I purchased a spot at Yan Fam Way on a whim. I saw her short post about the workshop and purchased based on not much more than a love of her work and a fascination with her public persona. As soon as I received confirmation that the payment had gone through a steady hum of anxiety about the workshop began to buzz in the back of my mind. There are a lot of bad photography workshops out there, and I had no idea if I had just signed up to fly to Utah attend one of the duds.

It was this public persona that had me feeling nervous. Yan is followed and adored by many, and she shares a lot via social media. One of the things I had retained from her admissions is that she is a free spirit with a killer eye but not a lot of organizational skills. I was worried about two distinct possibilities: that I had just paid for the opportunity to hear a conceited photographer talk for 8 hours about how awesome they are while telling attendees that they just need to find the rainbow butterflies that exist within each of us in order to harness the unlimited power of our artistic prowess OR that the day would be awkward and disorganized as we all tried our best to get the most out of our investment by gleaning droplets from a hurricane of information messily flung in our direction.

Keep reading, because I’m writing this review to tell you how needless that anxiety was, and how incredibly wrong I was about the negative possibilities I feared. We didn’t have much communication from her until about a week before the workshop, but a few days before the event I opened up my inbox to see an email titled “portfolio review and assignment.” Inside I found seven paragraphs, very detailed and written with a careful balance that allowed the message to cut right to my weaknesses while maintaining my belief in my own potential. I have read that email a dozen times since I opened it, and each time I come away with a new insight about my business and the revised approach I want to take in the future. At the end of the email she gave me a personalized assignment based on my Jenna Cole portfolio (each attendee talked about their assignment at the workshop and they were all very unique and specific) and I was frankly kind of shocked to see what she wrote. Not only was it the perfect fit for me and where I’m at right now, but it got really got at the reason I was attending in the first place. Read more →

I’ve been focusing on a variety of things lately, some writing, some shooting with Jenna Cole Photography, some blogging. Plus a personal photography project! I plan to share the details for each venture once they are more fully formed.

I’m stopping in today to point you to Naturebox. They’ve gone public with their branding makeover, something I’ve been waiting anxiously for because I provided them with the photos on their careers page! I loved working with this company, and I’m thinking about other ways I can do this kind of editorial work in the future.

I also took this one of the founders, and this one used in the Mashable First 100 series. I love seeing my work pop up across the web!