For the past six years I’ve half-consciously attempted to keep my business images and my personal life separate. I blog here. I blog there. I take pictures here. I take pictures there. I share pictures here and not there and there and not here because that’s what we’re taught to do, to separate work from pleasure.But I do not have a job that allows me to keep these two entities separate. They are both me. They are not two pipes that run side by side to the same place, never meeting until they reach the sea. They are two veins that pump one heart, and the blood that runs through them is photography.I built my business on a dream, no height restrictions could keep me from turning Elise Hanna Photography into a Skyscraper. I kept adding floors. Even when the great real estate storm hit South Florida and our feet were swept out from under us and we landed in the State Department in Washington DC, like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz...and then again in Brazil and now again in DC, I rebuilt with equal passion.I pounded my fists against the storm that kept swirling around me, lifting me into the air and depositing me in different cities...on different continents. I fought it, spinning in the opposite direction, but eventually I let it carry me away. I thought at many points that the degree of difficulty of picking up my business every two or three years would break me, but instead it was that very storm of our State Department life that set me down more clearheaded than when I started.
I'd fallen out of love with the editing, the hours in front of the computer, and sacrificing the time with my children that I work so hard to protect. Even though my eyes see more clearly from behind the lens, like corrective glasses for an astigmatism, I began to want to spend less time shooting, because it meant more time missing my family later. I all but stopped shooting personal work.
Simultaneously, we were growing in our new home in Brazil. In reality we were forced to start over from scratch in many ways when we arrived. We began to create and cultivate the things that we missed about home, friends, bagels, donuts, vegetables and clients. By re-creating these things by hand and heart I reconnected with the simplicity that I’d lost in life. Something I'd lost to instant gratification that we've all become so hooked on. I realized that not only was a lot lost in the process, but I was longing to be more a part of the process itself. Which is where I realized my photography had gotten lost. I’d spent hours on the back end editing and seconds on the front. I wanted to remove the safety net of digital photography and begin again participating confidently in every aspect of the creation of my images. I wanted to make them perfect before I even picked up my camera.
Enter film.
I’d shot film in the past, back when that is all there was, but I jumped on the technology bandwagon and was carried away into the future, seemingly never to look back.
Along with the clarity that came about during our time in Brazil. I longed for a new look that fit my new aesthetic. A look I could no longer try to achieve through my digital camera. However, I was a bit trapped by circumstances. I was unable to buy the film camera I wanted, unable to fully plug in and experiment with the film stocks and cameras I wanted and needed. So I researched and waited. In my research I found and ordered Jonathan Canlas' "Film is Not Dead" book and, just a page or two in, I knew this was exactly where I needed to be.
Then I learned that Jon would be teaching his workshop in DC and it just happened to coincide with our time here between posts so, I took a leap of faith and signed up. Knowing that the cost and the commitment would give me the push off of the digital cliff that I’d been dreaming of.Then I just had to wait nine months and move a continent away. What I didn't realize was that the second I'd paid my deposit, I'd become a member of a family of photographers, a group of people drawn together by similar circumstances and a staggering love for their craft. Jon stressed that, "The learning begins now." So even with nine months to go and just a rudimentary knowledge of film and my brand new medium format camera, I was already a part of a class. The Facebook group was a sounding board of friends in which to exchange information, ask questions and have work critiqued. I knew I'd made the right decision.Just last month I attended Film Is Not Dead (FIND) in Washington, DC.
For one of the only times in my entire life I was in a place that was so safe and familiar and so right that, even among a group of 15 complete strangers, I was completely at home.
We rented a giant, old house, near Dupont Circle. I roomed with another photographer from Virginia in a room with twin canopy beds, flanked by windows overlooking the Masonic Temple, a giant chalkboard, and a tiny sofa covered in yellow monkeys dressed in military regalia.
I arrived nervously Monday night and was greeted on the front stoop by friends who welcomed me inside.
I met Jon that night for the first time at dinner. He hugged each of us as we walked through the door to the restaurant. Jon is an intimidating guy...on the internet. His work is incredible, he is a wizard of business and photography and he is a rock to his wife and family of six children. In person, he is all those things and incredibly warm, hilarious and awesome, like a big brother.We had class time each morning where Jon taught us all he knew about film stocks, cameras, business, weddings and shooting people. There wasn't anything related to business or cameras, film that we didn't cover, there was no question Jon wouldn't answer. There wasn't any mistake he hadn't made and none that he wouldn't admit to. We laughed a lot, we cried a little, we reconnected to the reason we all had started taking pictures in the first place. We are all storytellers and were taught by a master storyteller.
We wandered the streets of DC and felt it’s innermost workings, from the Metro to its rooftops in the winds of gathering storms at night. We became a family. We photographed everything. Gorgeous and thoughtfully-planned models, including families and couples, brides and grooms, tourists, houses, architecture, dogs and food.
FIND was one of the most important things I've ever been a part of. Every step I’ve taken, every tear I’ve cried over the perceived loss and gain of my business, every laugh I’ve shared with a complete stranger as I've taken their photo, has brought me here. With each photograph I take that stops time, technology is transcended. Images begin in the heart not on a computer. Images that know no language barriers, or cultural differences and that bridge the thousands of miles between us all.
