Breaking Into An Industry

Normally I try to bring some insight into how I shoot my session instead I’m going to give you a bit insight into my start.
This is actually an older shoot from earlier this year; it has a back-story to it that I think is really something that happened in my life that I don’t think I can forget. Coming into this shoot I was totally shaken and nervous before I got there, if I had an ounce of courage it was slowly slipping away as I drove an hour to get to this place. I won’t get into too many details but to backtrack a bit I wanted to put some foundation in this story; I decided to start my business this year and try to get anything I could get. I networked with a model that was a spokeswoman for CFS (Charity Fashion Show), which I found out, was the largest fashion show in the west coast. Within a few hours I was set up to photograph what I thought was a fashion show event and in my excitement (because I had never had any experience shooting an even like this) I posted on a photography forum for anyone who could offer me any advice for how to go about shooting this event. Within a few days I had a handful of responses basically telling me I was an idiot for even attempting to shoot for them as well as telling me how my work was a joke and I had “no credentials.” I will leave these people nameless, but basically I was torn. Here I was fresh out of the portrait studio, and looking to take on any job that I could hoping to jump on any opportunity that I could, and sure I developed some tougher skin from the portrait studio, but when someone is good at bringing you down and basically destroys your dreams as well as tarnishes any feeling of self worth its hard to pick yourself up. I don’t like to add this in there, but I did want to say the reason this affected me more was because I was fresh out of a relationship, which was another side issue that I was hoping to overcome as I was looking to build up credentials for myself. I’ve heard of people who after all their hard work they got that “big break” where things just started to fall into place for them. I think this was one of my first big breaks and here I am totally freaking out thinking to myself, how and I going to shoot this!?! I didn’t receive any help from anyone instead criticism of my work, and here I am about to take on the largest fashion show. So I’m in a self-doubting mode walking into this event, and I struggled the whole time, from the moment I met them, which I found out it wasn’t a runway shoot but a modeling shoot (thank God)! So now I’m there a bit relieved but still not happy, and we get through the shoot, I looked at the images and thought maybe there would be one good shot for the client: Aksel Paris and CFS with makeup by Stephanie Rivera. I hand them over the images thinking this was a nice try Kanoa don’t try this again. Within a week I hear back from them that they loved the images, I thought they were stoned or something, but I was looking through my tainted glasses that were fogged by a lack of any self-worth, thinking there wasn’t a good shot in this batch. It took me until now for me to look back and realize that there were a handful of solid images. To finish off the story; I ended up getting a call back for a second modeling shoot, this time inside Equinox gym, and later was selected as their only V.I.P. backstage photographer for the HUGE fashion show event a few months later where my images were displayed on TBAF’s (The Bay Area Fashionista) fashion blog. I am the person that tries to take a negativity and make sure that I can make it a positive, and I messaged that photographer back telling them all that had happened a few months after, letting them know that their words drove me to be an even better photographer, and to not let the words tear me down but challenge me to be better at what I do!