We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Tiffany Bolk a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Tiffany, thanks for taking the time to share your stories 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.
I have always been interested in photography ever since I was a kid when I began taking photos with my little red 110 film camera. I photographed friends, family trips, my cat dressed up in cabbage patch doll clothes, my barbie dolls and my brother dressed up as a girl. When I became a teenager I found my dads Canon AE-1 film camera and it basically became mine through my photography classes in high-school and into my 20’s in college. During grad school I used a medium format 4×5 camera for a lot of my work, which I fell in love with, but it required a lot of work, processing time and chemicals. That’s probably the main thing I dislike about photography is all of the chemicals that are involved with film and printing. However, once I graduated from grad school digital photography was the new thing and supposedly film was dead. I felt a panic to try to re-learn everything with a digital camera and process my images on a computer. It was a whole new world! Of course film didn’t really die and I wish I had stuck more with it instead of panicking and feeling the pressure to switch to digital. I don’t really feel like any of my learning processes could have been sped up or that they needed to be sped up. I enjoyed all of it, mostly. My hang ups were always with the number parts of photography, like f-stops and shutter speeds. I always had issues with math and so numbers to me were like a foreign language and my brain just wanted to block everything involving numbers out. It was definitely a personal growth issue that I slowly had to learn to deal with and to teach myself to slow down and open up to learning new things and not be scared of not understanding something. I had to teach myself that it was okay to get frustrated but to take a deep breath when I did and step back and just take more time. I had to teach myself that learning something new can be fun. I feel like this might sound weird but for some reason I was really reluctant to slow down and learn. I just wanted to know everything right now! I think I felt that if I showed that I didn’t know something people would think that I was dumb. I’ve mostly gotten over worrying about what other people think, but since I’m human, these fears will creep in every now and then.
Being an introvert, developing my social skills with others has been a very important skill with having your own business. You meet all different types of people in the business of photography and it’s vital to make sure that you are listening to their ideas and what they are expecting of you when they hire you. Sometimes you might realize that you can’t do something that a client may want or that they don’t want to pay you what you are worth and you have to decide if that is something that you are okay with, or maybe you really don’t want to do and therefore you just need to say NO. It took me a long time to learn that lesson. I just wanted to do the job so bad that I would sometimes do things that I didn’t want to do but didn’t realize until later that I should’ve said no, this is not the right fit. When you know that something is not right and you say no, everyone is happier in the end. Or at least you are because you know you did the right thing. All in all, putting myself out there and trying new things and meeting new people had been the best thing I could’ve done for myself, even if I was scared most of the time. I have met some of the coolest people through my photography and creating photographs is what keep me sane.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
When I graduated from grad school I really wanted to be an accomplished artist. I had photos in several small art galleries, but then the pressure to pay back my student loans set in; and reality. I had a few small teaching gigs and then many of my friends started getting married. Since I was a photographer, everyone said I should photograph weddings. I didn’t really want to do this but I thought I would give it a try. It turns out I really loved it! At the time wedding photography was becoming what it is now, more of photography experience as opposed to just getting the essential posed photos of all the family members and wedding party. Wedding photography was a full 8 hour day and more creative and documentary. I loved being able to just follow people around as they went about their day and capture all of the important moments. I then decided that I would have a go at creating my own business! I created business cards, got a website and friends and family referred me and slowly my wedding photography business grew. I eventually added family photos and high school senior portraits to my offerings. Some of my favorite weddings were: a beautiful beach ceremony in a remote town accessible only by a 4 hour drive on a bumpy dirt road in Montezuma, Costa Rica; a wedding at the quirky and stunning Maddonna Inn, in San Louis Obispo, California; and a total all out stunner of a wedding at The O’Donnell House at The Willows in Palm Springs, California. After being in the business for 13 years I felt the draw to get back into my personal art. I began photographing my niece and nephew in different scenarios that reflected moments from my youth. More and more I wanted to create my own art again. Then covid hit. Weddings and family photos were harder and harder to come by and in a way I was a bit burnt out. I wanted to try something new. I was really interested in boudoir photography and I loved that you were able to be more creative with your images. I also began doing more collaborations with stylists, fashion designers, make-up artists and fancy homes that rent their spaces out to photographers; like Grandpa’s Pool House and The Zebra House. These are the types of images that I love the most! I spend months thinking of different ideas in my head, looking for inspiration in movies and paintings as well as other photographers. Then I need to find props, the models, the clothes. Then I need to make sure that we can find a date that everyone can agree to be available on. It’s a lot of work! And I do it for nothing. Because creating these artistic images is what makes me feel alive and makes me feel happy.
My current dream is to have people hire me to create more images like the ones I’ve been making currently. More creative portraiture. More fashion-y, artistic images, but it’s hard to find people that want to pay for those types of images. I also have a dream of having my own art gallery some day. Nothing super fancy, but something to represent local artist’s that I find profound as well as my own work.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
Being an artist gives me purpose. Being able to dream and create images literally keeps me sane and keeps me going to the next day. It gives me hope that maybe someday my images will be in a big gallery show. Being in the creative industry has also led me to meet some of the coolest people in the world and I feel so grateful and lucky to have these friendships.
Are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?
I really wish I had know about the arts high school when I was in school. I don’t know when it began, but if I could’ve gone to an arts high school I think it would have saved me a lot of strife. I also wish that art schools would teach some practical things, and maybe they do now, but things like how to save money for the future and investing in things.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.tiffanybolkphotography.com/
- Instagram: @tiffanybolkphotography
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tiffany.bolk
Image Credits
Ann Marie May Sawyer Summer Rose Jen Amanda Morrell Emily Bonnie Hannah Kyna Nora Mikayla