Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Rachel Tanner. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Rachel, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Some of the most interesting parts of our journey emerge from areas where we believe something that most people in our industry do not – do you have something like that?
Heart moving portrait and documentary photographs aren’t born from a passion for the art of photography – they are born from a love of people.
Now hear me out on this one, because I am 100% always trying to improve my skills and hone the craft of photography, for sure! Loving people isn’t my excuse for delivering crappy photography and not applying myself. Empathizing with the people in front of the lens is WHY I always strive to do better with every photoshoot I take on. Whether I’m photographing a ritzy wedding, covering a charity marathon or doing a free shoot for someone who needs a little extra love, I work every shoot like I’m doing it for my bestie. While I do enjoy photographing some still life, such as flat lays for weddings, the whole time I’m arranging and snapping photos, the motive behind it all is, “this is really going to bless the bride/groom! They’re going to really cherish these photos that encapsulate the theme/color scheme/style of their wedding.” For me, it’s all about the people.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
Yeah, so I’m a really enthusiastic person and I just really, really love people. I am a professional photographer (at least, that’s what my business license says) but internally I identify as a customer experience specialist who happens to be a photographer. Cheesy, I know, but the feedback from clients really solidifies this alter ego over and over again. “The photos are so beautiful!” is always nice to hear from clients, but the reviews that gives me the happy heart feels and teary eyes is when I hear how taken care of, safe and important they felt when working with me. When I open an email and see a client say how the photos aren’t just pretty, but they really “feel like us” and capture a depth of who they are that goes beyond the aesthetic.. Shew. That is what it’s about for me.
I call myself a “small beans” photographer because I’m not cranking out 35+ weddings a year like some of the insanely awesome photographers in the area. Mega respect for these legends, but I know I couldn’t give my clients the attention I want them to receive while also keeping all of MY proverbial kittens in my trench coat pockets (herding cats isn’t for the weak). I homeschool my kids, I’m really involved in a lot of things in the community, my standard poodle, Kevin, needs his downtime watching “New Girl” with me in my bed, and I really, really like my husband and try to keep him around by enchanting him with homemade lattes and my signature messy-bun + hand-me-down plaid pajama pants combo, which requires me to be present and not constantly gone every weekend shooting weddings. To fill in the empty minutes of my days, I spend my spare time playing in the mud in a ceramics studio to reclaim some of my time for just me.
Being “small beans” means I can treat every wedding like I’m doing it for my best friend, which is the only way I really want to do it (some of my clients have actually become close friends, so there’s something to my madness). The people that hire me have my cell phone number and can text me any time to ask a question, send an inspo pic or update me on how their cat is feeling after a hard day of napping in the sun. We chat on the phone a few times before the wedding to hash out details, create a timeline together and go over their hopes, expectations and worries about the day. I do all my own editing and communicate with the client to ensure they’re loving the sneak peek edit before I edit the entire wedding, which is an enormous amount of time compared to outsourcing to other editors, and remains one of the biggest reasons I intentionally stay small volume. I like to be extremely available and a strong support for anything my clients need, which I am able to do due to limiting the amount of weddings I photograph each year.
Weddings are known to be a beast of stress, chaos and tears, so I like to be the warm, jokey pep-talk that lifts some of the weight off of the bride and groom. With my passion for people as the driving force behind what I do, I genuinely care about how people are feeling and prioritize being a supportive calm in the mess, and that doesn’t only apply to the wedding day.
My greatest strengths as a photographer is being a generous, problem solving, supportive cheerleader who is actually kind of funny. One of the mantra’s I live by is, “You can’t out-give God”, so I’m always happy to provide free advice and support, even if the person doesn’t actually end up hiring me to photograph their wedding. I trust that giving doesn’t deplete my resources because they are always coming back to me in some way, so it’s natural to pour into and support people even though it doesn’t necessarily benefit me monetarily. Every potential client I have a call with gets all the relevant advice I can give them, a little trouble shooting for tight timelines and a run down of options for different aspects of their wedding day. Most of the people I chat with are planning their first wedding and feel lost and overwhelmed, understandably. I have had many inquiry calls that didn’t end up hiring me, but I’m so glad they inquired because the phone call ended with, “I feel way less stressed about this entire process now, thank you so much for all your advice and guidance!”, and I just absolutely love that. Like, I know you haven’t done this before but I’ve been through this process personally and walked alongside a LOT of couples; Lemme help you.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
Yeah, absolutely. I consider myself a really reliable person. When I say I will do something, I’d have to be locked in a trunk to miss it. I always try to relay this to people when they are considering hiring me, but talk is cheap and better people than me have backed out of well intentioned promises made, so I know people are always going to be a bit nervous about trusting people, and that’s okay. There isn’t usually many obstacles to following through with my commitments for clients, but when they do pop up, they’re usually doozies.
This past January while I looked forward to a handful of spring weddings, my active, fit and seemingly healthy 33 year old husband found out he needed semi-urgent open heart surgery for a congenital heart defect that was brushed off as non-problematic his whole life. Whoops. And wouldn’t ya know it, his open heart surgery was scheduled for less than 48 hours after my first spring wedding. During the six weeks leading up to his surgery and my spring wedding season, we seemed to have some kind of appointment or test to prepare for the procedure every few days. I didn’t want to burden my clients with the fear that I would cancel last minute, so despite having a really open rapport about our families and happenings, I kept the surgery information on the down low. So, 36 hours before the big procedure, I was in Baltimore photographing a wedding. It was a fun, high energy evening and the pictures turned out really beautiful. I clicked “upload” on couple’s 24 hour sneak peek from my home office computer at the crack of dawn while the car was warming up to take us to the hospital. I didn’t have to use the “in case of family emergency” clause in my contract to cancel/refund or provide a substitute photographer or editor for my clients and I considered that a big win.
This probably seems either really admirable or really callous that I kept all the weddings I booked during this time, but the whole process of finding out my husband needed open heart surgery all the way through his recovery didn’t really shake me. I had a deep knowing in my heart that this would not only go well, but that great things would come from it, so I didn’t see it as a dark, scary time in our lives but a turning point for greater things to come. With that mindset, and while also being the support for my husband, falling apart, cancelling on people that were relying on me and halting our lives just didn’t make sense, so I kept keeping on and I’m glad I did.
For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?
The most rewarding aspect of being a portrait photographer is knowing that I am providing something that, in a sense, is priceless. Memories fade, we change so quickly, and life is fragile. We are so very mortal, and it’s corny but true that photography immortalizes who we love. Recently, I made the familiar walk through the halls of my old community college, which is now my current college, as I enroll year round in ceramics to feed my artistic heart. As I walked the hall for the umpteenth time, I stopped so fast I almost fell over. I looked up to the very top shelf of a glass case in the wall and saw a photograph from the 90’s that was so sun-bleached, it had turned sepia, and saw my beloved, late uncle as a young man smiling back at me. Unbeknownst to me, my favorite uncle was on a choral team that won an award in competition and the team photograph was displayed next to their trophy. True to his care free, goofy personality, his tie was backwards and not tied correctly at all. He beamed with a smiling laugh that he never outgrew, that I hadn’t seen for over 15 years. Because of that photograph immortalizing him in that moment, I ran into my Uncle Scott unexpectedly in the hallways of our shared community college, despite his passing away from cancer in 2010.
That photographer will never know what a priceless gift they gave me. They may have been a student from the photography department at the school, learning the craft and practicing with excitement for the opportunity. Or perhaps an old-hat hired professional, who snapped and developed this photo like tens of thousands of photos before, with no inclination of how this particular photograph would bless a woman, also a professional photographer, just absentmindedly walking to her car in a community college hallway three decades later. The reward is knowing that I will never understand or know in this life how the photographs I take will bless people for decades and generations to come.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.racheltannerphoto.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/racheltannerphotography
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/racheltannerphotography
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachel-tanner-photography
Image Credits
Rachel Tanner Photography