We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Lena Wagner a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Lena, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?
The learning curve is exponential in the beginning and what makes me happy is that it never ends because it keeps you in that learning process. You level up, but you never stop learning. Photography is a passion that keeps you on your toes and if you make the effort to go out there, explore, experiment and dare to be open to making mistakes, the outcome is rewarding. Lately, I have been mixing up my photography with videos and drone footage which are very different ways of shooting and editing. It can be frustrating when your clip doesn’t look like what you had in mind and I tossed my computer out the proverbial window more than once. That’s where team work and your support networks come in: shooting with others, exchange photos/ videos, getting someone’s opinion whose work and progress you value is a big part of the process.
Lena, 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 German transplant in Los Angeles. I have an MA in specialized translation and linguistics and discovered my passion for photography when I came to LA. The city’s magic and versatility tend to unleash creativity you never knew you were capable of. I never gave up linguistics, but stacked photography on top of it and combined it with my enthusiasm for traveling and exploring. So I picked up my first camera to start capturing different areas of the city, venturing on road trips to national parks and portraying everything I loved about each experience. I wanted to contain that feeling of seeing something for the first time, and convey what I felt when I was in that experience. LA sunsets are unparalleled and I eventually started taking pictures mostly around sunrise and sunset. With time, lots of mistakes, and trial and error, I developed my own style and found my favorite photo spots.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
Resilience for me means a mix of staying the course and accepting change as inevitable. As you can see from my work, the majority of my photos and videos revolve around beaches, sunsets, palm trees, and Downtown LA. Naturally, you also receive incentives from others such as: “Are you ever going to shoot anything besides palm trees and sunsets?” or “You should take picture of people; you’ll make a lot of money”. While that does sound wonderful, it’s not the purpose of my passion. That doesn’t mean I haven’t tried it or won’t continue to try new things, but I’m more drawn to city and nature subjects and conveying that LA and Southern California feeling through said beaches and sunsets, etc. I believe you should always try as many new things as possible, but even within my niche, there is so much to explore, learn and improve on. I believe resilience in this makes you grow roots so that your purpose can’t be shaken.
Is there mission driving your creative journey?
My mission is to invoke a feeling of comfort, dreaming, a sort of relief and arrival, if you will. My sense of purpose to serve others is to help them through a rough time or just an ordinary day – even if it’s just for a few seconds when they see one of my photos. It may perhaps remind them of a trip to California they once took or motivate them to make plans to take a trip and explore. If they are unable to travel, I want to transport them here through my photos. Having others virtually travel to a realm of “remember when we were there and did that” or “imagine if we were there right now” is priceless for me.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.lenafound.com
- Instagram: @lenafound
Image Credits
All images are taken by me :)