Today we’d like to introduce you to Tara Fry.
Tara, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
So, I can’t exactly explain why or how or when it started, but I can tell you that as long as I can remember, I’ve been drawn to photographs. Specifically, family albums and old prints that can trace back a lineage to the original black and whites printed on tin. If you think about it, family traditions and histories used to be passed down through story and tales (usually pretty tall ones if you are in my family), but a photograph gives weight to those stories. They draw you in and show you the essence of person, place, and time. It’s an honest capture of what is and was. I think that’s what I love about it.
When I first started having kids, I knew time would move quickly and I wanted to remember each little phase and stage. From the hospital to home, to tummy time and sitting up and crawling and first learning to walk … I wanted to remember their chubby little hands and round faces and the way they morph over time. So, I bought my first “real” camera off craigslist. And then, I let it sit in a closet for almost two years because I didn’t know how to use it. Isn’t that what happens?
It wasn’t until after my second child was about nine months old that a friend and I decided we’d play around with our cameras and see if we could figure them out. We had so much fun testing the settings and trying out new techniques that it quickly became a bit of an obsession for both of us. We YouTube’d everything we could find that would help us make the kind of pictures we wanted to have in our homes. We spent countless hours researching and sharing with each other everything we learned. Fast forward three and a half years to now and we each have our own photography businesses, lots more kids and the kind of photos we want to help tell our own family history’s one day.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
The road is never really smooth, is it? There are always going to be twists and turns, ups and downs, and a few potholes along the way. I’ve always hated the saying, “Practice makes perfect,” because there is no such thing. There is no perfect person, or perfect life, or a perfect way to do one thing or another, no matter how much Instagram attempts to convince you otherwise. PRACTICE makes PROGRESS. That’s what I tell my kids and that’s how I approach my craft.
Photography is a subjective business, so of course, I’ve had seasons of ups and downs. There have been times when I’ve questioned whether or not I am good enough because maybe I’m not as “in-demand” as some others or because a session didn’t go quite the way I wanted it to or maybe I blanked on poses and direction for a second … and so I would beat myself up about it. I would tell myself I didn’t measure up, that I didn’t belong, that I was an imposter in the business because I wasn’t professionally trained. That everyone else was better than me. But that’s just not true. Others may do what I do differently and that’s okay – actually, it’s pretty great! I just needed to keep moving, keep doing, keep practicing my craft. And, usually, I find that the more I practice, the better I get and the better I get, the less I compare myself to others and the more confident I become in my own capabilities.
So, smooth? No. But it’s in the bumpy stretches that I have learned the most.
Please tell us about Tara Fry Photography.
I describe my business as lifestyle photography, the way life happens. Birth and newborn photography, family photography, milestones and all the little moments that make up our lives.
I want to document real emotions, capture genuine smiles, and creative an authentic experience where all the different personalities within a family really shine. That’s the goal. I want my prints and images to be little time capsules; heirlooms to be passed down through the generations to help tell the story of where we came from.
I am primarily a word-of-mouth business. I don’t advertise and anyone who follows me knows that I’m TERRIBLE with social media, so the growth of my business is strictly from previous client referrals and recommendations… and that makes me smile. 🙂
Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
Oh, so many!
I grew up in a BIG family – not my immediate family, there are only five of us – but my extended family of aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents. We did everything together! One summer, we (all) took a road trip from Oklahoma to California and spent a week on a houseboat on Lake Shasta. All 17+ of us squished on a single houseboat (not a yacht, I might add) for an entire seven days and had the time of our lives swimming, fishing, playing card games, board games, riding wave runners and jumping/flipping off the top of the boat into the water. This was before the days of screen time and cell phones. We used a regular old (gigantic) Atlas to get there. I think I was eight at the time.
Contact Info:
- Website: tarafry.com
- Instagram: tarafryphotography
Image Credit:
The personal photo of me and my family is by Kelly Sutton of Kelly Christine Photo
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