We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Tom Mcdonald. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Tom below.
Tom, 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.
For the most part, I’ve taught myself most of what I know. I didn’t get fully into photography until my mid 30’s and felt I was too old or didn’t have enough time for any real proper photography education or school. So for the first few years I just quietly photographed and edited as much as I could. Once I mastered something, I then would hone and perfect it as best I could. I had an eye, and for the most part, I knew how to get my camera to do what I wanted it to do. It was photo editing that I really wanted to learn. Over the span of a decade, between trial and error (LOTS of trial and error), experimenting and going to workshops with some of Chicago’s and the nation’s finest photographers, editing was no longer my Achilles heel. In fact, I’m still teaching myself new Lightroom tricks to this day. Looking back, I think for me, that entire experience of being self taught and my drive to continually want to learn more and push myself even further, really helped me create my photographic style.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I got into photography, at least professionally, kind of on a whim. I’ve always like photography and was the one usually taking the photos at the family events and vacations. Eventually in life, I got a job at a TV station which gave me an outlet and an opportunity to work on the sets and locations of film and TV shows being shot in and around Chicago. I had started bringing my camera with me on set and would take photos of the set as a sort of memento of the experience. Transformers, The Dark Knight, Contagion, and several television shows worth of images started to accumulate and my friends had started taking notice of my “new” talent.
Next thing you know, I’m photographing small weddings of friends and friends of friends. After I started getting a few of those under my belt, I started to seriously think about it being something I could do “full” time. My first real paid gig as a professional photographer from a client from my current job. So after about a year of mulling back and forth over Should I/Shouldn’t I? and talking it over with my close family and friends, I decided I should, and gave the two weeks notice at my TV station job. TomAMcDonald Photography, here I come!
Actually, about ten years later it came. Of course my $300 for a wedding every few months for a brand new photographer with no real formal photography education and a pretty shallow and meek portfolio wasn’t going to be paying the rent. In college I had been a bartender for years and loved it. So in the beginning, I went back into that to help pay the bills. Then over the years, life takes a couple swings at you and the next thing I know, one small bartending job had turned into helping my buddy help manage various restaurants around Chicago. I hadn’t photographed much of anything professionally in a few years. After running a restaurant all day, I didn’t have the time or energy to put into my photography. And I hated that. I hated what my life had become. Then Covid happened, managing a restaurant during a pandemic broke me in half, not only physically with the long days and the short to no staff, but it broke me mentally as well. It made me realize, I was giving too much of my time and energy into something I didn’t want or want to do.
Combine all of that with the timing of my father’s death, life gets put in perspective pretty quickly. So I quit the restaurant life and embraced photography with everything I had. My dad left a modest bit of an inheritance, so I used that to get myself a new camera body and upgrade my lenses and flash units and some new gear. With the world thawing out after the pandemic started to fade out, I used that time to get in front of as many other local photographers, a few conventions and workshops, and jumped into the upcoming wedding boom as an available and inexpensive second shooter to all those wedding photographers ready for their couples to finally get out there and marry.
During the next two years or so, I worked with a bunch of amazingly talented wedding leads and learned so much from each of them and the experiences at each of their wedding gigs. My portfolio started blowing up. One of my former TV station clients from all those years ago, working for a different company now, called me as they needed new headshots for their team. And from each wedding gig, with each new wedding lead I worked with and with each new corporate client I was meeting, was like one domino hitting another. I had a lot of dominos falling and more and more were getting lined up each following year.
Being a photographer in Chicago is insane. But there is no other place I would have rather sharpened my craft in. A gorgeous city to photograph, if not the most the most perfect. But it’s a tight packed city and every photographer is shooting the same things, the same spots, the same landmarks. My IG feed started looking repetitive. What is going to make mine stand out? What makes my photo of Willis Tower different than the same ones already out there? What makes my image of Buckingham Fountain more unique than the same views smeared all over my social media feed? Perspective. If the majority of photographers all snap images from the basic same vantage point, change your vantage point. There’s the challenge that drives me as a photographer. Tell the story from a different angle.
I also try to give the image meaning, give it purpose. What I try to do is capture a moment with my images so that they have a story to tell. I do it for my weddings, I do it for my portrait sessions, and I do it for my landscapes and cityscapes. Yes, even a large city skyline has its moment to say something beautiful and unique. Everything out there does. You just have to pay attention.
Photography has allowed me to see a lot of things, go to a lot of places, meet a lot of people and be a part of things I never could have imagined. I’ve been able to photograph my childhood racing hero Bobby Rahal in his personal home, President Biden, NASCAR and Indycar events, WNBA championship parades, skyscraper rooftops and dozens of Chicago’s most beautiful spots and breathtaking views. I moved from Chicago a year ago and now live in Boca Raton, FL. I get to take everything I learned and taught myself up there and put it to use in a brand new location with it’s own unique beauty and challenges.
Is there mission driving your creative journey?
Other than giving myself an outlet for my creativity, my goal or mission for my creative journey, is just that, the journey. I’ve been constantly creating since I was a kid. And in middle school, I joined the yearbook committee and was handed a 35mm camera and was told to just capture the school from my point of view. Over a dozen images I clicked that year ended up in the yearbook and I couldn’t have felt any more blown away to know that my 6th grade class would nostalgically look back that time with their yearbook filled with photos I made. So to have a profession now where I get paid to have that feeling, is incredible.
What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?
To this day, even after all these years, I get the biggest kick and most giddy when I see my images framed or hung in someone else’s home or business. And that’s the biggest reward for me. Seeing other people enjoy the images I created either for them or of them. It makes me feel good to know that people will cherish and remember certain moments of their life with images that I created.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.tomamcdonaldphoto.com
- Instagram: @tomamcdonaldphoto
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TomAMcDonaldPhotography
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomamcdonald/
