design, content creation – including photo and video – editing, and producing. I learned A LOT, more than I realized. I worked there for a few years, until I picked up a camera for a few friends of mine who needed family photos, and there the “business” was born. The reward of sending images to a happy couple was like none other. Before I knew it, I had a part time job outside of my full-time position, but I loved the photography so much.

My photos back then were a little more traditional and standard, but as I gained work and later quit my full time job to pursue this full-time, I found myself reflecting on what brought me to where I was. All of those years sitting in my bedroom as a little kid, writing stories and filming them, directing ‘characters’ on screen, and developing a plot out of thin air had always remained a part of me. I loved to tell stories. I loved to document them. I loved the feeling that certain movies gave me based on the framing, the color-grading, the composition, the story. I would walk away marked in ways that my photos weren’t giving me, and I knew I wanted to pivot into photos that told stories. And I also wanted to include undertones of celebration, joy, victory, silver linings, and real beauty.

As much as I love beautiful people in magazines, often what is so widely praised in society and glorified by the general public is just not real. Airbrushed skin, picture perfect outfits, bodies nipped and tucked away to hide flaws is not what I wanted to portray in my art, but rather, I wanted to show that it doesn’t take a hollywood start to experience a romantically cinematic life. I wanted to draw attention to even the mundane parts of life, telling stories about everyday people, doing everyday things. Most of all, I wanted it to be encouraging. I know that not every story ends with a happy ending. None of us are immune to the things that happen around us, but we can always choose our perspective, and often, that can be enough to change our life. I want to give the people that I work with something to remember their significant lives – mundane to them or not – and I want to give the viewer the ability to feel seen, encouraged, validated, and celebrated when they see themselves in my content.

And that is why I create today.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

So I mentioned before that my creative background and upbringing kick-started a desire in me to always be creating something. I would document my sisters and I goofing off on my laptop camera, and that grew into annual summer music videos that became more elaborate with every production.

After working with my dad for many years as a media director at our home church, I had developed a side hustle doing portrait photography for a camera that was bought for me for Christmas one year. I started with a Canon 5D Mark II, and a nifty 50mm – photographers know that thing can be a lifesaver in the beginning. ;)

Eventually, after landing some small weddings and needing equipment that could work with my job at the church and my photography, I ended up switching to Sony, purchasing my first mirrorless camera and LOVING it. Shooting photo and video became a breeze with its customizable abilities and how beautifully it handled low lighting. To this day, she is still my trusty side-kick, the Sony A7RIII.

When I went full-time into the business, I purchased my second Sony camera, and dove into purchasing my own subscriptions to the programs I needed in order to succeed. At first, all I needed was Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop, but when I added on wedding photography, I began working with Final Cut Pro X. Many other creatives I’ve spoken to in the past have mentioned using Adobe Premiere, which I know I should begin learning, but I’ve stuck with Final Cut since I learned it as a kid. I know so much about it since, in many ways, I’ve grown up with the program – it was the program I used when I was making those music videos in my middle school years.

Since starting my business, I’ve now incorporated wedding photography, wedding cinematography, portrait sessions for couples and individuals, and storytelling sessions. I have to say, the storytelling sessions are my favorite, as myself and the subjects focus each shot on a “plot” so that the gallery of images communicate something as you swipe through them. I also love doing portrait sessions with my couples and individuals, as we can take our time, go explore and really feel out each location, the mood of the day, and the uniqueness of who they are as well.

I incorporate into all of my sessions LOTS of movement – walking, dancing, running, riding a bike, etc – to also help with the emotional aspect of each photograph. Running combined with a blurry photo can communicate a lot of things non-verbally: anticipation, excitement, joy. Dancing: contentment, happiness, freedom. When I ask my clients to do an activity that includes movement or an action of some kind, it isn’t just to help them feel comfortable in front of the camera (although that does help!), it also adds to the thousands of words the viewer of the final images forms when he or she looks at them.

Great examples of this type of storytelling and recent work I was so thrilled to share is a session I did with a fellow photographer friend of mine in my hometown. We staged the session to tell the story of a woman feeling lonely when her friends are too busy to spend time with her. She copes with the disappointment by going and doing what she had planned anyways, finding that maybe for the first time, she enjoyed spending time with herself. The message was clear: we all experience being stood up, left out, or alone. It’s what we do with that experience that can define the day and even the belief about ourselves that matters. Sometimes doing things alone can be exactly what we need in order to discover something we love without peer pressure to participate, and we deepen our understanding of ourselves. Being alone isn’t an incredibly romantic idea, but it is vital to do so in order to learn to love who we spend the majority of our time with. This type of work, work that inspires, validates, encourages, and celebrates, is the work I am the most proud of. I love to make beautiful art with people who are real, but I love mostly to combine all of that with something that has purpose. I hope to make much more of that soon.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.

This one is a doozy. I honestly have felt at times that I am too creative to own a business, as I don’t think like other “successful” business owners do.

But I guess that all boils down to how each of us define success.

One thing I have really battled with other non-creatives or other business-people who aren’t in the creative industry is the idea of sustainability for the business. Right now, I travel all over the country, documenting weddings, couples, and people who want to tell their stories and trust me to do it. I am having the time of my life, going places I never would have gone had I not left that office job 3 years ago. People ask me how I plan to handle the realities of life as I grow older (if I ever have kids, if the market changes, if the demand for what I do lessens). Of course, life will ebb and flow, as it always has. Life will present its problems that I will need solutions for when the time comes.

Unfortunately, I often don’t have the magic answer to help most people understand why I don’t “get a real job” and just do this on the side. All I know is that I will never be in my 20s again. I have come to realize, through my own personal experience, that life is too short. I lived my early teens and early twenties sitting at an office desk where, yes, I had some creative outlet, but most of it was spent doing things that drained me. I would day dream about working somewhere else, doing something else, and sometimes, cry about feeling like I was ungrateful for the opportunities given to me. I have very little college education, and yet I was working a job that required a degree. I felt ashamed for what I thought was a lack of gratitude for many years, and I juggled a full time job and a part time job. I ran myself into the ground physically, exhausting myself to pursue what I loved, and be a grown up as well. And then one day, I realized that just because I wasn’t content where I was, it didn’t mean I wasn’t grateful. I knew that if I was going to go out and fail, as many other people might have thought I would, now was the time to do it.

So many people who make history often don’t do it by the ways the society often does. Going “the safe route” doesn’t always get you where your dreams are. Like I said, I don’t really have an argument for someone who might think a different way, but I do have a different perspective. I will say that I built up a business before I went out and quit my day job. I held off for a while before fully committing. But if I had a choice to do it again, I would do this sooner. I started later because I was afraid of what people might think of me doing something untraditional and unconventional. And honestly, living life afraid of failure, packing in security and education, only delayed me in what I would end up doing regardless. Living life afraid to fail is not living.

I am not saying live without wisdom. I am not saying live without some concern for the future. But what I am saying is that as a creative, I had a dream that required risk, and everyone who lives for sustainability and security has and will continue to say that I might need to think of something else soon. We will just have to see about that. For now, I am embracing today. I only have this one lifetime to do it. ;)

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

Comparison is an industry-standard when it comes to being a photographer of any kind. Clients come to you with an idea in mind, but they keep their options open, shopping around different vendors. Competition is a part of business. When it came to being a part of this industry, I struggled immensely in the early months and years with comparing myself to other vendors, other creators, and other options, often feeling unworthy of business from clients and even priced myself very low in order to ensure anyone paying for my services wouldn’t be disappointed in the quality of my product or my service.

All of that comparison was really heavily influenced by social media, ironically, one of the biggest, if not the most significant, tool used in marketing at this point in time. The same tool that I would use to promote my services was the same tool that I would use to tear it down (mentally, speaking.). I would post about a session I felt proud of, and seconds later, find myself staring at other creator’s images, taking in their engagement, their like count, their comments, and comparing it to mine, immediately noticing the deficit. Those numbers would work their way into my mind, crafting stories about how I would never measure up, how my craft was a lesser version of someone else’s, and how I should just give up. For a while, it worked.

I coped with the comparison issue by posting and doing what I needed to do for work, and immediately closing out whatever app I was using. No more scrolling, no more engaging with other creators. It took too much out of me. To some degree, comparison became competition, and celebrating another creator was nearly impossible. I had to think more about getting myself the business I needed, and I no longer enjoyed it.

One day, Instagram updated a feature in their app to include hiding “like” counts on posts. You could either hide them on your personal posts, or hide them for everyone – yours and those you follow. When I saw that, I immediately knew that I needed to enlist this feature in my life. I was beginning to value my gift and my passions based solely on its performance with other people, and how much others appreciated it. The numbers told me if I was good enough or not. I made the choice to turn off all like counts on social media. That was 3 years ago. I have left them off since.

I don’t struggle with the comparison anymore. I’m not sure if I turned the feature off if I would go back to dealing with the comparison issue or not. I feel like since leaving that behind me, I have had time to deal with internal issues of insecurity and other things, but sometimes, it’s not worth experimenting with your mental and emotional health. It may seem silly, but we each have our own issues. Feeling like I’ll never be good enough did nothing but stifle my creativity and kill the joy I had in something that I’ve only dreamed about pursuing. I would much rather live in ignorance about how many people like something I created and have the ability to celebrate others freely than live the way I was for so long.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.cicilyashcraftphotography.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cashcraftphoto/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cashcraftphoto
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCovYiUi2thfLo74FFduvdmQ
• Other: Threads: https://www.threads.net/@cashcraftphoto

Image Credits
Photos shot and edited by Cicily Ashcraft Photography