How I Got Into Photography

Journey Through The Years

There is something incredibly magical about photography that I’ve appreciated from a young age. A photograph is never just a photography. It is a snippet of time frozen and kept for later. When we look at a photo of ourselves blowing out the candles on a birthday cake, we are not just seeing ourselves blowing out the candles. We can taste the cake, hear a much missed loved one singing happy birthday to us, even smell the candles just after we had brown them out. That memory lives on long after the photo was taken and all it took was the pressing of button and a clever bit of science. Pure magic!

The Early Years

I first started to show an interest in photography when I was a child.  I got my first camera when I was maybe around 8 or 9 years old and was very excited whenever I was given a new roll of film for my camera.  I would usually get a roll for a school trip or for a special occasion.  I would mostly take photos of our pets and my family.  The first big trip I remember is a week away at Arthog when I was 10. Mam sent me off with not just one roll of film, but two rolls. When I came home I had all those rolls filled with a few landscapes, many photos of my school friends and quite a few sheep. From that point onwards I would continue to drive my family mad with wanting to take photos constantly and would happily spend my little bit of pocket money on my little hobby. There was nothing more exciting that getting that little envelop of 24 photos in the post to put in my little photo albums that I’d received for Christmas one year.

First Family Digital Camera

Mam bought our first family digital camera when I was 17 for a trip to London, just us girls and loads of theatre. This is when my love for photography really started to take off as I was no longer restricted to just 24 exposures on a roll of film. Instead we had a massive 125 megabyte card which I could fit a whopping 200ish photos on. The camera was nearly always in my hands with Mam getting very annoyed that she wasn’t able to play with her new toy because I was playing with her new toy. When we where at home I would take photos of anything and everything. Often my only semi willing models where our family dogs. If you’ve heard of “Photographer’s Child Syndrome”, my family definitely developed “Photographer’s Family Syndrome” quite early on. One of the best ways I could really get under my little sister’s skin was to point a camera a her.

My Frist Digital Camera

By the time I was 18, Mam had well and truly had enough of constantly never being able to find the camera because I always had it, and for Christmas that year, we both me and Jo got a digital camera each. When I was 18 I was hardly ever at home, but not doing the things 18 year olds where normally doing. I practically lived down at a local yard where I helped out with the horses and learnt to ride western style. My horse was a beautiful black and white cob called William who was as stubborn as I was. It was often a battle of wills when we were training together. I wanted William to walk calmly past the scary carrier bag in the tree that he thought was going to eat him, and he wanted to run away towards the food as fast as he could. Having a digital camera on the yard came in very useful for not only capturing memories, but for also checking my form in the saddle. Being able to see my form defiantly helped me to correct the things I was getting wrong, helping me to gain more control of my stubborn horse in a way that previous riders where not able to do.

The Nikon D40

By this point I was already onto my second compact camera with more megapixels and was starting to get more creative with my photography. I wanted to have even more control of my camera and was defiantly being help back by my little compact camera. It was time to move on my first DSLR which was a little Nikon D40. For few years this camera was pretty much permanently attach to my body until the day it just stopped working in 2014. Photography was well past just snap shots and saving memories and had started to turn into an artform I could express myself with. Over this time I experimented with many different styles of photography from landscape to portraiture. I even started to master the art of pet photography by training my cats and dogs to pose for the camera. With the dogs, it was the jackpot toy that I used as the reward. With the cats it was the jackpot treats that I used to get them to do what I wanted. My family remained very resistant to posing for me, but I was still able to find a passion for portraiture.

Finding My Style

Over the years I experimented with many different styles and started to learn how photoshop worked. I went from being one of those people who over edited every colour in every photo, adding loads of gradient layers and things like that, to someone who started just doing very simple edits. I eventually learnt that the more naturalistic edits where way more pleasing to the eye and started to do much less to my photos. In the early days, willing victims where very difficult to get hold of, so a lot of my photos where candid on days out with friends. As friends started to have children I started documenting their family and decided that I wanted to start taking photography more seriously.

Going Back to College

I was entirely self taught and knew that I had a lot of big knowledge gaps. I didn’t know how to use light properly, didn’t know my way around a studio set up, and wanted to have a lot more experience doing partiture. So I made the decision to go back to college when I was 24 to learn the skills I could put into a photography business.

Admittedly, college wasn’t quite what I expected it to be. The minimum requirements were essentially that you needed to know how to press the shutter button. I wasn’t quite expecting a class full of 16 to 20 year olds who I also somehow found myself teaching and being an occasional referee. It wasn’t entirely waisted time though. We had a young girl, just a year younger than me teaching on the course who was an outstanding photographer. She was brilliant at studio and shared the same love of light painting that I have now. She was a great inspiration and one of the people I continued on the course to work with. It was her that mostly helped me to fill in my knowledge gaps. I was blessed to work with some people who also went on after college to become outstanding photographer.

During my time doing this course I had the pleasure of doing some work that many can only dream of. I worked at the BBC Newcastle TV Studio for a day on one of their projects and created some content that the college was able to use to promote their student run restaurant.

Wedding Photography Experience

I think every photographer goes through a time in their life when they do wedding photography. As a photographer it is often the thing you get asked to do the most as there is always someone who knows someone who is getting married. My first experience of wedding photography a civil partnership with two girls. It was a beautiful day and they made me feel like family. I ended up with a new friend out of the experience who I still speak to today. This photo of a bride in the car is the daughter of the lady I did my banking with at the time, and again, was made to feel like family. After my first year of wedding photography I was buzzing and looking to learn more and get better. Along came my first bridezilla who was very obviously taking advantage of me to try and get a free wedding photographer. I learnt my lesson about contracts that time. After my second bridezilla the next year I went off wedding photography completely, saying that in future I was only willing to do it for friends and family I’ve known for a long time and have a lot of trust in. Wedding photography really isn’t for the faint hearted and, if like me you struggle with social anxiety and impostor syndrome, it’s just not worth the stress.

The Nikon D7100 Upgrade

The day that my little Nikon D40 took its last photo was a very sad day for me. This camera had been pretty much permanently attached to my body for many years, and I couldn’t believe it was finished. It was at the wedding of one of my closet friends as my wedding gift to her and a way of saying thank you for all of the amazing support she’d given me over the years. I spent almost a year after that without a camera, occasionally borrowing a friends camera when I had an event. The day the tax man gave me back nearly £800 was a brilliant day. On the day the check cleared, I purchased an ex demo Nikon D7100 and a new, much better quality kit lens. I was back and immediately started working on trying to make my dreams come true again, but this time with theatre, not weddings.

Development Years

It was 2015 inwards that turned into the development years. I was a competent photographer who could do wedding and event photography surprisingly well considering my limited equipment and experience, but to be entirely truthful I wasn’t really enjoying doing wedding photography very much. It was in this time period that I stopped being Jenny Vest Photography and became Zestlight Photography and I was trying to push into the theatrical side of photography. I started to work with my friend, James quite often on characters and would often do headshots for people. I even had the privilege of photographing an incredibly talented dancer on a beautiful beach which are to this day some of my favourite photos I’ve every taken. It’s also during the development years that I started to get a lot more experimental. Played around with levitation photography a lot, and started investing in a few more unusual tools such as a crystal ball.

Homeless Then Lockdown

I had a very difficult patch of my life where a mixture of not very pleasant situations had all come together for me to end up homeless at the end of 2019. The last two years have been very difficult, but those years have been the making of me and where I am now with the business and my core values. There is honestly nothing more humbling than loosing almost everything. Not only did I lose my home, but I lost a lot of work as I was no longer able to travel as freely around the North East. I was forced to move into my Mam’s house with her, my sister and my nephew. I was crushed and at the complete mercy of others. Five months after moving in with Mam, we went into the first lockdown and my first major crash into depression for many years. I wasn’t able to go to church, wasn’t able to see friends, and wasn’t able to work. I spent my whole time in one small, over stuffed room with my cat. When the overcrowded situation became too much for us all, I moved into temporary housing for people with mental health problems. They where very dark days.

For the first time, I wasn’t able to use photography as one of my outlets. Instead I spent most of my time revisiting old photos and learning how to do a better job of editing them, ending up with the style I have today. My photography has moved from being nice portraits, so what could be considered by some as fine art. I’ve spent time learning about skin retouching and how to do it correctly. Leaning new ways of using curves and layers to brighten eyes in a photo. And a very nifty trick to give the appearance of sharpening which is now used on almost every portrait.

Where I Am Now

My plans are very different now to what there where just a few years ago. As much as I love theatre, there just isn’t really a big enough market for it in the North East of England, although I do it very occasionally if approached my a performing arts friend. These days I work as a family photographer, primarily working with children and animals. What many people would see as their idea of hell, for me is the idea of heaven. I adore working with young children and find it almost impossible to not get a good photo of them. They are naturally funny, very photogenic and we have a lot of fun together.

I’ve been doing Christian ministry photography for a number of years with my home church, International Harvest Church in Newcastle where I accidently became kind if an official photographer. Since then I have learn the power of photography, with many people often asking me about my church when I post onto my social media and have had the great pleasure of inspiring people to look to Jesus throughout lockdown. I’ve also been incredibly blessed to be on the media team for Cedarwood, and now looking to expand and do far more Christian Ministry photography.

Teaching is something that happened accidently. I applied for a job online and found myself getting paid to teach for the first time. I had no idea how much demand there was for learning photography and in just a few short months have expanded and now have all of my business expenses and a little more covered by teaching photography. I’m planning to expand further, to hopefully run a summer club for kids once a week during holidays, and teach photography for businesses and ministry. The possibilities are endless and I’m looking forward to my next big adventure.