Featured Artist 05: Brittany Boote

Brittany Boote

Steel + Flint Featured Artist 05

Brittany is a wedding and portrait photographer based out of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Owner of Brittany Boote Photography, Sister North Studios and Hello honey boudoir, Brittany has excelled in absolutely everything she does. From empowering women through her lens to capturing an emotive and natural connection with her couples. Her work is full of connections, beautiful compositions and incredibly creative images that will blow your mind. On top of all this, she is also an educator offering mentorships and in person workshops in her studio.

An incredible artist, educator and best of all, an amazing human being.

What is one image that represents your overall work/style as an artist?

This is such a tough question. I am really drawn to connection, emotion and I really love finding a consistent composition throughout my work that feels like my own. This image that I took last November, in my hometown area really felt complete to me. I had always struggled with not having the epic landscapes or beautiful mountains, beaches that I felt like I couldn't really create jaw-dropping images. Once I realized that I could just embrace my home, and my local landscape, that was really liberating for me. I love simplicity, and a touch of imagination to come together. I love that the couple is on different ends of the image, but you can still sense how connected they are. I love the idea of capturing couples as individuals and working that into their portraits. I think that's really important in their story.

What’s one piece of advice you’d give someone working to get where you are?

Stay dedicated. Don't worry about what everyone else is doing, posting, creating. Create with your heart and the clients will come. Don't chase the sales, chase the feeling. That was the one thing that I resonated with since the very beginning. That mentality is what brought me to where I am today, and I have so many miles to go and lessons to learn. Invest in yourself as a person, and an artist, and the rest will all fall in place.

Who was your biggest influence when you were starting out?

On a professional level - I was really impressed with mentors like Anni Graham. Her work really showcased that connection, and emotion, while also understanding the value of composition to tell a story. Her brand mentality is what made me understand that I didn't have to be doing the kind of shoots that everyone in my town was doing. I just thought that's how you "open a photography business". I was like "Oh I need crazy backdrops, and cake smash props, and I have to offer all of these things". Realizing that I had the freedom to really create what I felt passionate about was super influential for me. I am in my 4th year and I just finally feel like I am beginning to have a small signature within my work. That feels really cool because I worked really hard to tap into that within myself. It makes me really happy when clients connect with that. Also, Sirjana & Ben from Tinted photography are so creative, and inpspiring. It's really cool to see how their work elevates itself all the time. I feel like they inspired that imaginative dreamy part of myself that lives within me that I was hesitant to show through my images.

How have you worked to set yourself apart from other photographers?

As an industry, (with weddings/couples) I think we all basically learn the same kind of posing, and same prompts or lighting techniques. We see a photographer do something really epic and want to go create it ourselves (Thanks, Estaban!). Which I think is really okay to be inspired by our peers. Being inspired is cool, and being influenced is also very cool. I think setting yourself apart really has to do with how you express your own visual language in everything you do. Use your own words. Do something that really feels like your own, even if it was inspired by someone else's art. Finding my own artful, visual, language has been a big part of this journey for me. Its definitely given me the freedom to create with my couples spontaneously, and they trust my vision, that is something that is really encouraging and important when you want to create an experience for people.