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

Alright, Shauna thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

Hello! My name is Shauna Hilferty. Thank you for being here and talking with me today!

I always knew I liked to tell stories. I like to talk, and I talk a lot. There was one instance when I got in trouble in the third grade for talking too much. My teacher had to move me from one desk clump to another since that was the only way to get me out of my best friend’s hair. To this day, I still enjoy talking to people. Through photography and film, music and media, when all of those combine, I am able to connect with others like I did when I was little. This time, instead of desk clumps, it’s concerts and film sets, coffee shops and subways.

I began pursuing photography through videography first. I loved John Hughes movies. I loved making movies on my $30 Polaroid camera I saved up for and took on my fifth grade field trip to the Liberty Bell. I loved to edit on Windows Movie Maker, and add transitions and download fonts from Dafont.com. My YouTuber era was short and sweet, and I fell off of making videos for a long time. The next time I picked up a camera for real was when I was 16 and I got a Nikon D3300 for Christmas. I used the camera often, taking photos of my dogs and my friends, my mom’s hibiscus flowers and the sunglasses someone left in our pool.

Besides taking Photography 1 and 2 in high school as my electives, I never had proper training and flew by the seed of my pants. To this day, I still wonder if I should have gone to Pratt to study photography, which would have given me an official document saying “you can take photos better than most people!” but had I attended, things would be drastically different, and I fear my relationship with photography would be unnecessarily complicated. Monetizing your craft is scary, so at 17, I decided not to, and that proved to house its own challenges. Challenges including always feeling one step behind in any room I was in where anyone else had a camera and being too afraid to ask questions I should already probably know the answer to because I’m wearing a camera so surely, I knew all the ins-and-outs. I quickly realized that being mostly self-taught was a conversation piece in it of itself, and that if I was enthusiastic about learning, many photographers and creatives were willing to spare the knowledge – and if I was lucky enough, their time – to teach me. more I learned, and am still learning, how to be comfortable with my camera and my gear, and that asking for help is always an option, and the answer will always be “no” unless I ask.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I think it was my freshman year of college that I dragged my then-roommate to a Nightly concert in the back of a bar. I hadn’t really gone to many concerts up to this point, I never really had the money or means of getting to them. Going to college in New York City, I still had barely any money. I did however have the means to navigate the M train to take us to the Lower East Side. Tucked underneath a sweater I didn’t plan on wearing, was my trusty ol’ Nikon D3300 and some crinkled, iridescent cellophane. After successfully completing my camera recon mission, we wandered past the bar to the back room full of maybe thirty people. Everyone had Sharpied X’s on their hands, including my roommate and I. I found myself in a corner, waiting until the lights dimmed, to take out my camera and begin randomly taking photos of the opening act, Phangs. I think the word random is the best way to describe my shooting style because I had no idea what I was doing or what was going on. The settings on my camera were way out of whack, and I refused to turn the wheel to “Auto”, (I mean, come on, I’m a professional here!) When Nightly came onstage, I dug my cellophane out and tried to do some sort of filter across the lens – looking back, the photos look blurry as anything but then again, I’m proud I took a second risk that night.

One concert turned into two that turned into four and then more. I began cold-emailing local bands and venues. Even a rejection felt like a win because, “Oh my God, they noticed me!” I was still adjusting to the entirely new setting, a stark contrast from my sunny senior portraits I was taking only a year ago. I exchanged daylight suburbs for a dimly-lit city, and it didn’t take long for me to get wrapped up in this new world of live music, and I couldn’t get enough.

I already knew I loved visual media and I loved music, but combining both was uncharted territory for me. To bring together what music felt like, to showcase it through photos of bands backstage in huddles to onstage in spotlights felt so right. My camera recon mission introduced me to an industry I knew I had to be part of. I just couldn’t wait to sink my teeth in.

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

It was September of 2019, the same year I began taking photos at concerts. At this point, I shot my shot and gotten a proper photo pass for one of my favorite bands. I was really feeling myself, booked a haircut for the same day and decided when I sat in the chair, to ask my stylist for bangs. Last time I had bangs was when I was a kid and someone called me Dora, so my relationship with bangs was complicated to say the least. Anyway, my quick act of impulse and change in appearance was a good choice! I thought! When I got to the box office of the Theatre Of Living Arts later that night, the person was hesitant to give me my pass. His eyes went back and forth from my new-ly framed face to my bang-less one on my license. “We’ll be with you in one second…” he said. Calling over not one but two other box office attendents/bosses/profesional picture reviewers, the second one asked “Ma’am, can I ask you, when is your birthday?” I replied, and with one last flicker from my face to the ID, I took this as my sign to pull my new bangs from my forehead. Then it clicked for everyone. I was the person on my ID, I didn’t know bangs were that drastic of a change!

So note to self, no drastic hairstyle changes if you cannot be identified. Since then, I got a new ID and this time I kept the bangs.

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

The joy that comes from connecting with people through art is unmatched. When it comes to photography, my responsibility is capturing a moment, and being able to catch even the most mundane and candid to the outrageous and electric are a wonderful privilege. I love to share what I’ve documented with others, to see if it resonates with them. If it’s a photo of them, does it represent them? Maybe it’s when I’ll be at a concert with my best gear, my best lens taking photos of the best musicians onstage. Sometimes it’s when I’m out with friends with my mom’s old Canon Sureshot film camera, taking photos I know we’ll look back fondly on. Regardless of what camera is capturing the moment, there is always a moment to be captured, and it is always such a treat to capture it.

(It also helps that I am a memory hoarder. I document until I need to upgrade – one, no four terabytes of storage please. Rolls of film filling dresser drawers because I ran out of space where developed film was actually supposed to go.)

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.shaunahilferty.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shaunahilf/?hl=en
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shauna-hilferty-7b0494178/
• Twitter: https://x.com/shaunahilf?s=11
• Other: Threads: https://www.threads.net/@shaunahilf

Image Credits
Concert Photos taken by Shauna Hilferty Photos of Shauna taken by Aspen Rider and Kero Tse