We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Kari Paine. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Kari below.

Kari, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you talk to us about a risk you’ve taken – walk us through the story?

Over the past few years, I’ve prioritized doing personal photoshoots that just feed my creative soul. This has felt risky, because every second you spend doing unpaid work feels stressful as a small business owner. But these sessions have helped me get back in touch with why I do this job. It helps me rediscover my creativity in new ways, play around with new techniques, and push myself. Without it, I end up going through the motions and delivering the same things. Investing in yourself yields a great reward, even if you risk a lot in doing it.

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 am a queer wedding photographer based in Detroit. I document LGBTQ+ weddings around the world, specifically on analog film. My approach prioritizes candid moments and living in the moment, yielding images that tell the story of a wedding day and all of its unscripted moments. I think the colliding forces of social media and widely accessible digital photography has led the wedding industry to mold a wedding day around the *photo* as opposed to the *experience.* My goal is to flip that script. Without the experience, you don’t have the photo. People that work with me are free to be their weird, goofy selves and not think about performing for a camera.

In addition to wedding photography, I also run a graphic design agency called Orso Design Co, which does website and brand design for nonprofits and cause-based organizations. In my free time, you can find me reading books, biking around Detroit, or cooking with my wonderful partner Kate.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

On social media, we are inundated by perfect images of perfect weddings, which shape our perceptions of how I wedding should be. It creates an idea in our head of *shoulds* and *shouldn’ts* that never existed before. As wedding photographers, it is all too easy to recreate images that we’ve seen on social media. I’ve had to consciously limit my social media intake, unlearning what I’ve seen from others and tapping into my own inner creativity to create something new and exciting.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

I’ve been working for myself full time for over 6 years now, but before that point I was in-house as a designer at a national nonprofit. I did photography on the side and hustled nonstop. Eventually, I got so burnt out that I had to make a pivot: go full time on my own or stop doing so much side work. I took the leap to go full time freelance and I’ve never looked back!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://karipaine.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/karipaine

Image Credits

All taken by me, Kari Paine