All Things Photography with Audrey Murray

Audrey, thank you for being with me today. You are a photographer. You do amazing things. You have a podcast. You found a live snap. Love, Just. I love everything you do. Can't wait to chat about it.

So thank you for joining me. Thank you so much for having me. It's great to be here.

Before we jump into all of that and talk about all the things you do, first just give us an overview about you.

So I am a wife. I've got one child, who is now 14, which passes by just so quickly. I keep thinking he's just this little grasshopper, but he's now just turned 14. And I run Live Snap Love, which is an online photography resource, and that's been great for me, because that means I'm just working from home rather than having to go back out into the workplace, and that's everything about me, I think.

Oh nice. Okay, then let's talk about you as a photographer, because everything is founded around you as a photographer, your podcast, just everything. So tell us what inspired you to become a photographer and then just talk about your journey, your podcast, everything you do.

Well, I never actually wanted to get into photography. It wasn't something that I felt inspired to do. It was actually my husband who bought me my first camera as a Christmas present, so I hadn't asked for it, I'd never even mentioned wanting to learn photography, and he just thought it would be a really good project for me. He thought I would really enjoy it. He knew that I quite enjoyed being creative and he thought this would be really good for me. So he bought me that first camera and I have to say I just wasn't really into it to begin with. I didn't really quite. It just didn't really appeal to me that much and I ended up taking an online course here in the UK. It's an open university course. You just learn photography online and it was just such a dry and boring course. It really spoke about the technical side of photography, about how your camera works or how lenses work and reflection and circle of conf, and it was like, oh, this is just. This is not for me at all. So I kind of gave it up. I just kind of popped onto our shelf in the cupboard and it sat there gathering dust until my son was born in 2009, late 2009. And at that point I just wanted to kind of slow it all down a little bit. I just wanted to sort of capture all the sort of things that were happening in our days and you know what it's like You're just in love with your new baby when it arrives. And at that point I was really trying to get into photography. That was, I think that's, when I felt really inspired to be a photographer rather. So that was two, three years after getting my first camera. I would say that's when I really felt inspired to learn photography and really get good at it.

So you were really inspired from your child. Just wanted to slow down, capture the moments, and you already had a nice camera, so, yeah, so it was great. It worked out really well. Yeah, maybe that's what it was for. Maybe your husband was like I just have this intuition that she's going to need this camera one day because, like, you know what are the odds? He would just get you a camera and you're like okay, thank you, this is great. It was a random present, but it worked out well. So tell me about Live, snap, love and your podcast. What was the segue into just wanting to capture these everyday moments, into, hey, I'm going to help someone else learn how to use their camera and capture these everyday moments, and then let's do this podcast to talk about photography and help others. So can I like go through that with me?

Yeah, so when I, as I said, that first course that I took in photography was just really dry, really boring, and I started to learn photography myself online and I found it really difficult to begin with and a lot of the resources were aimed at this sounds really sexist when I say this, but I say like men with cameras, but it was really and that does sound sexist and I appreciate that. But it was that kind of more into sort of landscapes and macro and it was all very technical and they kind of got more into that side of it which really didn't interest me at all. So I started Live, snap, love, really as a way of reaching out and teaching other mothers that photography doesn't need to be this kind of dry, boring thing where, again, when I first started out, it was almost as though there was always a name as well. It was like Moms with Cameras was a derogatory term. It was like you're not photographers, you're just. You're just mums who want to capture their kids, you're you know. And I thought, no, I actually I want to be a photographer and I saw amazing photos of just everyday moments with their children. But the images were beautiful and they were really artistic and gorgeous and and I wanted to capture those and I knew that other people wanted that, without having this whole kind of technical side of it. So that's why I created Live Snap Love just to kind of make it more fun and approachable and more like you were learning from a friend over coffee, as opposed to your class book, this kind of classroom way of learning photography. So that's when we started Live Snap Love. Now that would have been back in around 2014. So I've been doing this for a while and so that's been going on for a while. So we did blog posts for a long time. There's lots of courses that I've created over the years and then last year I started the podcast and it was just for me. It was another way of meeting new people, chatting about photography and reaching more people with what I wanted to say. So it's basically just an extension of Live Snap Love, but it's great because I get to talk and, as you can tell, I can talk quite a lot and for quite a long time. I just keep going.

I love it. And then the Scottish accent course, everything. I could just sit here all day and listen to you talk. So in college I so I was an art major, but it was really more painting and I took some photography classes, you know, just to learn, and it was fun. But I remember like I was going into it thinking, oh, I'm so excited to learn how to make beautiful pictures, and I was thinking more the finished product than learning how to get there. So I had to go through like the really technical stuff and I was like, wow, this is boring, but I know I need to learn it, you know to take good photos. But and then once we watched this documentary I don't remember much from my photography class, but I remember watching this documentary. It was about this female photographer and she was talking about how she captures her photographs. Nothing was technical, but I felt like I was still like learning, Like I was thinking, oh man, it was almost just emotional. She was like this is how I get this perfect, you know like setup or how I do this, and she was just so passionate you could tell it was like her life, but it wasn't like put the F stop here, but it was something that I'll like always remember. I'm not a photographer. I have a camera, you know I can, I can take a pretty good picture right, but like I'm not a photographer, but I remember feeling like I learned more in that one documentary about this, like really passionate woman, than in all the worksheets I did in that whole class.

There's, I think, as you say, there's a way of teaching that it doesn't have to be this more inspiring. It's more like well, if you do this, this and this, this is what you can kind of get and this is where we can go with this. And it's more exciting than this is how your camera works. Right, you know that. I just need to know what to do to get images that I love. I don't need to know how my camera does it, or you know how that sensor picks it up, and no, no don't do it.

So let's move on to talking about you as a mom. How do you find the balance of your creative life and motherhood? And what would you tell another mom on how just to dive into their next project or their first project, something they want to start? But motherhood can be overwhelming with kids at any age. Tell us your thoughts.

Well, for me, I have to say, photography was, it was a little bit of a lifeline almost when my son was young, because I had worked in a corporate job before that. I was a business development manager, so I was used to going out to work all day in a suit, being around other parents, and then I'm stuck at home with a baby and a toddler and I found that quite lonely at times and I didn't really feel like myself in that early bit and I think a lot of parents can relate to that, that you, you're, you're the one that's at the cold face, or you know 100%. And you don't have a lot of time for yourself and I was thinking about going back to work. I didn't want to sort of put them into, you know, at that time and all that. So photography just turned out to be one of the best things I could have done, because a allowed me to be creative and I had something for myself and I was learning something new and but it was something that I was able to do with my child as well, because he was he were the brunt of my practice sessions in photography, so I could do it with him. But from that obviously, a lot of things have come. I did start my own professional photography business and I had that for a while Before I focused mainly on teaching. I have to say I think I would have been a little bit lost without having some form of creative and Outlet, wherever that may be. I think for me it happened to be Photography because I had my, had that camera sitting there, but I'm glad I had something. So I think I would say to anyone who is a pain and who is maybe struggling a little bit is to Just to make sure that you have something for Yourself, because I think if you don't. You're not I Don't know how to quite say this but I feel like I was a better parent by able to have things that Let me up. I didn't feel as if hemmed in or I don't know quite how to put it, but there was something there for me, and so I encourage everybody who comes into our courses. Now I don't have time to do this like you know what. Just 15 minutes a day, that's all you really need, and you can either learn photography or you can use that for practicing. But there's something that is just for you, and I think that is just so important when you are a parent, actually at any age. So, as I say, my son's now 14, so he's definitely well grown up and doesn't need me on a daily basis, but I still love photography. I still capture my day-to-day life. For me, it is a form of I wouldn't say a form of therapy, but it's like a form of mindfulness, because when I'm taking a photo, I'm noticing the light, I'm noticing the way it looks on the leaves, I'm noticing I'm just noticing everything around me. And it is this form of Therapy where you're just doing something for yourself and you are Just focusing on the beauty of something and I find that really Relaxing and I guess it is a form of mind mindfulness, and I know people say that they do mindfulness Exercises. I don't actually know what that is, but I'm saying a bit. Photography is a form of that, because you are Focusing on that moment and everything else just gets pushed aside for a little bit and and I find that very relaxing and it's definitely something that was Fantastic when it was a bit more stressful back in those earlier days, when they they are More sort of tugging on you every five minutes, having something sometime that you can just go away, calm down and calm down. We just sort of relax and get into a sort of creative fame of mind really important for me.

Mm-hmm. Oh, I get it. My kids are four and six right now, so I'm in that constantly being touched phase and I'm just not being on that anyway. So I'm like I love my kids so much, but, guys, can you not touch me for five minutes? Just give me five minutes to not be touched.

I'd spend longer in the bathroom than you really need, right? I mean, get me for about 20 minutes.

I know, I know, but I still go in there. But I try, I try, I like how you said. It's not necessarily a form of therapy, it's more like mindful, and I think mindfulness and stuff can. Those can just be buzzwords lately. So like, do we really know what that means? We just know we're relaxing and being happy, right.

There's something to be said for being in the moment because I, I Do this and I'm sure other people do is you're Constantly thinking I need to go and get this done and then I, once I finish that, I'll go and get this done. And then you have this to-do list and your day is somewhat mapped out with okay, I've got this time, then we're going away to this activity and then even now it's like right, got to go pick him up. I've got an activity. Now it's more show foring them around, to be honest. But you're still, and you can be constantly thinking two steps ahead about what you're meant to be doing or what's next on your to-do list. So, just having some time where you are not focusing on your to-do list, you're not five minutes in advance, you're not thinking about what's happened before. You were just there in that moment. I think photography is one of those things. You are in that moment because you're looking at it through your viewfinder and you're looking at everything that's going on in that frame, whether that be the light or composition or expressions, or absolutely everything is, and you're right there in the moment. That's for me. Why photography? I'm sure it is the same with other forms of creative like painting and so on. You must be there in the moment, there as well.

I think every human needs to do that, whether you're a mom or not. But when you're a mom, you just have that extra layer of okay, I need to go in here for 20 minutes, or let me you don't do photography, let me write something, let me. This journaling is big, so you have to make those times for yourself and definitely do it on purpose and be intentional about it.

I do think women in particular are guilty of putting everyone else first. We make sure everyone else is taken care of and then if there's any time left at the end of the day, we'll probably fill it trying to do something for someone else, probably, and it is exactly whatever it is for you that makes you happy, if that's writing or photography or painting or drawing or just scribbling, whatever it is that is for you. I just think it's so important to take that little bit of time Wow.

Audrey, thank you for being here and talking with me. I again could talk to you all day. I loved, loved, loved our chat. So where can people find you online to connect with you on social media? If they're interested in learning photography from you whether it's from your podcast or actually learning it one-on-one, tell us where they can find you online.

Okay, so we have, or I have, the website which is livesnaplovecom, and on there is lots and lots of blog posts which have got tutorials, step-by-step guides on everything. Also, you can get the photography made simple podcast, which is pretty much everywhere that you'll get your podcast. And you can also find me on Instagram, as at LivsnapLove, and the same on Facebook, and I'm not really on any other social media channels. I'm not big on social media, it has to be said. For a photographer, I put very little on the social media, which is terrible. But yeah, if you go to LivsnapLovecom forward, slash everything which is a page on the website which has everything. So it has all of our freebies. So we've got free workshops, got free guides for learning your camera. We've got there's loads of stuff there, both free and paid, for you to learn photography. But do check me out there at LivsnapLovecom. That's kind of like the hub for everything. So that's where I spend most of my time.