Right as we’re ending 2021, I stumbled across a blog post I made at the end of 2016. It wasn’t exactly my first on my website, but I’d just learned that photographers need to use their blogs, so it was the first where I was actually trying to blog with purpose. Nowadays, I use it to bring people to my website and show them what a day with me might look like. It’s not an online diary like I thought all blogs were, and it’s probably my current favorite channel for my work.

I’d just started hearing that people want to see photos of the people who were posting (not just photos I took? What?). I took a few awkward selfies with a Clemson 2016 tassel before I posted one on Instagram saying to look at my blog about what I did in 2016 and what I would do in 2017. The advice I’d gotten about posting pictures of myself was actually good—I’ve had people at vendor events recognize me from Instagram and remember things I’ve posted.

When someone who just got married 5 minutes ago offers to take a phone photo of you because you’re both obsessed with the venue’s pig

This 2016 blog was mostly along the lines of “I bought a new lens, I’m going to British Columbia, and I’ll get to take photos of an eclipse next year.” I was also in the early stages of trying to use my actual voice online, not just the academic writing I’d worked so hard on through high school and college. It’s still a work in progress, but there’s a noticeable difference.

Instagram reels weren’t a thing in 2016, but I love that I can share some of my favorite music with my photos now. A reel of me taking a photo of this gorgeous waterfall was set to a deep track by Chicago and was one of my top posts of the year. Click here to see it (and more of the waterfall because it was stunning with the foliage and the blue sky)

I had written in that blog about getting better at shooting, and therefore not spending as much time editing. Again, there’s been lots of improvement there, but it’s still a work in progress. Here’s a photo I posted along with that blog to show how little I’d edited, alongside one from earlier that year that had a lot of editing done to it. Today, I’m sharing that December 2016 photo alongside a December 2021 photo. My photo style has gotten brighter and more vibrant over time as I’ve gotten better about showing colors the way I remember seeing them. I also have a lot more variety in poses and backgrounds in each session, but I’ve made good use of this bush at Clemson for headshots.

December 2016

December 2021

I posted that I was watching a lot of photography webinars and I was on a lot of email lists, which was really exciting and not annoying (yet) because I was learning so much. Since Dan was in school in Florida at the time, I could just come home from work, turn on a webinar while I ate dinner, and do it again the next day with a different photographer. This led to me getting more Facebook ads from photographers, so I kept ending up on more email lists. Eventually, my inbox did kind of become noise, and I learned to refine my email lists down to what I was most interested in learning about. There are three photography email lists that I’m still on five years later, and they’ve all been influential to me the whole time: Katelyn James, Amy and Jordan, and Ben Hartley.

I had written about how I had never expected to like portraits, but I had done so many that year. I specifically mentioned my friend Tracy asking me to take her Miss Clemson University photos in March 2016, which got me the confidence and portfolio to get something like 15 more Clemson portrait sessions that year. That was a huge deal to me at the time. My photos of Tracy caught the eye of the next year’s Miss Clemson University pageant director. I’ve now covered the 5 pageants since Tracy won, as well as doing a session afterwards with the past 4 winners. Those sessions are some of my favorites each year! Not only did Tracy ask me to do more sessions with her over the next few years, her now-husband reached out to me to secretly take photos of him proposing to her. This past year, the pageant director said they were struggling to find judges, and I happened to know someone with a little experience with the pageant.

I wrote about how I hadn’t gone into portraits earlier because I was scared of having bad interactions with people, but I’d had a great experience so far. That’s still true for the most part—I’ve learned that communication upfront goes a long way, and that it’s okay to not be the right fit for everyone. In 2016, I started to love walking through a beautiful place on a gorgeous day, making something beautiful together, and getting to know someone new during our session. That’s still true.

I had no idea in 2016 that I’d fall in love with weddings and engagements less than a year later. The idea scared me because I felt like weddings would be a lot of pressure. With the help of some friends who trusted me with their photos, a few wonderful wedding photographers who I got to assist, and some more courses and webinars on the side, I learned how to be a more versatile and organized photographer, and it wasn’t so scary anymore. I’d also just found out that some people specialized in elopements, it that blew my mind that you could do that. Here I am with a wonderful couple who eloped this fall!

I wrote that I was spending the time between Christmas and New Year’s revamping my website, just like I did during that same time period in 2021. In 2016, that meant separating my work into galleries like “portraits, sports, still life, landscape, and animals.” It did take a good amount of time and I was proud of how much more organized it looked. Most of my portraits were Clemson graduation photos, so there wasn’t much variety in locations and outfits. In 2021, I mostly used that week to work on my SEO, which I’m pretty sure I didn’t know about yet in 2016. If you don’t know what that means, it means making your site more likely to show up on Google when people search for certain things. It’s an intimidating thing to learn about, especially if you’re not into the tech side of things, but I’m finally getting more comfortable with it.

I was pretty anti-Pinterest, especially while I was planning a wedding, but I’ve learned how to use it to reach people who like the things I like. My best-performing Pinterest pin is a video of me and my second shooter playing with these light sabers before setting up this shot. Click here to see it!

So where am I at the end of 2021? I’m a photographer who loves vibrant colors and going to pretty places with unique couples. I’ve established a business flow that lets me take care of myself, make memories with my husband and dog, and still deliver my best work. I know that photography is more than just art or “capturing moments,” something that every photographer tries to phrase differently on their website so it doesn’t sound cliché. Here are some of my favorite blog posts from this year, so click each one to see more and read about that day!