Conversations with Alex Sumner

Today we’d like to introduce you to Alex Sumner

Hi Alex, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
The passion for photography began as a little girl; the passion for turning it into a business began when I had a little one of my own.

I grew up an only child, so I had a lot of time to escape inside my mind. In a world without smart phones, tablets, and even instant streaming services, I was gratefully left with books, art, and a twinge of imagination to entertain me. Curiosity drove me to explore different ways to express myself and by the time I’d reached college I decided to add an additional minor for Photography – not to necessarily do anything with, just to learn. My main path was to become an English teacher, but I often found myself spending my free hours in the darkroom developing print after print. Therapy. Assignments didn’t feel like work. Grades didn’t feel daunting. The “schoolwork” felt freeing to me.

I was also married at the time and a few days after he had deployed for a year I found out we’d be having a baby. In October of 2011, just a baby myself at the mere age of 19, I gave birth to my son and realized that I didn’t want the world outside my home to raise him knowing that since his dad would be away often with the military, I wanted to be as present as possible.

And so, I quit my full time job and opened my photography business. Ignited by my own childhood, fueled by my son’s.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
I’m not sure that running any kind of business is a smooth road. But worth it? Absolutely.

My biggest struggle was simply being a business owner; I’ve learned that most creative-based entrepreneurs either fall heavy on the creative side OR the entrepreneur side, but rarely both. Marketing, strategy, pricing, taxes – none of this felt natural to me. I simply just wanted to create when inspiration hit, but in order to successfully run a business you can’t rely on wildly fleeting inspiration. You also can’t run one smoothly without a strategy. This became an interesting learning curve for me to tackle.

The next big hurdle was time: raising a baby who eventually becomes a toddler who MOVES, haha, feels like a full time job. A little over a year after my son was born, I had my daughter. Juggling two babies in diapers while running a business was a challenge I wasn’t expecting; my passion to make income while being present with my kids actually felt like a more distant dream than I’d anticipated. Instead of working my business around my babies’ childhoods, I worked their childhoods around my business. I spent the majority of the years ahead learning how to balance both.

However, I feel immensely blessed for the times I got to include both my kiddos and my business together. Cuddling with them while editing pictures, baby-wearing one at a time during sessions, taking portraits of them to learn more about my craft and keeping their pictures as artistic memories. I’m so grateful for those days.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I specialize in children portraiture! As a mother myself, I find it difficult to explain what motherhood actually feels like to me in words. When I tell my kids I love them, those three words just don’t fully describe what that phrase means to me on a deeper level.

When I take pictures of them – playing, laughing, smiling…even crying or making messes or simply sitting and looking at me – I can “see” what I feel for them. As I spend time hand-editing each picture, I’m able to bring out those “feelings” more. Looking back at these pictures years down the road, not only do they have even stronger significance for me but my kids are old enough now to appreciate their childhood from someone else’s viewpoint.

This is exactly what I strive to give families as well. More than just a picture, more than just a cliche “snapshot of time”, but the feeling of parenthood and one day down the road the nostalgia of it…in the form of art.

My images are also uniquely hand-edited in a colorful, painterly way instead of editing with a one-click preset.

Risk taking is a topic that people have widely differing views on – we’d love to hear your thoughts.
I am a huge advocate for risk-taking (in healthy ways of course – we don’t need to be throwing ourselves in jail, haha). When I look back at every positive shift that’s happened in my life and my business, I can source it back to a risk I took.

I also don’t believe in failure. I believe that there’s “trying and succeeding” OR “trying and learning how to succeed better the next time”.

I believe when I make it to the end of my life I won’t even bat an eye at the things I risked trying and “failing” but rather the things I didn’t try at all.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.alexsumner.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thispoeticlens
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/alexsumnerphotography