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

Alright, Meghan thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Are you able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen?

Shared my story in response to the next question!

I am so lucky to be able to pursue this incredible career full time. I am lucky to have found photography so early into my life, at a time where I had no expenses and nothing to lose. I did not go to college and instead worked full time after graduating high school. College is usually the time where people figure things out, and that time period was the same for me, just in my own way. Living at home and working 40 hours a week during covid allowed me to save a lot of money with nowhere to really spend it. Living at home and not having any financial obligations allowed me to start my business and devote all the time I needed to it to make it successful. The timing was lucky but the rest has been hard work.

I inevitably quit my job as things started to pick up for me in my business. I am now at the point where I’ve had to hire an office assistant and a video editor to help me complete projects on time. This new wave of AI has been really helpful with computer tasks making me more efficient. But even still– I have too much work for myself to manage. It took three years to get to this point.

It really takes time. And more than that, it takes concentrated, devoted, time, which not many people are fortunate to have. People have responsibilities, families, financial hardships and obligations that do not allow them to just up and quit their jobs as I was able to. So I’m grateful for that and acknowledge how easy my situation was. The hardest part was overcoming embarrassment and what I thought others would think of me. Overcoming the fear of failure. But YOU decide when you fail. You can always keep going. You can always try again. I think failure is subjective.

Meghan, 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?

Hi, I’m Meghan! I am a wedding photographer + videographer based in Connecticut.

I began my journey with art and storytelling through theatre. All my life growing up I loved to create things. I took all the art classes I could in school as a kid and realized how much I loved the art of photography. I loved learning about composition and how photographs are just as intentional and convey as important a message as paintings do.

I also loved theatre. Theatre has impacted my love for storytelling in a different way. Being behind the scenes was the perfect place for me as an introvert with a heart of an artist. I loved contributing to the story being told, but not being the one with the center of attention. But rather helping show off the person who was really telling the story. That is what photography means to me. I get to witness so many amazing love stories and amplify it in an artistic + romantic way for the world to see.

Theatre has also taught me so many amazing life lessons I still use today in my business operations. As the Stage Manager, I was responsible for all the moving pieces and ensuring the Director’s vision was carried out. (much like the relationship I have with my brides + grooms!) It took a lot of organizational skills, communication, and time management. I continued to pursue this professionally after I graduated in 2019. We all know what happened in 2020, which brought an end to my theatre career for the time-being.

I remember sitting in the break room at my 9-5 wishing for some creative opportunity to come my way and for the word to go back to normal. Scrolling on IG i realized I was following a lot of photographers, women around my age, who somehow not only made that creativity happen despite the way of the world, but also turned it into their careers. I realized I didn’t want to wait for an opportunity to come and that I could just make it happen too. So I did.

I photographed people for free and bought a ticket to a styled shoot to build my portfolio. Eventually people started to ask me to photograph them! Little by little I learned more and more and raised my prices. Throughout the year I realized my love for weddings after assisting other photographers at theirs. In 2022 I reached my goal of ten weddings for the year, 2023 I exceed my goal of 15, and in 2024 my goal of 20 has been surpassed too!

I’ve also now expanded my business and offer videography services as well! Couples can book me for both services and a team of us will come to document the wedding! The team I’ve built has been truly incredible and has my back. They’re all lovely ladies who I would not be able to service all these amazing couples without.

Documenting weddings has brought me such fulfillment. It feels surreal to have created this world for myself so quickly and I am so fortunate. I was so lucky to have people take chances on me and believe in me so early in my business. I have devoted so much time into building the business and learning as much as I possibly could about the craft. It is so rewarding to now have it all pay off and watch it continue to grow.

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

Creative industries can be tough. It can be tough to maintain your style and brand with the flood of other artists to compare yourself to. On the one hand, seeing other artists’ work can be empowering and inspiring. But on the other hand, it can make you sometimes wonder “am I good enough?”

Something I’ve had to unlearn is that there aren’t rules. You can do whatever the heck you want. When I began my professional photography journey and played around with editing my photos, I felt like I had my own style. Maybe not so much a “style” as photographers really word it. But more of like an intuition of what I felt the photo HAD to be. The colors just HAD to be this certain way in my mind. Editing the RAW, unfiltered photo to me was like putting it back to the way I found it. The way the world had looked to me when I photographed it.

As I became more in tune with the photography world and experienced other photographer’s styles, I realized how many different ways people viewed the world. It made me get in my head that I had to stick to some consistent thing and always maintain this “style” and brand identity. Which I do think today is true– but I am a rule follower by nature and not one to really rock the boat. So at the time, I began to feel like I was doing it wrong.

My editing changed a lot and became something that wasn’t what I had started with. I manipulated the colors and overall feeling of the photos into something that at my core didn’t really feel right. I feel like I’m just now coming back to my original style and trying to forget the rest of the world. I’m trying to drop the comparison and uplift other people as inspiration instead.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

I want to be a safe space. I want people to feel comfortable telling me their stories so that I can help them convey their love in my photos. I offer gentle guidance through my photography and try to “create” candid photos. When I meet couples for engagement sessions I try my best to make it feel natural. I don’t do much of the “stand here and cheese” and instead do a lot of frolicking through fields, piggy back rides in the street, rolling down hills, and movements that make the session feel like an adventure instead of a photoshoot. My mission isn’t to make weddings photoshoots. My mission is to be the guest assigned to taking pictures. If the couple wants to spend an hour taking photos together, I’m ready to jump right in! But if they want to just be a couple and greet their guests, drink a little, eat a little, just be married– who am I to tell them how to use their time? I’m being paid to support them and document their day. How and where they choose to spend it is soley up to them and I will be there for them, no matter what it looks like. It doesn’t matter if the room is dark and candlelit, or bright and sunny. The challenge and art of it is finding those small candid moments couples share throughout the day and honing on them. That’s what people don’t notice and that’s what makes someone a professional.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.meghanannimagery.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/meghanannimagery/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/meghancormierphotography/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkIZyOdPCygM1NaLdjzmUYg
• Other: tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@meghanannimagery