We recently connected with Cooper Westerman and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Cooper, thanks for joining us today. How do you feel about asking friends and family to support your business? What’s appropriate, what’s not? Where do you draw the line?

Starting out in portrait photography was a mix of passion and fear. The biggest fear was how was this going to support itself? Money is the only way to keep the lights on, but I was really just focussed on a creative career that allowed me to make art, tell stories and overall make people happy. In early 2022 I made a shift to something I am very passionate about. This was going to be a way I could do it all and the fear of making enough went out the window. I started to focus on our natural land around the world and how we can help conserve the beauty and species that we share the earth with. Maintaining a portion of my portrait work through a partnership with the Judith A. Bassett Canid Education and Conservation Center in Santa Ysabel, California. There we offer photography sessions with some of their fox rescues to the public as a way to help the center reach financial goals and keep helping underserved canid communities. This work is vital in keeping both JABCECC and my doors open for business and the ability to continue helping. Along with this partnership, I have a shop where you can purchase prints from all sorts of adventures I have been on. Buying this art is a great way to add some amazing pieces to your walls at home as well as supporting my business and ensuring I can continue to get outside and lend a helping hand to various organizations with no cost to them! My goal is to provide any help I can to the conservation community without asking for anything in return. I turn to my community here for their ongoing support and financial help to keep fighting for our natural world and protecting the only earth we have!

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?

I have had somewhat of an affinity for photography since I was a young child growing up in the Mid-West. Shooting go-kart races on the weekends to Friday night football games for my school when I was in middle school. It was a semi-turbulent affair growing up, as I would put the camera away for a year here and there and return to the craft later. It eventually had its grip on me fully after I got out of the military in 2018. I had just left the Marine Corps and was looking for something to fill a deep void that a loss of community created in my life. This is when I started exploring different possibilities through higher education. Having to take an intro to photography course as a prerequisite, I dusted off the old canon t5 and began shooting again. It was like finding an old best friend I had figured to never see after our last farewell. We became joined at the hip and from then on it was rare to find me without my camera. The evolution of my career developed from there as I discovered the endless possibilities that such a creative industry has to offer and ultimately realized that I can use this art form to bring positive change to my community and hopefully the world.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

To be resilient is to survive. Whether in life or in your career. There will be people telling you how to do things, when to do them, that you have done everything to this point wrong and even that this is a dead end for you. It’s all a sham. No matter what path you take in life, your ability to believe in what you are doing will be the key factor in how successful you are. If the odds are stacked against you, whether the market is saturated in your field or its a completely new idea that people are not showing immediate support for, you have to keep going. I have been told no so many times by this point and my career is still fairly young that believing I should give up crosses my mind more than I care to admit. However, I wake up everyday and venture out to do what I dedicated my life to do. I can hear no a million times a day as long as I still enjoy and believe in the work I’m doing. Believe me, it takes a lot to convince myself some mornings. This is just life and it will not be getting any easier so lets lean into it and do what makes us happy.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

Without a doubt, the genuine smiles of a portrait client or someone who buys a print makes every hour of blood, sweat and many tears shed worth it. I live to see the change I bring as well. Hearing how people are more connected to nature and animals or start thinking more about the impact we have on our world is all I need to remind me that I’m on the right course and people believe in it!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.coopergraham.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/coopergrahamphotography
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/coopergrahamphotography
• Other: Print Shop: https://www.coopergraham.com/shop Booking Page: https://www.coopergraham.com/services

Image Credits
All images are property of Cooper Graham Photography LLC