We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jenny Day a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Jenny, thanks for joining us today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

When my husband got me a camera for Christmas, I decided to take some photography classes to learn about photography. It started out just taking photos for friends and family for fun and all of a sudden people were paying me to take their photos. I wish I would have attended workshops and done mentoring sessions with successful photographers to speed up my learning process. I spent way too much time on YouTube and trial and error when I could have taken a short cut and learned from other photographers. I think the skills that are most essential for becoming a successful photographer are being creative and being personable. You need to have a creative eye and be able to get people to feel comfortable around you. The main obstacle for me that stood in the way for me to learn more was my budget and time constraint. Most workshops were quite expensive and I wasn’t able to afford it when first starting out. I was also a full time physical therapist assistant so I didn’t have much time to put towards my photography education. Overall, I feel like I learned what I needed to in order to succeed but wish I could tell myself back then to invest more in my education to make the road to success much smoother.

Jenny, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I was born and raised in the middle of the mountains of Montana without electricity or service. Many may find that unusual, but I find it fascinating and loved my childhood! I now live in Sandy, Utah with my husband, who I have been married to for over 7 years and is my whole world. We also have the perfect 2-year-old girl named Ava and a baby girl on the way. I have been a photographer for over 4 years and currently work as a full-time wedding photographer. I fell in love with photography when I was a little girl and would take photos of everything, I found beautiful (which was almost everything haha). When my husband got me a camera for Christmas, I decided to take some photography classes to learn about photography. It started out just taking photos for friends and family for fun and all of a sudden people were paying me to take their photos. I wasn’t planning on becoming a photographer since I was happy in my career as a physical therapist assistant but I think God had bigger plans for me. Once I started my business in 2018, I knew photography was something I was strongly passionate about. I quit my full-time job and went all-in with photography. I am now a successful wedding photographer who specializes in couples and weddings. I love being able to capture not just pretty images but the emotion behind an image. I love seeing a photo and can feel the emotion and it’s been my goal to capture images that make others feel something. I am beyond grateful for the journey that this career has taken me on and all the opportunities that I have had.

Getting started with photography wasn’t easy. I had to attend classes to learn how my camera worked, learn editing, learn the business side of things and so many other things that go into photography. I was so scared to start my business because I was intimidated by how many amazing photographers that were already in Utah. Comparison was the hardest thing for me. It was hard to start out and compare your work to photographers who have been doing it for years and still believe in your work. But I am glad I put forth the work because there is room for everyone and room for growth.

Looking back, are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

I didn’t know much about mentoring sessions with other photographers and wish I would have done more mentoring with the photographers that inspired me. It would have been so nice to pick someone else’s brain on all the things I was struggling with in my photography business.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

I feel that photos are so important and I want to be able to capture photos that not only captures that moment but captures that feeling so you can feel that feeling in that moments over and over again. Life if short and it’s hard to remember certain moments and I want to be able to provide a those captured memories for people.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.jennypearlphoto.com
• Instagram: jennypearlphotography
• Facebook: Jenny Pearl Photography

Image Credits
Ashley Teresa Photo for photo of myself