Episode Transcript
[00:00:13] Speaker A: Welcome to two Travel Dads podcast. Here we share our favorite destinations, travel tips, stories from our adventures and bring on awesome guests to share insights into their travelsome lives. Be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and check out our detailed show notes at Dash episode.
Hey, welcome to another episode of two Travel Dads podcast. I'm your host, Rob Taylor, and today I don't have Chris with me, but I do have a special guest, which I love having special guests. It is my friend Colleen, who is. I'll let her introduce herself, but she is a remarkable person on many different levels and did a little preview. We've got many podcast episodes coming, but today we are going to speak with Colleen about photographer life and what it is that she does, how she does it, and what makes it something that is special and a source of joy for her.
Why don't you introduce yourself and give us just maybe a quick little 45 seconds, 47 seconds of how you got into photography, not just as a fun thing, but as a means for life.
Go.
[00:01:35] Speaker B: Hi, Rob. Hi, everybody. Thanks so much for having me, Rob. This is going to be so fun. Yeah. My name is Colleen and I never intended to be a photographer.
I'm an ex software engineer and I took up photography as a hobby to my stressful job. I worked for Intel Corporation for about ten years, but about halfway through in 2001, I got really stressed out and my mom handed me a brochure to a local community college for an intro to photography class. And she said, you need to get a life and be careful what you ask for, mom.
I went into this class without a camera or a clue, and I ended up selling my work. I ended up, it kind of just snowballed, and I ended up doing a lot of different types of photography. But now I am settled into being a freelance, a full time freelance photographer, writer, publisher, instructor, speaker. It's kind of evolved beyond photography, but photography has been kind of at the core. And right now I'm focused in nature photography, mostly focused on water management, river, lakes, water. Anything involving water really is kind of where I'm focused. So I think that was longer than 47 seconds, but that's about the shortest intro I've ever done.
[00:02:57] Speaker A: I made a list of questions and things that I want to talk about, but I think, actually, let's kind of start there with what you just, you know, Colleen has been able to put together some really beautiful books, and one of them, which I have here, which I don't think I'll be using a video, but just in case, oh, you can't even see it.
[00:03:17] Speaker B: That's okay.
[00:03:18] Speaker A: It is a really cool. I don't know if we'd call it a photo essay or a story of water in the southwest.
You can talk about it, but it's called the current flows, water in the arid west. And I think it is a fascinating and beautiful. I mean, call it a coffee table book if you want. Tell us about what it was that got you creating this specific piece.
[00:03:45] Speaker B: Yeah. So thanks for that feedback. I appreciate that. Yeah. The current flows actually started as an exhibition, photography exhibition. I was doing a presentation out of Yosemite conference in obviously Yosemite. And I had the fortunate opportunity to meet Jean Falk Adams. And Jean Adams is Ansel Adams'daughter in law. She is married to Michael, who is Ansel's son. Ansel is one know photography's most renowned photographers. He's obviously passed away, but he was so influential in the photography community, and obviously one of my biggest inspirations. So to meet Jean was like, oh, my gosh. And it turns out that she was in water management issues as well. She was dealing more with oceans, in particular, the gulf oil spill and things like that. And so we really hit it off because I was really focused on Colorado River. I was falling in love with the Colorado river and a lot of my work, the Colorado, as Katie Lee calls it, the.
So we kind of hit it off. And she had this whole exhibition with Ansel's prince, Ernie Brooks, some other pretty renowned photographers involved in this bigger exhibition. But she was looking for a little bit more of a local flair. And I just happened to run into her at the right time, the right place at the right time. And she was like, you're going to be in this show. And I was not photographing in black and white, which was her show. I was color. And so instead of just saying like, no, you can't be involved in it, she was like, we're going to do a solo show. And I was mean because why?
That's what I think that's part of why Gina and I get along is that we're both really focused on the possibilities and creating opportunities as opposed to just saying, no, it doesn't fit right. So she is very good like that. And so we ended up putting this exhibition together. It was held in Pueblo, Colorado, but it was held right at the end of the pandemic. And we recognized that not everybody was going to be willing to travel to see the exhibition. And so that's what ended up becoming this. We call it an exhibit catalog. You can call it coffee table book, whatever you want to call it. But these are my exhibition photographs from that show, and I wanted to help kind of raise awareness beyond the exhibition, that time frame. And so that's how the current flows came to be.
[00:06:22] Speaker A: I love it, and it's absolutely beautiful, and it's inspiring. As somebody who is out in nature, I think it's pretty amazing to see that body of work in physical form. It's really cool.
[00:06:38] Speaker B: Thank you. Yeah.
[00:06:40] Speaker A: But so then, with that, you've done some other books, and you've been a part of other books.
Another one here that you just recently gave me, and I am halfway through just pondering and all that is all about Arizona's wildflowers and photographing the beauty of Arizona that you don't expect.
[00:07:01] Speaker B: I know, right? Yeah.
[00:07:02] Speaker A: So tell us about that. Where did this book come from?
[00:07:06] Speaker B: Well, that's the thing. So I didn't grow up in Arizona, and when I was growing up in the midwest, I kind of was under the impression that Arizona was just kind of a bunch of sand, because that's what a desert is, I guess. Right? And so when I came out to Arizona, it was quite fascinating that it is so full of life, and there is so much going on between the valley floor all the way through the mountains. And so, over time, as I transitioned from my corporate job into photography, I ended up meeting a gentleman named Paul Gill, a great friend of mine, a phenomenal photographer. And we would get a lot of questions about, like, okay, where should we shoot? Where do we go? And Paul was so great at. He just knew Arizona so well. He was a native, and he had been photographing for a very long time, specifically wildflowers. And so it was like, okay, well, where do we go to find the flowers? They're so fleeting. Every year is different.
The timing is different. And so it's kind of a treasure hunt, kind of.
We decided, I guess a lot of things in my world start off like this. What if we put a book together?
What if we did this? And so we just started winging it. And I had never put a book together before.
I had great direction from many folks in the Outdoor Writers association of America. Owaa. Which we're a part of, you and I are part of.
I had written a query when I went to my very first conference in 2010. I wrote a query with the hopes of selling this piece to some editor, some publisher. Like, I wasn't even sure what I was doing, but I had the whole marketing analysis, and I had the whole thing, and I was told that I should keep the idea to myself and that I should self publish it, and they taught me how to do that. And then I ended up starting a publishing company. And then you do this, right? You get started on one thing, and then it snowballs, and it becomes something much bigger. And so that's what it ended up. We ended up self publishing the book, and it is our way of trying to help people enjoy the beauty of Arizona. And it's funny, I thought it was, know, a five minute thing, but it's actually, Arizona blooms from kind of the middle of February all the way through maybe kind of mid September. We have a spring bloom. We have a monsoon bloom, which is separate. And so there's so much going on, and so we wanted to pack the book with all of that.
[00:09:46] Speaker A: I love it, and I love that you are self publishing. So your Acadia book, did you also self publish that one?
[00:09:53] Speaker B: I did, and a lot of it, that was just kind of a cut and paste structure from the wildflower success. So people really liked that format and the approach. And so it's not just about location based and what gear to bring, but it's also a little bit more of creative inspiration. And how do you approach a subject, and what kinds of things are you thinking about when it comes to composition and things LikE that? And so they are both photography guidebooks, but in obviously different places, because ACaDIA is in Maine and on the Other side of the world for me. But pretty much the guidebooks, everything that I do is to really help others enjoy the outdoors safely and through their own lens, metaphorically and literally. And so I want to help people make the most of being outside and their life.
[00:10:47] Speaker A: Thinking about joy and photography and all that stuff. When you start to take a hobby, something that you do that makes you HapPy and is Your creative outlet, and then you turn it into a business.
How do you continue to make that the thing that is your driving joy factor? Because I know that sometimes I'll get really amped about writing, and then I'll discover, oh, my gosh, look at the snowball that I really have to work on. And I will create a huge chunk of stress in my world that also is a part of my business, but it's also the thing that brings me happiness. So how do you make.
[00:11:25] Speaker B: I totally get that because, I mean.
[00:11:26] Speaker A: You'Ve got all your photography. You've got workshops that you do. You are also publishing. How do you keep it a source of.
[00:11:37] Speaker B: Is my. I think this is my biggest challenge, is that it's all fun. And that's not how photography started. Photography started as my escape from corporate America. It has evolved into my joy. And I think one of the biggest privileges of being a freelance is that I can wake up at any time.
I can change my course at ANy time. I could do it when I wake up. I can do it right now. I could do it in ten minutes. I could do it two years from now. And so if I find that I'm in a ball of stress, which does happen, you get so excited about it, and then you're like, all of a sudden you're like, wait a minute, where am I?
So kind of my guiding principle is if I'm having fun, if I'm learning, I'm going to keep doing it. If I'm not having fun and I'm not learning, I'm probably going to stop and do something else, at least temporarily. I may come back to it, or I may just discover that it's not really fulfilling for me. And I do that on kind of a yearly basis. I do it on a moment to moment basis, but in a bigger picture, like from a business perspective, so that I at least stay in some direction. I have priorities, and so those priorities change from year to year.
Right now, I am very focused on publishing my next book. And so all of my creative energy, all of my business stuff, activities are going into releasing this book, which takes me away from some of the photography time. Right? Yeah.
Workshops are near and dear to me because I love teaching as much as I like making my own photographs. And so for me, it just kind of becomes a little bit of a juggling act between those three major things. It's just, for me, the priorities help me really hone in on what my favorite thing to do is, simply because there's just millions of things that I would love to do, and I just can't get to them all. There's so much fun. There's so much fun.
[00:13:41] Speaker A: It's so good to hear somebody else talk about this, because I've been managing my own business for a long time, and people are like, oh, my gosh, how do you do that? Don't you get tired of it? And it's like, no, because it is just each thing that I choose to take on, whether it is another article or a project for an actual client or recording podcast episodes, each thing has its own driving force that kind of feeds everything else. And I love hearing that from somebody else, too.
[00:14:12] Speaker B: Well, passion is incredibly strong, right? And they say there's all these quotes about if you love what you do, you'll never work a day in your life kind of thing.
I work more now than I ever did at intel.
[00:14:28] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:14:29] Speaker B: But it's driven by passion and it's driven by purpose. And when you have that motivation, it doesn't feel stressful. It's still work, but it feels joyful. Right. It feels exciting. You know that all of the things that you do, especially, and you do do a lot. You do a lot. You know that you're making a difference. You know that you're helping people. You know that you found the magic formula, right, of joy in your life. And that's the root of that is passion and purpose. And I think that's an honor and a privilege to be able to find that and to be able to deliver that through our career choice and actually make money at it and support families and support lifestyles. And so with passion, I do believe that fashion can get you a long way.
Fashion can get you through a lot of stuff.
[00:15:30] Speaker A: There's the quote of the day, funny little side quest here, the book that you've got coming out in a couple of months, which we'll talk about in a different podcast episode. Yes. As I was going through and reading, I was making notes to myself about the different quotes and things that you had written out because you really, well, you're this fantastic wordsmith in a different way than like Dickens or somebody you're.
[00:15:56] Speaker B: Calling, which I'm going to take as a compliment because I want to be me. Dickens is amazing, but I want to be me.
[00:16:03] Speaker A: It's funny because you really capture the things that both bring you joy and kind of soften moments of heartache and stress in way that you write. And I think it was also reflected in a lot of the photographs that I've seen from you. You can kind of see, I think, probably where your mind space was when you were creating. And I love that about you. And I think it's a fantastic quality.
[00:16:31] Speaker B: Thank you. I love that you pick up on that.
That is incredible. I do try to be emotional in my work. I do try to put channel my energy into my work. And the fact that you're seeing that is warms my heart here.
[00:16:52] Speaker A: Good. Well, so with that, though, doing this work and creating these landscape images and stuff, how do you feel like that?
Let me reel it back because I had made myself some different questions and stuff, and then I was starting to walk down different paths, which is okay.
How do you feel like you are setting yourself up to create these images? You are able to capture what it is that you're feeling or the story that you're wanting to tell, whether it's about water or as others are going to read about personal journeys in the desert on the water. How do you set yourself up to actually photograph these little vignettes of life in the landscape? What's your process?
[00:17:39] Speaker B: Yeah, so my process has evolved. It's very different than when I started. When I started photography, my goal was to go out and make a photograph of a pretty picture, and I never really liked my photograph with doing that.
[00:17:54] Speaker A: There's nothing wrong with doing it.
[00:17:56] Speaker B: There isn't. I was copying other people's compositions by going to cliche locations and iconic locations, and that was never really bringing me joy. They were beautiful pictures. They were sellable. I was making a good living off of it.
I wasn't feeling all that connected with the landscape. And so I have a very long story about transformation and my artisan residencies and things. We can talk about that later.
But my process now is that I go into an adventure. I don't go on photo shoots. I don't go out with the intent of making a photograph. I go out with the intent whether to experience awe, to experience wonder, to experience, to follow curiosities, to discover something new about the world around me, about myself, about my craft.
I am out there to learn. And that is a bit of a mindset shift. And so when I go out, I go out on a hike. I might do a stand up paddleboard. Maybe it's a river trip.
Whatever that adventure is, whatever it looks like, it doesn't have to be big, or it can be as grand as the Grand Canyon wrapped in the Grand Canyon, through the Grand Canyon. But it's even smaller. Things like just going on a walk around my house. It's curiosity that drives me. And what ends up happening is, in some form, I create meaning and I create connection with whatever I'm seeing. And that could be anything. That could be like, oh, my gosh, that pattern reminds me of my grandmother's apple pie. Or it could be I start creating these narratives, like these little stories that I'm projecting my life onto trees, and I'm like, bubbles having bubbles, right? Well, bubbles. I just lose all two marbles in my brain. If you see photographs of bubbles of mine, it's just, you know, that I have lost my mind because I love photographing bubbles. And so for me, I have to have a moment of connection. I have to have a moment of meaning, of story, of experience before I snap the shutter and then I use things like Gestalt psychology and human perceptions to match the meaning that I've created in my own head to express that visually in visual language, through photography. And so I'm using optical illusions. I'm using color associations and perceptions about depth and all of that. I'm incorporating that into my frame so that viewers, like you, have some sort of emotional response. And like I said, one of the biggest compliments I think a photographer can get is that you can kind of maybe sense the emotional state that I'm in when you see my photographs. That's it. That's the prize. That's the trophy.
There's nothing better.
[00:20:53] Speaker A: Excellent. Good.
So with that, then, when you do leave the house with a camera in tow, which I always have a camera in tow, do you ever go out with the intent of seeing what you can see and then not creating an image? Do you let that get you down? Do you feel like that's something where you're like, today just wasn't the day?
How does your mindset flux with doing something like that, with heading out with intention and maybe not, maybe not being spot on today?
[00:21:32] Speaker B: Absolutely. So, again, it's changed over time.
When I started with my career in photography, I would get very frustrated if I came home empty handed. And a lot of that was just, I was putting a lot of time pressure. Like, I was working at intel, so I didn't have a lot of time to make images, and so I must make the image right now. And so a lot of it was just trying to control external circumstances that I didn't really actually have control over.
[00:22:01] Speaker A: Like, this is a different podcast episode.
[00:22:04] Speaker B: Yeah, I had issues. I was a little bit controlling. Right. So I wanted to control the weather. Why didn't the rainbow just magically appear on my schedule? And so I would get very frustrated about when things didn't go my way. The thing is that the universe doesn't care what you think and what you visualize. And so, again, kind of in that transformation, when I flipped, I started realizing that it was okay. Again, it goes back to that growth mindset. My sole purpose for going out into the world is to learn and to have moments of awe and wonder and experience the world in whatever form it happens. And so now I go out with the expectation that I'm not going to make the photograph. I have no intentions of making a photograph. And so that means if I come home without making a photograph, it's cool. I've had a great experience that's called an autotelic personality or an autotelic approach. It's doing something just to enjoy the experience as opposed to focusing on some end result. And so that's how I practice things today is I'm just there for the good times.
[00:23:23] Speaker A: That's a shift that I know I need to work on personally, because I've been in that create for business mindset and mode for so long that, for example, we're heading to Peru next month, and it's supposed to be a fun trip, but I'm also researching it like it's going to be a work project, and if something comes from it, great. But at the same time, I know I'm going to write about this. I have to write about this. So I need to shift, especially in the next month, teach myself to release that a little bit before we leave, because I want to enjoy and not feel compulsory creativity.
[00:24:11] Speaker B: Right. That's not how it works. Right. You can't force it.
[00:24:15] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure. So we only have a couple of minutes left.
[00:24:19] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:24:20] Speaker A: One other thing I wanted to hit on especially we're talking about your process and actually walking out the door, creating or not. So when you are leading a workshop, is that something that you guys dig into and talk about? Do you talk about the technical side of things, or is it much more of the theory and philosophy behind just general photography?
What's the aim with your workshops?
[00:24:45] Speaker B: Yeah, so mine are educationally focused. They just happen to be in beautiful locations. And so with photography, you have to have a combination of technical and creative. And so I ask my participants what they want to learn so that they have their goals, and I tailor every workshop to their individual.
Ultimately, you know, kind of as an overarching principle, I'm teaching a visualization driven photography. It's based on the Wallace model of creativity, which is preparation, incubation, inspiration, illumination, and verification.
And so how does the creative process work? And the technical aspect absolutely fits into that. So without knowing how to use your tools and how to actually photograph, it's hard to be like, oh, I see that. And this is how I put it in the frame. And so there is kind of this translation and language that we have to go through. And so I teach that. And most of all, I try to encourage a safe, supportive environment for learning, for asking questions, and having a pretty darn good time. Like, creativity happens when you're relaxed.
I obviously want people to have these amazing experiences in these locations, but I also want them to relax so that they're connecting with the stories that are out there and giving them the confidence that they're going to be able to create something no matter what happens. And I think know, going back to your trip to Peru is knowing that you have the ability. You are an amazing storyteller, you have the skills, and you are going to respond to your environment in pretty remarkable ways. And just having that confidence that you will, I know that you have the ability to tell the story no matter what happens, even if it doesn't go entirely according to plan. And I mean, let's be honest, how many times do things really go according to plan?
I'm trying to teach in confident. I'm trying to instill confidence. I'm trying to help people become a better photographer, become a better human being, whatever that looks like. I'm just hopefully helping them progress, moving them downstream in their own journey, and hopefully finding joy and finding success in that journey.
[00:27:07] Speaker A: I love that.
Gosh, I could talk about photography all day, but we must limit.
[00:27:14] Speaker B: I know we do.
[00:27:16] Speaker A: Is there any kind of final parting thought that you would want? Anybody who's listening is like, you know what, I'm not a photographer. I just snap pictures with my phone, which is absolutely fine, and I have great success with my phone. What's like a kind of parting photography thought that you think can apply to almost anyone?
[00:27:34] Speaker B: Yeah. So I think creativity doesn't always fit in the rectangular box that the camera manufacturers have given to us. And so I think creativity can be expressed in a variety of different ways.
And the tool doesn't matter. So, like, whether you use a big girl or a big boy camera, or you're using an iPhone, or you're using, I don't know, maybe you're playing the flute or maybe you're doing an interpretive dance. We are celebrating the moments that are important to us. The tool doesn't necessarily matter. Like, we create images with our brains, we connect with the world, with our perceptions, not just seeing, but all of our sensory capabilities. Smell, touch, taste, all of those things. And so how that gets expressed out into the world, the tool, is irrelevant. So the joke that we have in photography is when you're cooking a great meal and you put the plate down and you offer the great meal, people say, that's a fantastic meal. They don't ask you what kind of pan you use to cook it in, right? And so that's the same thing with photography. So people who are using iPhones, I want to encourage them if that's what you're excited about. Keep expressing the world. Keep expressing those moments that are important to you. This is a record of your life. This is the legacy that you are building here and now. And I like to believe that photographs, sharing photographs brightens our world, makes it a better place, and so inspires people to see all the things that are out there. So that's kind of what I would offer.
[00:29:17] Speaker A: That was well said. And if I were to sum that up, I would say, it doesn't matter the tool, as long as you are sharing the story that you see.
That was my summation.
[00:29:27] Speaker B: That's it. That's the whole thing.
[00:29:30] Speaker A: Well, thank you for joining me today. And I can't wait for us to share more because I've got a whole list of things that we have to talk about. Okay, so in the meantime, everybody, you can watch for Pauline's upcoming book, so said the river, which we're going to talk about in another part.
And watch for her to just show up in your life in one way or another.
Thank you for coming into my life and being a part of that and being here today. And I can't wait to talk to you again.
[00:30:02] Speaker B: I can't wait. Thanks so much, Rob. I so appreciate what you do and I really enjoyed our conversation today. I look forward to chatting some more.
[00:30:09] Speaker A: Yeah, thank you so much for listening, everyone. And don't forget to hit that subscribe button. Colleen, I will talk to you soon.
[00:30:15] Speaker B: Sounds good. See ya.
[00:30:17] Speaker A: Two Travel Dads podcast is created by Rob and Chris Taylor in St. Augustine, Florida. We'd love to answer your questions here on the podcast, providing both our experience and stories. To share our own insights into whatever you're wondering about, visit twotraveldads.com podcast episodes to leave your questions and to check out past episodes and show notes. Don't forget to hit that subscribe button and have an awesome day.
