January Member Photo Challenge Winner

Casey Ladisa

About this month’s challenge:

Each month, our members are given a challenge to help push their creativity and have them learn and grow through new techniques and exercises! Those who participate have the chance to submit their results and win both a $25 gift card to Hello Storyteller, and a special blog feature with HS! For the month of January, our challenge was to complete a Day-in-the-Life Project! In a DITL Project, you are prompted to take (at least) 1 photo every waking hour for an entire day. You pick the day, the location, the genre… all of that is up to the artist. Our Members were given a Challenge Guide created by Hello Pro Mentor giving them full instructions and inspiration to get them started.

Our January Member Photo Challenge Winner for the DITL Challenge was our amazingly talented member and Hello Artist, Casey Ladisa! We got a chance to sit down and chat with Casey to get to know her better! We think you’ll find her and her work quite inspiring!

~ Holly & Angie

Casey’s Day in the Life Project

Q {Angie} ~ Hi!! We’re so excited to chat with you today. Are you ready? We have some Q’s for you. First of all congrats on winning the January challenge! We love your day in the life photos. Have you done this project before? Or was this your first time?

A {Casey} ~ Thank you so much! This was my first time doing a day in the life project before. It’s something I have had on my creative project list for a while so having it be January’s challenge was just the push I needed.

Q {Holly} ~ You documented your day so well! How did you approach your DITL Project? Did you prepare ahead of time and have some ideas in mind? Or did you plan to document your day as it unfolded?

A {Casey}~ A little bit of both… haha. I took a very loose documentary approach to the shots I took and didn’t plan on trying to get any specific shots. However, I did try to set myself up for success for the more fluid style. Things like making sure my battery was full, my memory card was empty, and I went with a zoom lens for this day so that regardless of what was in front of me I could get the angle I wanted. I also made sure I took at least one photo every hour but some hours I found myself documenting more.

Q {Angie}~ So now that you’ve done one, do you think you’ll do another? Would you do it differently or did your approach work for you?

A {Casey} ~ I will absolutely be doing it again. Outside of it being a fun creative project, I found it put me in the mindset to looking for beauty all day long. I think if I were to do it again I would probably plan out things a little more. Things like “a shot of breakfast”, “a shot of getting ready”, and have a more structured though still loose shot list to more accurately capture what all happened in the day.

Getting to know Casey

Q {Holly}~ That sounds like a great approach. The beauty of a DITL Project is you really can make it your own and each time you learn and grow with it. So now that we know how you tackled your DITL Project, we would like to get to know a little bit more about YOU as an artist! How would you describe your photography style?

A {Casey}~ I always have such a tough time answering this question haha. But I have also been asked it enough I’m getting pretty good at it. I would say my style is authentic and moody. I love using light and shadows and rich deep colors to convey the reality of a moment and I also love capturing all moments both carefree and difficult.

Q {Angie}~ I would agree with that. I’m always in love with your colors and your creative mind always blows me away. Now most people want to know…what kind of gear do you use? Are you a Canon or Nikon girl? Have you gone mirrorless? Also, what piece of gear could you not live without?

A {Casey}~ I’m a canon girly! I made the switch from a crop sensor to mirrorless back in 2021 and now shoot with a Canon RP. I would say the piece of gear I couldn’t live without is a nice lens because I just love some good bokeh! I love my 35mm 1.8 RF lens so I would probably pick that one if I am picking just one lens. I have found regardless of the camera I am using I can create the type of images and quality of images I want with a high quality lens.

Q {Holly} ~ I agree with that statement wholeheartedly. Good glass makes a huge difference! Now let’s talk about inspiration! What inspires you to create? Where do you turn to get your creative juices flowing? Both photography related inspirations or non-photography related such as books or movies. And who are some of your favorite artists that always inspire you?

A {Casey}~ A big piece of inspiration for me is communicating and sharing myself. I am not the best with words — never have been haha. -But I am also an outgoing introvert and love to connect with others. Photography has been a way I have expressed myself to those around me since I was like 9 or 10 years old. That only got deeper when I went through postpartum depression with my first born. Photography was a huge mental escape for me and helped me not hold onto all that weight but feel like I could let it go through the photos I was taking.

I have a few photographers that are huge inspirations for me right now. Kristen Ryan is one and Alex Eischeid is another.

Non-photography related I find so much inspiration in nature. I love hiking, biking, being on the water and pull so much inspiration from that. I would say the other big driver for inspiration is music for me. I truly love all genres of music and the artistry that musicians create both instrumental and lyrically can be a great starting point for being inspired to create!

Q {Angie}~ Oohhh… I love that you use photography as a way to communicate your thoughts and feelings and also to connect with others. Photography may be a solo endeavor but it’s also such a great way to connect with others, too, like this community. So what about photography or the creative process in general excites you?

A {Casey}~ I absolutely love the editing process. If it’s a documentary shot I can truly make the image look like what I saw in that moment to share with others. If it’s a more creative/conceptual shot, editing is where I make the image I have in my mind come to life. Even beyond my own work editing is a favorite place of mine. I will scroll before and after images for hours. If someone posts a BTS reel of the editing process I get so excited (Holly does these a lot and I always love them!!).

Q {Holly} ~ Oh I’m so glad that you like seeing behind the scenes! I enjoy sharing them as well. It really is interesting and inspiring to see what artists create in editing. It can range from simple color tones to incredible composites. Seeing what is possible really allows you to push yourself to find out what you are really capable of in your own work! When it comes to the creative process there are always ups and downs. We all go through ruts or creative blocks from time to time for various reasons. How do you overcome creative blocks?

A {Casey}~ Yes totally agree Holly! It is so awesome to see the different range in which the editing can be. I love this question because if there is one thing I could help people see is that there is value in mediocre. Being okay with creating mediocre images is how I push to overcome creative ruts. I feel like society puts so much pressure on people to be “great”, create “great”, and only take in “greatness” but that isn’t real life. You have value and what you create has value just in the fact you created something you shared part of yourself with those who are willing to stop and see. I have found that when I really work to accept mundane without pressure to create “great” eventually I find that I am making photos that I would put in top 10 top 20 photos I have created.

Q {Angie}~ Yes! So much yes to this!! And we are all our own worst critics so we often get in our own way. I like the idea of giving yourself permission to be mediocre. That kind of segues us into the holy grail of photography…the big thing we focus on is finding our own specific voice and style, and sometimes that can feel like a huge, daunting task. Do you remember a specific image or moment where you feel you found your unique artistic voice?

A {Casey}~ Yeah I do. It was actually through HS Big Tog / Little Tog program. I was paired with Hollie (I am forgetting her last name now ) but we were focused on my portfolio for hello artist and she asked me to describe what I want people to see when they look at my photos in three words and I landed on Authenticity, Innocence, Joy and those still are the driving factors for me as an artist. But I especially loved that exercise because I think our voice as artist changes as life happens to us and so those three words for me may change with time but for now it helps me have a consistency and focus on what I want to convey to people when they see one of my images.

Q {Holly}~ That is an excellent exercise and you’re so right… your focus and your “why” will definitely evolve over time as your life changes and you grow as an artist. You seem to be very driven an motivated as a photographer and an artist. Is there anything that you struggle with as a creative? If so, how do you overcome those struggles?

A {Casey}~ Oh absolutely! I think like most people comparison and/or jealousy can be so crippling. It is absolutely incredible to be involved in the Hello Storyteller community because of how much immense talent there is but along with the appreciation of talent I have to be super careful to not let myself get into the comparison/jealousy game. I try to combat it when I recognize it happening by shifting my perspective to appreciation of someone’s talent and seeing it as an opportunity to learn from them.

The other way I combat it is just asking people to pump me up. I think its a hard thing to do because we worry it would make us come across as vain but the truth is your community wants to support you and sometimes that means asking them to be a vocal hype person for you to get you out of your own way.

Q {Angie}~ Oh goodness, I feel this deep down. It’s so hard not to get caught up in the comparison game. I love your idea of having a hype person or people. I feel we should all have those people in our lives, outside of photography too. Now that we’ve dug inside your brain about photography, we have one final thing…let’s take a minute to get to know Casey! Tell us a bit about yourself… including 3 random facts!

A {Casey}~ Yes… Okay… three random things about me.

1.  I have jumped off a 40 ft waterfall in Kona Hawaii. It was one of the most thrilling things I have ever done. 
2. My day job is as a Program Manager in Content Moderation. It is a completely different way to use my creative brain but I love how it combines analytics and creativity to try and solve for all the chaos and harm that tries to make its way on the internet.
3. I was homeschooled growing up and my senior year I helped my parents build the house we lived in from the ground up. The only things we contracted out were the framing, roofing, and masonry. Literally everything else we did ourselves and it gave me so many incredible skills. This is the listing from when my parents sold it years back for anyone interested in seeing the house we built haha. I am very proud of being able to look back on it and saying, “yeah I built that.” lol

{Holly}~ Wow! All of that is so interesting and that house is BEAUTIFUL! It really was such a pleasure chatting with you today. Thank you for taking the time out to share with us

{Angie}~ I’m wanting to go jump off a waterfall now! Yes, thank you for letting us pick your brain. You had such thoughtful answers. And congrats again for winning our first challenge!

{Casey}~ Thank you ladies so much! It was so much fun chatting with you and such an honor to be chosen as the winner of the DITL challenge! This has me sooooo excited for future artist features so I can read and learn more about others in this community!

{Angie}~ We’re excited about this interview style Q&A too. We want to know all the things about everyone. Have a good day, Casey!! Thanks for your time.