We were lucky to catch up with Tami Cutler recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Tami, thanks for joining 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.

I started the learning process online – both in forums, and taking classes. I think that is common because it’s a low coast and low-risk way to learn. Unfortunately, it is also the least effective. Knowing what I know now, the best advice I can give is to be brave. Admitting that you’re a beginner, then putting yourself in situations where you can get immediate feedback are invaluable. Workshops, mentor/coaching, or at least an online class where there is feedback on my work were exponentially more effective ways to learn than reading tutorials and surfing tips in forums. I have found that whenever I have hit a plateau, it is time to pay for a portfolio review or a workshop with small groups that will allow a lot of instructor attention. I have become shameless about asking questions. I give an assignment a go, self-critique, and adjust, and then go to the instructor to ask what it is I’m missing. If you’ve done the homework to find a good instructor, that feedback is incredibly valuable. I then take their ideas and try again. Then loop back to see how I’m doing at incorporating their thoughts. I am a hands-on learner, so this process has done more to advance my skills than anything else I have tried.

Tami, 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 have been a piano teacher for twenty years, and really love to teach. When I started as a photographer I was lucky to find two wonderful mentors really early in my journey. One of them decided to put my teaching experience to work, and gave me the opportunity to teach basic manual photography skills online. I created a curriculum, held online zoom sessions, and offered feedback on assignments. I found that teaching photography was sometimes even more rewarding than teaching the piano. That might be largely because photography students tend to be older, and taking lessons by choice. (Rather than school-aged kids who are there under duress from their parents). But I also loved the stories of the students and why they were taking up this new hobby. Recent widows trying to connect with something they watched husbands do, young moms looking for a creative outlet, mid-life crises forcing the need to slow down and see the world a little differently. These were meaningful experiences for them, and so it became meaningful to me to teach and help them develop these new skills.

I think my experience teaching kids to tackle problems that are incredibly frustrating for them is my most valuable asset. It has forced me to think out of the box to find solutions to roadblocks in their learning. Those frustrating moments become a gateway to mastering a new concept, and that process is incredibly rewarding. Working with kids has also taught me to simplify. So often, teachers like to display ALL of their knowledge at once, and the poor student is lost somewhere along the way. With eight-year-olds, you have approximately two seconds to make sense of where their problem lies. Luckily, adults are a little more patient, but learning how to simplify has served me well.

I also just really enjoy sharing something that I love. Photography has taught me to slow down. I see light, and details. I stop and take in the moment. I take time to remember those moments as I go back through my photos and feel the emotions attached. It has given me a way to interact with the world that works with my strengths and weaknesses. What a valuable gift to share.

Have you ever had to pivot?

I bought my first real camera to learn to take photos of my children. I was tired of paying money for poor photos that felt staged and stale. As I practiced and people began to notice, I was hired to take family, newborn, and other portraits more and more often. I loved connecting with people – especially as I watched a family grow from maternity shots to newborn shots to first birthday cake smashes to family portraits. But I quickly learned that what clients were looking for was more dependent on what they saw on instagram or pinterest, than on what I saw in a scene. Many of them found afterward that their favorite images were the ones I shot “off the cuff,” but that didn’t change the way a photo shoot developed, and how much of the time I spent staging the photo they had seen online and were trying to recreate. It was exhausting. I took a landscape photography class to learn new skills, and I never looked back. The freedom I felt to create what moved me, rather than trying to please someone else opened a whole new world. Luckily, I love to teach, so I don’t have to make a career selling my work. That isn’t an option for everyone. But it was a perfect fit for me.

Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?

Private coaching and portfolio reviews. It never even occurred to me. Ironic, as I was a long-time private piano student, but I had no idea that people did that for creative skills outside of music. I have rarely learned more about myself, my skills, and my vision than I did during a portfolio review. We just don’t know what we don’t know, right? Having another set of eyes to find my strengths and blind spots put my photography on a new level. Hearing feedback on what I am consistently drawn to and how a portray it was new insight into myself and how I see the world. I wish I knew how easy it is to find mentors willing to help with that. I have never been turned down by a photographer when I tell them I admire their work and would like to pay them for their feedback on my own. Again, be brave! The best learning opportunities come when you put yourself out there.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.tcutlerphotography.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tamicutlerphotography
• Facebook: Tami Cutler Photography

Image Credits

none