Okanagan-based photographer serving to others really feel seen by her lens

This story of a part of Kelowna Capital News’s thirty fourth version of Women Who Dare (previously Women in Business).

Kristen Clancy is making an area on this group for girls that makes them really feel comfy, secure and most of all, seen.

Her story began when she was very younger, in a family the place it was not secure for her to be seen, she advised Black Press Media.

Growing up, one merchandise she all the time had was her digicam. So, she turned a wallflower, taking photos of others and experiencing the world by her lens.

“Having a camera in my hands became the way that I was able to view the world without having to be seen myself,” she mentioned.

When she was 16, she mustered up the braveness to inform her father that she wished to pursue pictures. Unfortunately, he didn’t assist that for her as a most important occupation.

So she put the digicam apart and took the common approach forward, going to school. She tried a few topics earlier than touchdown in graphic design college in her 30s and ran a profitable studio for nearly 15 years.

That was till someday, she picked up her digicam once more and went round city taking photos and realized how a lot she missed it.

She then took a workshop with a photographer, who appreciated her a lot she employed her to be a second shooter at a marriage.

“I was like, this is my dream. I had totally forgotten about it and I was like, this, is it, I’m getting paid to do this. This is amazing,” she mentioned.

One day she noticed an advert on Facebook for a course on model pictures, which referred to as out to her immediately.

Brand pictures is advertising and marketing pictures for entrepreneurs who need to showcase their model and enterprise. Clancy realized that step one in altering niches was to get a model pictures shoot accomplished for herself.

“I was like, oh, no. I was the one who was hiding behind the camera and I (said to myself), okay, you have to be in front of the camera now, Kristen,” she defined.

She shared how this was a turning level for her.

“It was scary as heck. But I did it, I did it scared,” she mentioned.

She defined how when she obtained the images again, she felt how good the images had been, however how she didn’t really feel good in them. Now she understands that that is an expertise that each one her shoppers undergo, which she felt she needed to sort out instantly.

“It was really important for me to have that experience,” she shared. “I didn’t like the photos. All I could see was all the things that I hated about myself, how I looked.”

Clancy saved going again to the gallery each couple of days, till she knew one thing needed to change.

“After the third time I was like, ‘okay, Kristen, just find one thing that you like about yourself in each of these images, like just one thing,’ so I started doing that and it changed how I saw myself. It was a game changer. Now I have all my clients do that. The fifth or sixth time that I went through the gallery, I started to be able to see myself. I’m like, ‘Oh, there you are. Okay, I see you.”

She described it as a cathartic expertise, having the ability to launch that perception inside herself that was afraid to be seen.

“(I said to myself) ‘You’re strong, you’re confident’, even though I didn’t feel confident in that moment. It was almost like play acting. But I could see that version of me that was wanting to come through and who was confident underneath the veneer. I started to see myself reflected back to me so that photo shoot became like a mirror.”

Since then, Clancy has gone above and past for her shoppers, creating an expertise that’s set to carry outcomes that they not solely love, however settle for from inside.

“Whenever I have someone in front of my lens, I imagine myself as me (in a photoshoot) for the first time. So I like saying all the things and guiding her. One of my superpowers is really guiding women into poses that feel natural and movement and just my energy also just creates a safe space for women to just feel safe and just show up as themselves.”

Clancy’s artistic course of may be very thorough. Her work begins with a number of conferences and consultations together with her shoppers to grasp their work and be capable to translate it in her pictures.

“I really want to make sure that we’re creating images that speak to her clients and speak to her brand so that they’re authentic and true to her brand.”

As part of these consultations, she has a particular technique session which helps her and her shoppers slim down specifics like location, props and wardrobe.

At the tip of the consultations, they resolve in the event that they need to do a one-off photoshoot, or a sequence of shoots.

“I have an evolution series where I work with women over a period of one year or they can just do a one-off shoot,” Clancy defined. “So depending on where they are, we’ll create a series of three stories, stories that build off of each other. But if we’re just doing a one-off, we want to kind of work with the most important stories for where they are right now.”

By the time that shoot day comes alongside, Clancy and her shoppers are so aware of each other that it turns into pure to be behind the digicam.

Clancy has her personal enjoyable methods of constructing her shoppers really feel comfy as nicely. In one among her shoots, a consumer who had simply revealed a e book got here to her trying to get some advertising and marketing photographs.

This consumer had no earlier photographs taken of her and he or she got here to Clancy with an impediment that she sees so much in her line of labor, “I hate pictures of myself.”

They began their shoot someplace exterior Lake Country, in a forest by a river.

“I could tell in the beginning, she was smiling, but it was the fake smile. It wasn’t really kind of making it to her eyes.”

Clancy all the time brings music to her shoots, so she requested her consumer to cease for a second, requested her what her favorite music was and began dancing. They danced collectively till “she landed back in her body and was more present.”

Then they continued with the photoshoot. Before they parted methods, her consumer advised her that even when she hates the photographs, she had a lot enjoyable that it was well worth the expertise.

The consumer ended up shopping for the entire gallery as a result of she liked it a lot.

Clancy left a message for the ladies locally who could also be hesitant to take step one for themselves.

“Just do it. Because courage comes after doing and not before.”

She goals to depart behind an affect locally by her work, creating secure areas for girls the place they really feel seen and stand of their energy.

She additionally needs ladies to let go of the conditioning that they might have been introduced up with.

“The impact that I want to make is to release those layers and help women to continue to rise and stand in their power and change the world and make bigger decisions and make bigger businesses and make bigger money because we have a different way of being in the world than men. And it’s time to share that space.”