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

Keelyn, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

My most meaningful projects have been my healing through art sessions. I had always seen artwork on pinterest or facebook of artists drawing or painting how emotions and mental illnesses felt. Those images always helped me feel better, knowing that I wasn’t alone with how I felt, but also seeing exactly how I felt for things I wasn’t always able to describe.

I was originally planning to go to grad school and obtain my PhD in Psychology, but academia just wasn’t meant for me. I still wanted to use my psychology background to help people, but wasn’t sure how I could do so without a degree, until I remembered something about art therapy and also thinking back to how those paintings and drawings made me feel. I wanted to figure out how to create that style work on my own.

When I got more into photography, I felt myself drawn to emotional depictions and wanted to learn how to capture that and make my art meaningful and create an impact as those artists had made on me. I’ve always found a kind of beauty in darkness, in confronting “demons” as they are just as much a part of life as all off the joy and happiness. I taught myself editing styles to help convey the emotion I was going for, worked hard to figure out how to best instruct people to show emotion, anything and everything I could to produce the work I saw in my head and felt in my heart, and to also be able to create what others saw in their minds too.

Over the years, I have helped turn trauma into art for so many amazing people. Alcoholism, sexual and domestic abuse, anything people have gone through that they might want to reframe into a positive in their life and create something beautiful from it. It’s truly an amazing experience seeing the reaction during this healing experience. I absolutely love helping others with my art.

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’ve always been someone who had a camera with them, even from a very young age, so I’m not surprised that this is where life led me yet again. I had always done photography just for fun, until high school when I learned the art of traditional film photography and fell even more in love. While doing film photography all through high school, I had occasionally picked up ver small gigs here and there where I had opportunities to showcase my work. I even got hired to photograph a vow renewal for some family friends. When I graduated, I didn’t have access to the high school’s dark room to develop my film and make prints, so slowly it kept getting pushed to the back burner. The craziness of college didn’t leave much time for it anyway. Fast forward to graduating college, I was working as a research lab manager until the pandemic hit. I started being able to enjoy my time more, get back to takin pictures again, even if it was just on my phone. I started following more photographers on instagram, trying to get as much art back into my life as possible. After a while, I started picking their brains about what gear they used, the equipment, anything. I had never used a digital camera before or even used editing software, so I was really intimidated but wanted to give it a try. I ordered a basic canon rebel t7 kit to start, figured worst case scenario would be keeping it to take pictures of family and friends for fun. I got that kit in the mail and immediately started teaching myself anything I could about the camera and its settings. I took pictures of EVERYTHING and spent an entire week learning how to edit, use presets, and how to make my own. After I felt ready, I posted a model call to see if anyone would want photos in exchange for just paying the studio rental fee. Booked a few that same day, and things just kind of went up from there. I found my community and they welcomed me with open arms, helping me, having me tag along with them to shoots, teaching me whatever knowledge and wisdom they had. I will always be forever grateful for those who took the time out of their busy days to take a new, stumbling photographer into the real world with them. I got into every style of photography I could, but when I found creative, I knew I found my place in the world and worked on setting up my brand and what sets me apart. It was the emotion and the way I was able to portray them in my images that truly set me apart. I wasn’t like most photographers with a very specific editing style, I edit my sessions to how they make me feel, to bring to life the stories and emotions that are being conveyed. Every edit is truly unique to that session. In a creative funk? I’m your girl. Healing from trauma? Let me turn your story into art. Want a safe place to just be weird and capture it? I’ll be right there with you hyping you up. I thrive in chaos and love thinking out of the box. I’m your hype girl, your safe place, your shoulder to cry on, your photographer that will bring whatever story you want to tell to life.

How did you build your audience on social media?

My best advice is to be yourself. Show your audience and potential audience who you are, not what you think they want you to be. The first couple of years, I was desperately trying to just get any work that I could, so I followed what successful photographers were doing on their pages. I posted similar styles I saw did well on their page, advertised a chaotic variety of photography to show I could “do it all”. I saw others doing giveaways and all of these other things. It was exhausting trying to keep up with what was “trending” on everyone else’s pages. Then finally, someone told me to just be myself and not worry about the person next to me, because people invest in other people they connect with. They told me not to post what everyone else was posting, it wasn’t coming across because it wasn’t where my heart was. They were right. As soon as I started posting for me instead of other people, I started coming into my own. My people were finding me, connecting with me and my work that set my soul on fire. Just be real, be yourself, and don’t focus on what others are doing.

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

The most rewarding thing about being an artist is bringing a vision someone else has to life. When they are having trouble visualizing what they want or how they want it and its just jumbled in their mind. The ability to pick apart their “chaos” to figure out the perfect way to execute what it is they are trying to convey, its just magical. It impacts every step of the creative process. I take the jumbled mess, and put it into something they can see, like a mood or inspiration board to make sure I understood correctly. Hearing someone say “its like you picked that out of my brain and put it on paper” is like nothing else. Making it truly come to life is such an experience, making sure everything is perfect. Then to see their reaction with the final product, it just confirms over and over that I’m truly where I’m meant to be. I’m meant to be here to help others convey something they don’t even know how to verbalize. Being able to do that for someone is just incredible.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://photosbykeelynmarie.mypixieset.com/
• Instagram: instagram.com/photosbykeelynmarie handle @photosbykeelynmarie

Image Credits
Beth Moore Portraits – personal photo