We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Emma Shane Heim a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Emma Shane thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What sort of legacy are you hoping to build. What do you think people will say about you after you are gone, what do you hope to be remembered for?
In doing the work to reinvent myself, find who I am, and then pursue it.. I have realized that my end dream hasn’t swayed. Ever since I can remember, I have had the heart to see others with an emotional lens, reading a room, serving a friend, and being a joyful light in any room. Most of my life, that has looked like working with children, in my childhood church, staffing summer camps, and being a Kindergarten teacher. I sort of thought that my life would forever look like working with children and that would have been a successful legacy in my eyes. Then ,I picked up a camera for the first time in a long time and everything changed. Being behind the lens wasn’t new for me, I had been the Editor-In-Chief for my high school yearbook (twice) and in that timed saved to buy my first camera. That camera then sat on the shelf until summer 2022. My husband and I had moved to Nashville, I was teaching, and I came across my old camera in a box we never unpacked. It was like I had seen a friend I had never seen in years. It started from there, a love for capturing people and serving them in a new way, from behind a lens. My hope and prayer for a legacy is for people to remember how I made them feel when I captured their memories. That they remember joy and support. That they felt like they were captured in a raw, real, way that felt just like them instead a vision the photographer had. I hope that the photos inspire others as they see something that isn’t industry standard (at lease mostly), to capture the real, and the vulnearable.
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.
I haven’t always been in this line of work, I am actually relatively new however in photography while experience is valued the beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I stumbled back into photography after putting it away for many years, pursuing other passions that were near and dear to my heart. I now, after juggling full time teaching and full time photography, am choosing to step into a new industry and provide what I think is a breath of fresh air. My photography style covers a series of markets, my main three including: love (weddings & couples), artistry (music professionals providing branding and artwork for their covers), and motherhood (mommas and their babies). What I feel is different for my photography is that time and vision are not thought of the same for each client. I view each shoot as a story worth being told and not worth being captured like the last three shoots. I am grateful to work alongside such remarkable people and get to know their heartbeat and how I can best serve them!
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
If I could be useful in any way to someone new to the photography industry it would be to share with them this; you are enough. Find what makes your heart beat, for me it’s love, its motherhood, it’s music but that’s me. The best photographers I have ever found are people who photograph what makes their heart beat. Only you know that, and only you can feel that. Take time to dream of photos and time with clients on your own, take free work and all work. Figure out what drives you and chase it. Do not look to the right or to the left, what is unique is you. And NO one can do what you can do, so do it! You are worth people getting the only you that ever graced this earth.
For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?
For me, the most rewarding part of being an artist through the medium of photography is the being able to give people the gift of memories that last a life time. Having the unique perspective of seeing photos as a time capsule gives me the freedom to tell a story. This stance has allowed me to develop projects that I have always dreamed of running into reality. It has allowed me to be a photo journalist and a story teller which is such a gift!
Contact Info:
- Website: emmashaneheimphotography.com
- Instagram: emmashaneheimphotography