We were lucky to catch up with Brianna Flanagan recently and have shared our conversation below.
Brianna, appreciate you making time for us and sharing your wisdom with the community. So many of us go through similar pain points throughout our journeys and so hearing about how others overcame obstacles can be helpful. One of those struggles is keeping creativity alive despite all the stresses, challenges and problems we might be dealing with. How do you keep your creativity alive?
I keep my creativity alive by being adventurous. I try different recipes from new cookbooks or by visiting places that I have not been to before. The main idea is to break out of my day to day routine. The monotonous regimen of getting up, making breakfast, going to work, etcetera can make for an uninspiring life. I can get different perspectives and feel more creative when I am living a fun lifestyle outside of work. It leads to wonderful opportunities for new photographs, eating at unique restaurants, collecting even more books, all of which are inspiring ways to make me want to do more with photography and culinary artistry. A recent cookbook, I have bought during my travels is “The Miracle of Salt” and now I am messing with recipes that include salt preservation and it is causing me to want to continue my progress in the culinary field. My latest trip to Wyoming, gave me the opportunity to photograph antelope for the first time in the wild. There is a lot of exploring left to still do in the world, but I look forward to moments of creative bliss that it grants me.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
I am an adventure photographer, who documents my travels and hopes to inspire other people to get out and explore. It is exciting to see all the different wonders this planet has to offer us and living in such a beautiful state, surrounded by nature, continues to inspire me to new lengths. For me, at least, there are healing and relaxing properties provided by the environment. Breathing it in and enjoying what is provided to us naturally is beautiful and very beneficial to our minds. With my photographs I hope to inspire people to get out there and explore, just a little bit. I also enjoy combining my photography with my culinary skills. Albeit, it is fairly rare that I take photographs of my food, the idea of using a creative mindset while cooking is fun. I am, also, a professional in the culinary world that loves to cook and eat new foods. The positioning of food and color and smell all affect our enjoyment of dishes provided to us. I do hope to be able to combine these two fields more here in the near future. I enjoy challenging myself and am constantly trying to grow to do more.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
The three qualities that I think were most impactful on my journey were resilience, being a risk taker, and the ability to self reflect. Resilience is a necessary quality while being an entrepreneur because it is not easy all the time. There will be days where it is necessary to continue to keep fighting against the odds to help yourself achieve your goals instead of going the easy route of quitting. Do not give up, it is amazing to realize what you have accomplished. Self-reflection is another important quality to have because it prevents overwhelming yourself. This is an attribute that can help the thought process through failures and where you may be struggling. The final quality I have found to attribute to success is by being a risk taker. I jump in and go for what I would like to do or see in my life. How else am I going to get to where I want to be?
Any advice for folks feeling overwhelmed?
When I am overwhelmed it can feel like the world is collapsing in on me. It is a difficult feeling to have to manage, but when it does occur I have learned to breathe through it, get a pep talk, and create a plan. Breathe or meditation can slow the heart rate and racing mind down. This is the big first step because it takes you slowly into a more relaxed headspace. Following this, I usually call my mom because I need to hear someone else tell me that the world is in fact not gonna fall in on me. Getting an external pep talk helps me realize the truth of what is going on and where the actual problem lies. Finally, I figure out a plan to follow for next steps to help mitigate the feeling of being overwhelmed and how to fix it if it appears again. This is what works for me and how I cope with being overwhelmed. The biggest thing is to keep on going and continue to be strong. You got this.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @wildjuniperphotography
- Facebook: @wildjuniperphoto
