Meet Heather Hillhouse

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Heather Hillhouse. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Heather below.

Heather, so great to have you with us and we want to jump right into a really important question. In recent years, it’s become so clear that we’re living through a time where so many folks are lacking self-confidence and self-esteem. So, we’d love to hear about your journey and how you developed your self-confidence and self-esteem.

I believe that my confidence and self-esteem comes from believing that I, and every human being, has something unique and of value to add to the world while we are here. I think that every single one of us is here to add beauty in one way or another, we don’t all choose to tap into that opportunity, but we are all given the chance to. Whether that is your smile, your art, your songwriting, your handshake, your generosity, your genius, and it just goes on and on. I believe that how I see the world is how I add to the beauty. I believe my ability to capture this world with my camera is how I add to the beauty. I believe how I make the subject feel about their own beauty as I capture it is also how I add to the beauty.

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?

First, some things about me that I love: Being in a movie theater on opening night, giant Gilmore sized coffee mugs, travel, LOST (best show ever), comic books, and capturing moments of people are enjoying the things they enjoy.

Photos have been a part of my life since my first purple Minnie Mouse camera. Then there was those “one time use” cardboard things that I must have used hundreds of in high school. Then came my first “real camera” with film and a dark room in college.

Today, me and my digital magic box would love to help you captures your events, corporate events, weddings, portraits, conferences, and everything in between. I have owned and operated my own photography business for the last 14 years. This business has allowed me to be in so many different types of rooms.

These rooms teach me about the wide range of beauty and complexity that is humanity. This job has made me fall in love with countless humans. The range of interests, abilities, knowledge, artistry, talent, and depth is just a wonder to behold and capture with my camera. I love what I do.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

1. I believed that I could serve people with my art and my craft, but choosing to move this service from a hobby to a business was honestly one of the hardest things I have had to do over the course of the last 14 years. Your craft is worthy of people compensating you for it. Believe that.

2. I love communicating with people with the intention of really hearing them so that I can serve them in the exact way that they need. I love hearing all the details from the event planner, and how they will use the images in the future. I love hearing from clients about their comfortability in front of the camera. I want to serve them well, and this means I listen well, and i ask intentional questions.

3. I try to always be a comforting presence and to lift up those around me. If you are the last speaker at a 3 day conference, and you are looking out at the audience and see that the few people who have not left for the airport yet are nodding off, then look at me. I will give you a reassuring look, I am genuinely interested in what you are talking about (I love learning), and a smile to let you know you are doing good. This goes for the speaker on stage, the frantic event planner who can’t find that one box of lanyards, or just the guests. I am an extension of the company that has hired me to be there and I want to add good in every way that I can.

We’ve all got limited resources, time, energy, focus etc – so if you had to choose between going all in on your strengths or working on areas where you aren’t as strong, what would you choose?

I love this question, because it is the question I have asked myself since day one of creating my business. I believe our strengths are always gonna be our strengths. Our strength are natural and flow out of us, and I don’t think there is a lot we have to do to maintain our strengths. That being said, why would we not want to add more to ourselves through exploring those things that do not come as naturally to us. Plus, we may find that we have more strengths than we ever realized.

I did portraits for 6 years before being asked to shoot my first event. I will never forget where I was when I got that email (on my couch, in my pj’s), because the flood of thoughts that entered my brain at that moment were so impactful: You are a portrait photographer, you have no idea how to shoot an event. What do you even take photos of at an event, aren’t those rooms dark? What the heck is a “step and repeat”? Do you even have the technical skill to do it? It does sound fun, but what if you fail, you probably will, you have no idea what you are doing.

I said yes, because I wanted to learn something new. I knew I was delivering a good portrait product, but I wanted to see if this could be a new way to use my camera that I could love. And, my word, was it. I fell so head over heels in love with shooting events. My saying yes to new things has not stopped there either. I have been asked to shoot some things that are so out of my range of what I thought were my strengths, but shooting them has helped me add to and uncover strengths I didn’t even know I had. Always invest time in new things, you never know where that mystery door will lead.

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Heather Hillhouse

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