Unraveled Expert Artist Interview | Amy Dangerfield, UEA
Congratulations to the talented Amy Dangerfield for becoming our latest Unraveled Expert Artist! We are so excited to welcome her to our community of leaders!
Amy loves real life stories. Even when Amy was very little, she would just pull up a little chair, sit quietly and listen to all the adults telling all kinds of stories for as long as she could until her mother told her to please go finish the homework or go to bed. Till this day, Amy can still easily just sit and listen to people talk about their life stories all day long. With her own unique experiences and perspective, Amy is also very excited to share with others her own life stories and thoughts. Amy thinks it's absolutely fascinating how this thing called "life" works.
Beyond the literal stories, Amy is always digging for deeper meanings in life or in anything. She is always trying to learn to appreciate the beauty, the humor and the tender mercies in life. She wants to see all the good in the world and in everyone's life so she can stay grateful, hopeful and joyful. Family is the most important thing to Amy and she definitely is trying to have as much visual documentation as possible of her love towards her family and of the love she feels from her family.
Amy was born and raised in China and she is currently living in Arizona with her husband and three little ones. Amy is an international award winning documentary lifestyle family photographer based in Arizona and she is providing documentation of family histories for people around the world.
For more inspiration from Amy:
Instagram | Website
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Here is Amy, Unraveled…
What inspires your art?
The short answer would be interesting moments I caught in life combined with a gut feeling that I absolutely need to pick up my camera to just take a picture.
Photography has become the medium of my choice for my self-exploration. I use photography to figure out how exactly I see the world and how I want to see the world. I use photography to store the moments where I felt something but not necessarily absolutely clear how I should feel in those moments so I could revisit the moments to get a better understanding of my own emotions later. I also hope to use my images to share my thoughts across culture. There might be things getting lost in translation between different languages but visual stories can always get to people's heart by passing the language barrier.
So yeah, I always have my camera near by in case something interesting happens and I just take a picture whenever I feel something inside.
What do you shoot with? Camera body and favorite lens?
Nikon D610 + Sigma 35mm f/1.4 + Sigma 135mm f/1.8
For underwater I have GoPro Hero 7 Black
I shoot with my 35mm lens most of the time, well, mostly because I don't have a lot of space at my house and I am not able to stay far away from my little kids when out about. I definitely still love a long lens too when it's called for.
What other ways do you express your creativity?
I am definitely a jack of all trades outside of photography!
Lately I've been doing watercolors everyday and it has been awesome. I do a lot of crafts, sewing, cross stitching, and cooking. Finding new ways to dissolve sibling rivalries calls for lots of creativity too right?
How do you de-stress at the end of the day?
Quiet time to myself and a good book to read.
What kind of music do you listen to while editing?
Is it weird that I don't usually listen to music while editing? Haha. Usually when I get to sit down and edit, it's my precious time to get a moment of quietness so I just enjoy it while I can.
If someone else is making noises in the background then I'll cue up some country music.
What is your favorite book?
It's actually a photo book--The Family Imprint: A Daughter's Portrait of Love and Loss by Nancy Borowick.
I love her approach to this very unique and special experience of her life. It is a time of loss but it is more a time of love. I resonate with her as a daughter who is trying to learn to be prepared for the loss of parents and grandparents. I admire her courage to document the raw emotions. I love the fact that this project was her way of processing what was happening and I am inspired by it all.
I can keep going on and on about how I love this book. So yes, everyone should have a copy of this book!
Name one movie that inspires you.
This is a difficult one. Can I just say a whole genre? My favorites are definitely documentaries. Duh. But hear me out on this. My grandma is a documentary film editor in China. I've watched soooooooo many movies in my life thanks to my unique connection into the industry. Probably because I've watched so many movies, I feel that I watch movies in a different way. I always get inspired when I see a good documentary because one, it inspires me to find interesting topics/issues, aka content, in my own life. Also, it really inspires me to figure out how to get that kind of access and build relationship with the people involved in the movie. And of course, the courage of talking about real life issues is just amazing.
I love a good movie from a pure aesthetic perspective too but my mind just always want to dig deeper than that so well made documentaries would always leave a huge impact on me.
A few documentaries I enjoyed recently are: Finding Vivian Maier; One Child Nation; and Apollo 11
What has been the most difficult part of your creative journey?
Wooo. I think understanding my own emotions. I tend to think too logically and emotions were never really talked about when I was growing up. I definitely have to work very hard to make sure that my images are more inspirational than informational. I need to remind myself to ask myself how I feel and try to translate that visually rather than taking things too literal.
Who is one of your favorite photographers?
I can only name one?! Hmmm...I'll say...Platon.
I actually don't necessarily like his photography style as it is but it is just amazing how he approaches photography and life in general. He is truly inspirational when it comes to making genuine connections with people and how he interacts with people. And it is just so cool to listen to him tell all the stories behind each photo he makes and the unique stories of the subjects he's photographed from his perspective and experience.
How do you handle selfdoubt or creative slumps?
Speaking of self-doubt or creative slumps, I actually just had gone through this huge self doubt earlier this year due to really complicated reasons. What helped me to get out of it was definitely shooting through it and actually stop comparing my work with others work totally. Obviously you don't want to become just full of yourself and become prideful but setting at least a good chunk of time to just focus on myself is really great. I pulled off from all social media totally for a whole month, and I am still off social media mostly these days. It is really freeing to not feel any pressure at all about likes. At the same time, I took an intensive photography workshop and I worked on assignments every day focusing on only the one-on-one constructive feedbacks from the teacher.
Another thing that helped me was to put my work out there for people to actually judge--so enter contests and get serious critiques. Not just any contests though, I found some really amazing contests with incredible judges. To me, not knowing if I am good or not is worse than knowing that I sucked. Am I weird? Haha. I feel that if I know that I indeed am not that good, then that settles it and I can move on to actual improvements. This might not work for everyone but for me, I love a good critique. Once I know my weakness and my strength, then I can keep doing what I am doing right while I can work hard to fix my short boards. Then I become better ;)
What is your favorite course or lesson at unraveled?
Unposed!
This was the first workshop I took a few years back and it REALLY helped me to get on this path of being an artist rather than someone who snaps pictures. I still refer back to this course often because the content is just so good. But beyond the course content, there is just nothing else that can replace the importance of this course to my whole photography journey.
What is your favorite pizza topping?
Grapes. Yup, grapes.
What is your most favorite kind of light and why?
These days I am really liking a good pocket light. It's just super exciting when a good moment happened to fall under a "spot light". It creates so much more drama and tension about the subject in the light and it also creates so much mystery about what falls into the shadow.
Also... it can be challenging to work with and to get all the stars aligned and I like a good challenge ;)
