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

Mandee , appreciate you joining us today. Do you take vacations? How do you keep things going – any advice for entrepreneurs who feel like they can’t step away from their business for a short vacation?

I do take vacations, and they’re different every year. Sometimes, we travel internationally for several weeks. Other times, we go camping. Sometimes, we travel with friends; other times, it’s just my partner, Joel, and me. It’s essential to take vacations, take time off, be inspired by things around you, experience new things, and appreciate life.

My travels inspire me, and I incorporate those experiences into my work. I see different lighting and experience new cultures and locations at various times of the year – all of which inform who I am and how I approach my work.

Like anything, if you’re not experiencing new things and pushing yourself to grow, your work becomes stagnant, repetitive, and boring. So, it’s important to push yourself outside your comfort zone. Vacations, trips, retreats, getaways are all fantastic ways to do this while also having time to decompress and relax.

Mandee , 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’ve always had a camera in my hands. I know it’s typical for many photographers. My first camera, a Canon AE1, was permanently loaned to me by my father in sixth grade. If you ask him, I’m pretty sure he’ll say it’s still his camera. After high school, I went to photography school, where you still processed your own film and printed it in darkrooms. Then, I moved to Los Angeles with my partner Joel, and started going to lots of live comedy shows. It was an easy and cheap thing to do in LA when we were in our early twenties. We decided to start our first local comedy show, The Super Serious Show, in 2010.

My career is made up of a lot of ‘yes, and…’ moments. Honestly, all of life is if you’re paying attention. While producing live comedy, I still had a day job producing commercial photo shoots because being a local live comedy show producer doesn’t always pay the bills. At one of the shows we produced, The Super Serious Show, I took 4×5 Polaroid portraits of every performer on the show, and that slowly led to me being asked to photograph this or that. Eventually, it evolved into what I do now – editorial wedding photography, along with commercial and editorial photography.

So, my job title is a mouthful. I’m a wedding photographer, editorial photographer, commercial photographer, author, live comedy, and scripted TV producer. It’s a lot, but I’m proud of my multi-hyphenate life. My favorite thing about my multi-hyphenate life is how each role pushes me in different ways, from lighting and client relations to telling a story and managing live events. It all benefits my approach to wedding photography and my practice.

I love that my celebrity, commercial, and editorial photography work allows me to bring more to my wedding clients when they invite me to capture the best party they’ll ever throw. They know they’re getting a seasoned professional wedding photographer who is quick on her feet, shoots fast, can handle multi-day events, big personalities, complex timelines, collaborating with a team, and any level of anxiety they might feel about being in front of a camera.

Any advice for managing a team?

I’ve managed many teams as a producer for still photo shoots, live events, and on-set. Your team is your backbone, your everything, your family. They are vital to your success. You should consider them more than just people you hire or replace – you should cultivate a space where you build and train a team for success.

If you build a team that shares the same goals as you, and you take care of and protect them, then they will take care of and protect you. I find it helpful to remember what it was like to be the team member and how I wanted to be treated, collaborated with, and valued. Too often, we forget that the people on our team are individuals with their own lives and goals outside of work, and they show up every day and bring value to your table.

My best advice is to be empathetic and always treat team members as you would want to be treated. It’s also really important to be open to feedback. No one is perfect, and everyone can always learn and grow from those around them. It’s great to have different viewpoints, ideas, and thoughts contributed to your company and your projects. If you invest in your team, they will invest in you.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

I’m drawn to capturing moments, stories, ideas, feelings, and experiences. I like the idea of finding ways to preserve a night in a bottle.

Wedding images — at least how I do them — have so much raw energy, spontaneity, joy, and vulnerability. Getting to give real people beautiful photos that allow them to relive their wedding day over and over again— for me, that just hits different than my commercial work. It’s so fulfilling and such an honor to create beautiful historical work for my couples, their families, and loved ones.

My commercial and editorial jobs are gratifying because you take an idea and see it through to creation. It can be a glimmer of an idea that you storyboard, find props and wardrobe, cast talent – you pull all the pieces together to really create a whole world, the entire universe, to sell or share a product, a TV show, promote someone’s project by telling a story revolving around their album or book. It’s very creative and collaborative with others on your team.

My fine art allows me to explore dreamscapes and ideas inside my mind slowly – pieces I pick up along the way that I want to pull apart and look at a bit closer. There are no rules in this part of my practice, allowing me to experiment and bring whatever I find successful back to the rest of my practice.

My favorite part of live comedy shows is that each one is a little snapshot – a little Polaroid of time that can’t ever be quite repeated precisely the same way again, and for everyone that was there in that room – you were able to bring some joy and laughter into their lives while all of them experiencing the same once in a lifetime experience. Weddings aren’t too far off from this feeling – they are a celebration instead of a show, but they are a snapshot of who you are at this moment in your life with everyone you love.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.mjpweddings.com/
• Instagram: @mandeephoto
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mandeephoto/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mandee-johnson-6177a51b/
• Other: https://www.pinterest.com/mandeephoto/

Image Credits

Photo of me is by Joel Mandelkorn

The rest of the photos are mine. Credit is Photo by Mandee Johnson Photography – @mandeephoto