By Jonay Sutton
What does it mean to be a professional photographer? Does anyone really start off as a beginner? These are the questions Jonay faces as she tries to grow as a photographer. Her story is paired with the perspective of another mostly self-taught photographer who stands somewhere between amateur and professional---just like herself. This story details vivd images of candy stores as she attempts to capture alluring and nostalgic photos.
The Set-Up
It started with my iPhone. I was fourteen and hooked on the feeling of nostalgia, and I wanted to create something. Though I wasn't exactly sure what. I started an Instagram account with an embarrassing username—the.indie.blues. I uploaded random assortments of photographs: the bus stop changing through the seasons, movies I had on DVD, street signs, and silhouettes of bands I had seen. I wasn’t trying to be extraordinary, I was only trying to make moments last longer.
There was satisfaction in creating an array of photographs with similar themes and compositions. A few years ago, I was in a candy store that smelled of fruit and refined sugar. There was a counter for macarons and cookies, walls lined with Hershey bars, pixie sticks, giant gummy bears, and neon green candies. I noticed this row of Laffy Taffys, chocolate bars, and Nerds. Above it was a sign labeled “down memory lane.” It felt like I was six at that moment. I took a photo of the scene, posted it to my Instagram account, and eventually printed it out and put it on my wall.
Danise isn’t someone I know personally, but her Instagram showed up in my “suggested followers”,and I saw she had a photography page. I reached out to her because she was mostly-self taught like me. She described her beginnings in photography: “My first and foremost reason for owning a camera is because I wanted to shoot a short film in high school. But over time, I switched to still images completely. I think I began to love photography ever since the pandemic because I had more time to explore the camera. I want to capture the beauty of life, as cheesy as that sounds.”
Her perspective brought me back to those moments when I was fourteen and fifteen, not knowing exactly what I wanted from the camera. I just wanted there to be some sort of appeal about my life. I never liked living in Greenville; it was dull, gray, and quite pathetic. When I came across something with even a hint of beauty, I took a photo.
I got a Nikon D5300 on my twentieth birthday. Holding it in my hands felt daunting. I could no longer just click a button and get good results. I went on a trail through the small forest on campus and took pictures and watched a couple of YouTube videos ahead of time. What I learned was: f stop, ISO, and shutter speed. The first photo came out too blurry and the rest were so dark, I thought I’d broken the camera. There was this moment when I wondered how having this “professional” camera was different from using my iPhone.
Why do I need this five-hundred-dollar camera when my phone has similar functions? Why should I try so hard when I need only to click one button on a phone? I renamed my photography account and archived my photos in an attempt to start over.
The Process
I added a studio art minor and took my first photography class during the fall semester of junior year. I felt slightly ahead despite my underexposed and muffled photos. I had my own camera, I knew the rule of thirds and all the basics from my Youtube summer school. I was surprised when I only got a B on our first challenge: the box project. That’s exactly what we had to do— take pictures of a box. The lesson of “finding beauty in the mundane” was something I thought I learned from my phone photography years in Greenville.
She left comments on my photo sheets saying, “why not this picture for your best five?”, “take more pictures!”, and “Looks like you had some problems with exposure.” I remember saying in our project critique, “I just prefer photos that look dark.”
I did get better over the course of the semester, but things never significantly changed until our final project.
Joy, my photography professor, gave us two options for our final: photograph yourself or photograph an acquaintance. At the last minute, I decided that I would do self-portraits. I knew it would be more difficult than photographing someone else, but I just didn’t want to work with another person. I always found that I took my best photos when I was alone.
I wanted to feel like a professional. But I didn’t quite feel like an amateur. I had been taking “artistic” photos on my phone since I was thirteen. Danise addressed this conflict by saying, “I wouldn’t call myself a professional, because there are lots of things that I still haven’t got the hang of, but I also don’t call myself amateur either. So I guess somewhere in-between.”
It doesn’t seem like anyone really starts off as a beginner in photography. Not in a world where everyone has a smartphone in their pockets. Being in that photography class made me wonder how I could make art when just anyone can snap a photo on their iPhone—including myself. Those pervading thoughts stuck around throughout my photography class. Through each project, I couldn’t help but wonder if my composition would look better through my phone. Would she even notice if I just used my phone? Honestly, would she even know the difference?
When I asked Danise if she thought of photography as an art she said, “Yes definitely. A lot of people think that it’s clicking a shutter button and it’s not as “difficult” as, say painting. But photography is not just clicking the button, it’s also the experience of composition and a trained eye and (depends on the subgenre) digital manipulation.” These are things I knew while photographing, but it didn’t wipe away those thoughts that sometimes made me want to put down the camera.
I picked places that were familiar, yet seemingly mundane: my backyard in Greenville, my aunt’s house, and my apartment. For my first photo session, I used my living room in Chapel Hill for the location and chose not to wear anything dramatic and striking. It was just me in a white top with black pants and a green jacket. I was prepared for this to be chaotic, but I never considered how painful it would be. It took so much effort to set up the tripod, pose, set up the timer, and take enough photos. For some reason, I had decided to do this two hours before I left to drive home to Greenville. I looked over the photos briefly before heading to my car and realized how much I hated the pictures. My skin tone looked unnaturally pale and there was a green cast over most of the pictures. I drove home that night hoping I would miraculously become more talented so that I could produce better pictures.
Greenville has always been something of an abysmal swamp to me. Nothing happens and nothing looks particularly interesting or important there. For this very reason, I was looking forward to taking more self-portraits there. Once I got settled in, I spoke to my dad for a bit, and we ordered Chinese food.
“So you’re gonna go outside in the woods and take pictures?” my dad asked curiously. “It’s slippery back there on the porch, and there are some cats roaming around back there, that mama cat had another baby I think.”
“Yeah, I know, and we used to go back there all the time as kids,” I pointed out to him. “And you know I love those feral cats, maybe I can get a picture with one of them.” He shook his head and went back for another serving of the greasy Ming Dynasty fried rice.
The next day I put on my new red and black sweater and a pair of blue jeans and went to the backyard. I went outside in the afternoon when the light was a warm orange. When I was in high school, I would write poems about the backyard; how I saw it as a sort of dreamland. There are these two large trees that arch together in the center of the woods, and I believed it was a portal to Terabithia (from a movie I persistently watched as a child). I thought photographing back there would help my project.
I became more aware of my body. I thought carefully about where I would place myself. I considered how much of myself I would show. Moving between the green-stained wooden steps and the woods, I took one of the strongest photos from my whole project.
The Critique
I spent hours scrolling through images in Adobe Bridge. From my photos taken in Greenville, I had about two hundred to go through. I could finally have a project where I actually had difficulty picking the best six. It was unlike my days photographing for “the.indie.blues,” there was intention. In Danise’s editing process, she spends anywhere from 10-15 hours editing. It sometimes even takes weeks for her to plan and think through the setup.
During the final critique, everyone was supposed to say which they thought best captured the theme of the project, which photo they would change, and which one was their favorite. I was shocked to hear how the picture one person would change, was actually someone else’s personal favorite. “So Jonay, can you tell us about your photo sessions, I find the one with you behind the tree to be so curious”.
“Well, I knew that I wanted to go back home to take pictures. I thought that if I went back to somewhere that I wasn’t too fond of, it might force me to find something meaningful in it. The one with the twigs, I think I took almost two hundred photos.”
A twig splits my face. “It’s almost like a scar,” Joy said in our final critiques. I remembered intentionally standing in between the twisted vines and branches so my face appeared in the background. This photo was the moment I knew I couldn’t click the button anymore. I wasn’t just snapping photos while walking through the candy store, or capturing the sparks of fireworks. I had to find the photo.