We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jessica Turner a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Jessica, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Let’s jump to the end – what do you want to be remembered for?
My greatest hope for my legacy is that the photographs I create will last for generations. I don’t necessarily want to claim responsibility for creating these memories, but I find that it’s my calling and duty to serve my families with the understanding that our session is a once in a lifetime moment; that is created in order to preserve this exact moment in time. My hope is that these memories will last for eternity. I want future generations to see the love their grandparents, moms, caretakers and all of their loved ones shared. I especially take careful consideration for End of Life Sessions. I’ve had the opportunity to photograph multiple End of Life Sessions with individuals who understand that their time is limited due to illness, and my legacy is intertwined with these individuals. I create for them, for their children to look back and remember the last chance they got to squeeze into the frame with their mother, their loved one. For me, this is everything.
Jessica, 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’m a photographer who specializes in family and wedding photography, as well as a contractor for our small city of York, South Carolina covering most of our special events in town. I’m 34 now, but as far back as I can remember, I’ve been creating photographs.
Most memorably, as a child, the Nickelodeon camera that came out back in the maybe mid-90’s, I received for Christmas one year– the camera produced instant film with a sticky back, think miniature Polaroid stickers. I was obsessed. Pair this with endless hours of sitting on my maternal grandmother’s floor, ogling over decades of memories carefully placed inside of her stacks of photo albums, each inches thick, all full of family members I’d met, as well as those I’d never had the chance to meet. I would stare at these images, imagining the emotions that were being shared, looking at myself in my mom’s stomach, seeing photographs of my father, whom I didn’t know. I was privileged to be gifted with photographic prints that my paternal grandmother created when she was younger. A grandmother I was told I’d met, but had no memory of. I was able to kind of create these memories for myself, by browsing our family albums. This comes full circle today, in a world of instant and online access, as I create memories with intention of printing, being cherished, and looked at over and over, for years to come.
Then, years later, after being gifted with several more cameras over the years (35mm, novelty cameras, disposable, etc) my mom caught onto how much I really loved what I was creating, and purchased a Canon Rebel 20D for my 14th Christmas. I was over the moon. At this time in my life, I was a teenager, I was really experimenting with everything. From giving myself endless varieties of vivid hair, painting my bedroom walls this punk-vibe lime green with black borders, getting into self portraits, tattooing my own knuckles and arms, as well as friends’. From this experimental phase I really leaned into capturing everything on camera, documentary style. I still think one of my favorite photos today is of this Polaroid with me, freshly tattooed knuckles and a Camel cigarette hanging from my fingers (Winston-Salem was cigarette capital back then, and I was young and impressionable). So for years that’s really what I considered myself- a documentary style photographer — I was too young to understand the impact of photographing families, but I knew what it felt like to document my own life. My boyfriends, my friends skating, cutting each other’s hair, going on road trips just for the hell of it because back in my day (ha!) we didn’t have social media. Nothing was for views, we created to create. During this time I was able to snag a Polaroid SX-70 Land Camera on EBay while original Polaroid film was still on the market. This was way before The Impossible Project / Brooklyn took over the now-defunct Polaroid world (I still hold a grudge). I can’t imagine how much of my money that I made from the local ice cream shop went into flash bars, expired Polaroid film, lighters to manipulate that film, and gas for my car to just drive around and get lost. I was lucky enough to attend photography classes in high school, before I made the decision to leave school early in order to receive my GED and head straight into the real world. There was a lot of angst driving my creativity. I rode that for years.
It’s only recently I’ve found my current style, current niche of families and weddings. As I’ve aged, all of that teenage angst has settled. I really rely on the embodiment of love that I felt I missed out on years earlier in my photography now. And, sometimes, I find myself having to revisit my roots, and pull out all of those big emotions to harness them into some really personal, creative projects. I don’t typically share those .
I am most proud of being the vessel for these memories. For creating for families, while in the back of my mind, knowing nothing lasts forever, but pictures can.
I want potential clients, followers, and fans to know how much I relate, how I know struggles and triumphs. How it’s okay to show up just as you are. How many mundane moments in life are a celebration, and just being alive, having the grace of the universe to show up, is worth being remembered.
Can you talk to us about how your side-hustle turned into something more.
In December of 2020, after the peak of Covid and the milestone of our most successful year in 2019, I’d just shut down the bakery I was running in town with my mother. It was a small, artisan bakery, everything made by hand, learned from my mom. She baked the yeast products, I did just about everything else from brownies and cakes, to being the cashier, manager, and all that comes with being a small business owner. At this point, I’d just entered a serious relationship and mother role myself. The bakery was taking up about 18 hours of my day, everyday. With Covid making restaurant and cafe life hard, I decided to call it quits in order to focus on my family, and take the risk of seeing if I could really go full time with my photography.
I spent about the next 6 months not shooting, but educating myself. I knew I had an eye for photography, but felt I really lacked some technical skills, and what I learned in high school and college no longer cut it. And me, being a perfectionist, was appalled at the idea of calling myself a photographer but not being prepared in the case of a situation arising that I didn’t know how to handle. I give a lot of credit for my courage and drive to just this invisible faith I have in the universe that everything will work out the way it’s supposed to, so with that in mind, I decided to open a photography studio in downtown York. I figured, if it worked, great– and if not, I tried it out and I could focus on something else. Well, the studio has ended up being a success, mostly as advertisement by having my name on one of our downtown Main Street’s buildings. I typically work on-location outdoors, but having a refuge to edit, invite clients for workshops, events, and social gatherings, plus an area to give me a break during the city’s annual Summerfest held outdoor, all day, in the middle of South Carolina heat is really a bonus.
I’m still so new, as a second year full-time photographer, that I consider most of what I’m currently doing to be my first milestones. I’ve just surpassed my previous annual salary at Duke Energy, I’ve just hosted my first workshop, and I have my own wedding coming up, which will provide me with even more experience for weddings that I have the honor of photographing this year and in years to come. I look forward to celebrating more milestones as the years pass by.
Where do you think you get most of your clients from?
The best source of new clients for me has been word of mouth. I really try not to rely on anything that will drive up my overhead costs of doing business. Occasionally, usually seasonally, I’ll pay for a few Google/FB/IG/Yelp ads here and there. I also rely on having a sound technical understanding of photography, while continuing to pursue education in an ever evolving world. I do what I can to re-ignite my creative processes by attending workshops, reading and researching– and I also try not to stress myself out with today’s current trends or comparing myself to other photographers (I really don’t even follow that many!) — I think I’ve maybe created 3 reels, zero Tik-Toks, and yet I consider myself a success, and my client base is ever-growing.
Sometimes, I think stressing about how to find new clients can prevent me from being myself, I think it turns into this comparison thing. I kind of take myself out of the idea of “how do I find new clients?” and lean into “what kind of work can I create that will make me happy as an artist”, and allow others to find themselves drawn to that. It just kind of feels more organic this way.
With that said, of course as a growing business, I do want more clients, and I will often send out model calls, gift my loyal families free shoots here and there, as a way to network with new potential clients and their families and friends, as well as reminding my repeat clients as to why they are repeats and what they love about me, which, to me, is how much I love and care about them.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.jessicaturner.me
- Instagram: jessicaturnerphotography
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jessicaturneryorksc/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessica-turner-b8947ab1/
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/jessica-turner-photography-york
Image Credits
Photographer: Jessica Turner Photography & Studio