I always love hearing the story behind how someone found themselves in their career. While I don’t think that my early years in photography are all that unique, I think the process of building my business is one that is a little less common. From a young age, I’ve always loved taking photos.
I grew up in a time when film cameras were still a household object but I also was a kid as digital cameras made their way onto the scene. The first camera I remember having in my family was a black point-and-shoot camera. The front had a lens cap of sorts that you slid to the side to take the picture. And the viewfinder was the only way you could have any idea as to what your photo would turn out like. I remember film canisters and 1-hour photo drop-offs. I remember looking through photos and finding the occasional photo with a finger blocking the lens. I wasn’t all that interested in photos until I was about 10 years old. My mom purchased a portable CD player that was orange and had flowers on it. It came with a matching film camera. I loved it. I took pictures of whatever I thought was cool… mostly my room with my stuffed animals on display. Sometimes, when friends would come over, we’d take goofy pictures in my mom’s living room. It was a time when your photos were memories the moment that you held them in your hand. A very different experience from the world we live in now.
I'm on the left with my first ever DSLR camera in hand. When I say that I brought a camera wherever I could, I mean it!
Eventually, the family was given a digital camera. It was bulky, silver had a viewfinder AND a screen on the back, and had to be plugged in using a USB cable for us to save the photos. By the time I was in middle school, digital cameras were becoming more popular. My dad gave me my first ever digital camera. It was smaller than my mom’s and was cheap. It used 2 AA batteries and had to be held together with a ponytail holder so the battery case would stay closed and so that it would stay turned on. The technology was mostly the same but as I moved into high school, I remember the shift from film… you could take photos and see how they turned out right away. You could take SO. MANY. PHOTOS… certainly more than you could when you were using film.
I specifically remember one night after school. A few friends and I were waiting for our rides and we were bored. They asked me to take their picture and I obliged. Each time, they asked me to take another one, and another, and another. I’m pretty sure that I took 100 photos of them while we were waiting for rides with me pausing every few minutes to show them the photos I just took. This was the start of a new era for our generation and cameras. Little did we know, in less than 10 years, every person would have a really good camera on their phone with instant access to social media to share it.
I took photography classes in high school and loved it. I carried a school DSLR camera with me just about everywhere that I could. Extracurricular activities, lunch, classes, concerts. I bought myself a Kodak Easy Share digital camera when I was 16 with birthday money. A few years later, I upgraded to a Nikon Coolpix. I photographed family photos for a friend and senior photos for another friend on that camera. When I got to college, I upgraded to my own Canon DSLR camera documenting the majority of my freshman year on that camera. Once smartphones took hold, I carried the camera around less often but still photographed landscapes, travel, and photos of my family members whenever I could.
During my last semester of college, two of my friends got engaged. They had me take their engagement photos and out of that Photographic Memories by Tess was born. I worked with a few people in my first teaching job that asked me to take their photos for various things and that sparked my desire to serve more couples, more families, and more seniors. That desire grew to include photographing weddings, something I was always terrified of as a photographer who considered herself an amateur. But, amateur is not what I should have considered myself.
One of the first photos ever taken of me with a DSLR in hand. This went everywhere with me when I studied abroad.
Here's a photo of me working at the first wedding that I ever photographed solo.
I had been photographing clients since I was in high school. I had attended conferences about photography. I was running a school photography club and teaching students about photography. Regardless, I felt like I could never “make it” as a photographer. That’s something I’ve always feared and, until recently, I had run from that and fast. When I was deciding what to study in college, the idea of studying photography as a major scared me. The market for photography services wasn’t quite as great as it is now and it didn’t seem like a great life decision. Then, I got a job as a teacher. That job consumed so much of my life for three years that there was little time for me to put any effort into my photography business. For several years, I only did a handful of sessions with clients as I wore many hats in my full-time teaching job.
To my surprise, as many other people my age were getting married, I found myself more and more curious about wedding photography. A fellow teacher reached out to me to see if I was interested in photographing a wedding. It was exhausting but I LOVED it. And I realized that I can do both. I can teach and I can have a photography business that is as successful as I’d like it to be. I can tell love stories and capture memories with families and photograph landscapes AND I can teach super awesome students. Occasionally, imposter syndrome creeps back in but I spent 2020 setting goals, investing in myself and my business so that I can serve clients to the best of my ability. In recent years, I’ve rebranded and my business is known as Tess Ender Photography, something I am proud to say isn’t going anywhere. At least not for a while.