Chapter 2 Creating Mill Creek
Well, hello again. Thank you for coming back to hear me ramble about creating and starting Mill Creek Photography. The last time I shared with you on coming up with the name. A name is an important thing in business and in life. Sometimes in life your name is all you have, the only true thing that belongs to you. Now sure you can share a name with someone, like the fact that there is more than one Jeff Roberts. Even here in Pamlico County.
I am talking about the name behind the name. The person or business who is that name. A long time ago sitting on the porch with my granddaddy, whom we called "Pop", we sat and talked about life. You see, back then I wasn't doing such a great job at building my name. I was getting in trouble etc. I was the baby in the family so it seemed it was very easy to ignore me, shoot I had cousins almost as old as my mom and dad. And there I was the little runt in the family. Getting in trouble made it real easy for me not to be ignored. I laugh now about it but it wasn't so funny back then.
The story that Pop told me was about a name and what a name was and meant. A name typically is just a group of letters put together in some logical manner often given to you from a past name in the family or just one mom and dad liked at the time. It's given to you at birth and for the most part is yours from that day forward. What truly make a name is who you are though. The person who owns that name. That person is what makes that name mean something. It can either be remembered as good or as bad. Sometimes once you're gone it's hardly remembered at all. How you carry yourself, how you treat others, and how you live your life is how your name is remembered. Remember that and carry it with you always and pass it down like I have tried to over the years.
Now that i had a name for my photography now it was time to build that name. Well how do you do that? Good question, I started off with the type of photography I wanted to do. Now when I say type I don't mean landscape, wildlife, or portraits. I mean the type of photo I want to take is one that actually happened. I don't want to do art. Art to me is something you create. To me art in photography is when you take a picture on a cloudy day and when you are done editing it, it has the sun shining and a rainbow going across you and whomever as you kissed on the mountain. While that art is quite special and definitely gorgeous to me it just isn't a moment that was stolen in time. I want to take actual pictures that actually happened and was taken and saved into raw data on a SD card.
The type of picture I want to take are developed in what I have learned to call "My Style". Meaning how I want them to look and most of the time with a photographer that style is uniquely them. One of the true reasons that multiple photographers have different styles which equates to people choosing a photographer based on their style that matches the person requesting the photograph. When I develop a picture in Lightroom or whatever app I use, I want to enhance the colors that inside my head I saw. I want to create the environment that is pleasing to the eye and to make the actual photo look, better. You see a RAW file is just that, it is raw data that is written in a file of that picture, and a raw file is well dull.
What do I mean by dull, well when you look at a raw data picture it doesn't interpret what our eyes and mind interpret. I know, explain. The best way I know to explain it is raw data doesn't have a soul. That's right it doesn't have a soul. A soul is once again the person behind the name. It's how you see things, its how you react to things. and it's just you. Sometimes people see colorful rainbows while others see dark and gloom and lots of other ways in the middle of all that. Raw data let's us use that data to let who we are out when we edit a photo. Most people who just take pictures are use to JPEG files. Those files have been processed to be more appealing to the eye, in other words the camera gave it a little soul. It gives it little tweaks and changes to make it more appealing to the eye.
As a photographer who is building there style, you have to learn to develop a picture using different programs. Another part of that style is how you shoot the photo. I will explain that the best I can. When I shoot or take a photo I aim to take one that hasn't been taken. I like to look at the subject matter and think how I can see it differently. How can I show everyone that object, person, or place in a way that most haven't seen it. I use angles, a lot. Meaning I try to take a picture from a different perspective. Most of us look at something straight forward or how we are at the exact moment we see it. When I take a picture or most of the time take pictures, I take them several different ways, first I take it usually as I first saw it, then I try to shoot it differently, maybe from down low, maybe really close to a certain part of it. However I take it depends on how long the moment last.
Back to building the name, so far we have talked about what is behind the name with your style and how you take a picture and ultimately develop the picture. Next in building a name is name recognition. Who they associate with a name. Well in this case that would be Branda and myself. To do this we started to be in places where people can see us. On social media I made sure to use the same profile picture for all the accounts, one that looks like me if you were to see me out. That seemed to work pretty well. The other thing that helped was having my camera with me. Not the camera that most everyone carries, because things always seen don't always get seen. We live in a retirement area and a tourist area...everyone toured first before they moved here, lol. So someone walking around with a typical camera is just that, typical. When we go out I make sure to carry "Big Boy" what pray tell is that? Well it's my Nikon D7500 with my Sigma 50-500 lens. That thing is a beast. It's huge and bulky but it is so versatile. People take notice and will often stop just to say something. Funny thing is the week before when it was just me there, they walked right by. "Big Boy" is a conversation starter, an ice breaker. It works like a charm and I am now able to continue a conversation about Mill Creek.
The other thing I did was started posting pictures I took on social media, not just where my friends and family can see, but social media from places I took the photo or places that I am at often. I wanted people to connect the dots. I also submitted a lot on the local news WCTI 12 chime in, where they share my photo, where it was taken, and by whom.
All this, I think, I hope has helped build the name Mill Creek Photography. I don't know how well it has worked as I have not been actually open that long. So far, my pictures are hanging in Ghent Sandwich Shop in New Bern, really good friends of mine that have always liked my photos, the other place is the Hope Clinic. They had seen my photos on social media and contacted me about getting a few for their new office. If you visit there hopefully you will see them as well. These are all the ways that we have tried to build within the name Mill Creek Photography and we will continue to strive to build it the best possible ways we can think of.
Until next time, thank you for reading, thank you for visiting the page. My hopes are for you to know us better and the process that has got us to this moment.
