I’m Sarah Lopez the photographer behind Sarah Lee Photography, a boutique fine art portrait studio that primarily specializes in contemporary glamour. I’ve been two things all my life, a humanitarian that wants to change the world and an artistic soul. Although I cannot complain about how I grew up at all, there was not a lot of focus and encouragement on living your life with passion and going after your dreams. The focus was more about being a normal, well behaved, responsible adult. So that’s what I did.
I got married and had kids young which required me to get whatever job I could get to pay the bills so I settled in to a corporate America job and accepted my role as a responsible adult. It was never a thought that I could take time to get the job or career of my dreams until I got a little older and my buried passions starting yelling at me like a multiple personality. I spent a lot of time over those years in corporate America taking pictures, drawing and writing just to have a creative outlet but it never even occurred to me that I could build a life doing any of that.
I decided to go back to school while working full time to finally try and obtain a career in the humanitarian path that I had wanted many years ago. I got my bachelor’s in psychology and moved on to a master’s program in social work and took up volunteering at a suicide prevention hotline for a year or so. During my master’s program I could not shake the overwhelming desire to somehow bring my photography in to my life as more of a mainstream.
In my dreamworld I wanted to do some kind of humanitarian work and photography but I never felt like dreams like that could be my reality. One day my niece asked me to photograph her small impromptu wedding and once I did that it was like opening the flood gates and I did not want to go back to corporate America. I began researching, reading, taking classes, following and practicing everything I could get my hands on with photography while working full time and going to school at night.
During this time we also had a big move come in to our lives and we relocated from Central California, to Poulsbo Washington. I knew I was not at the point I could quit my day job but I was juggling so much trying to get to this dream life that I know felt I might be able to get to, so I decided I had to make some choices. Quitting the day job was not an option right now so I really did some thinking and reflection to figure out which one of my passions I could not live without at that time. Photography and creating art gave me more passion and excitement for life than anything I had ever really done. Halfway in to my master’s program I opted to put the rest of my school on hold and really focus my free time in building a fine art portrait business.
Moving to a new state and working from home in my corporate America job really put some extra challenges on me with this dream. Not to mention I am pretty shy and introverted so I fight myself daily on having to get out there and network not to mention start over having no friends at all in my new area.
Ideally what I would like to do is integrate community outreach and volunteerism in to my brand and who I am, thereby fulfilling my need to help and to give back without having to give up photography. My passion has grown so much with every new thing I learn in photography and with every amazing photographer I find to learn from. Even as I write this I am still not where I dream of being because I still have been unable to quit my corporate America although I am a lot closer than I was a few years ago.
I currently work on my photography business part time knowing that I have two choices. Let my fear and shyness take over leaving me in a job that literally sucks the soul and passion out of me OR keep working one day at a time toward a life where I get to live out my passion everyday. I have only been in my new state now for about six months so I am still trying to rebuild a network that I had back in California and most days I am terrified that I won’t be able to approach new people, that I won’t be able to get clients to love what I do, that I won’t be able to ever quit this job, and that I won’t be able to overcome my fears of wanting to be an artist so I just keep reminding myself of the two choices I have and how nothing amazing every really comes easy.
I absolutely adore giving people the opportunity to exist in a printed memory that will last forever. Most of us, especially us women, do not believe we are good enough or pretty enough or thin enough but what we see as our faults is not what our friends and loved ones see. They just see us and that’s good enough for them and that is what I hope to bring to people that haven’t existed in a photograph in years or even decades.
We are all exactly who we should be right now and it is always the right time to exist in photographs that your children and grandchildren will have for years to come.
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