Today we’d like to introduce you to Sarah Rodriguez Arvidsson.
Sarah, please kick things off for us by telling us about yourself and your journey so far.
Hi! I am a portrait, events, and commercial photographer at Lightning Whelk Photography LLC. (Trivia: The lightning whelk is our state seashell.)
I have been a maker for as long as I can remember. I grew up in a coastal-ish town not far from Houston, and I have enjoyed a lifetime love of the outdoors – in particular, the Texas Gulf coastal environment. I was president of my high school art club and explored a wide array of artistic media growing up. I especially loved working with paint and clay. (I still do, just not as often and just for fun.) I went away to college to the University of Texas at Austin, and after one semester of not actively making art, I felt decidedly not-myself. I found Photojournalism, and I spent much of college as a staff photographer for our school paper The Daily Texan, covering college sports, Texas politics, fine dining and lifestyle, and general news events. I also majored in Anthropology, diving deeper into my love of people, cultures and how we, as a species, make our homes in our natural world.
My defining turning point moments as an artist were my early experiences in the darkroom, printing in black and white. We take the technology around us for granted in a big way – but photography is absolute magic at its purest form. The total magic of slipping magic paper into a magic potion (made of things given to us by the earth and figured out by people) and seeing an image you captured made tangible – it’s mindblowing. It’s not best practice to develop photos facing up, but I just couldn’t resist watching this completely magical moment as photos appeared on a blank sheet. I absolutely loved darkroom printing. I opted to shoot my final project on film – a medium format studio portrait project of Texan women shot with elements of the Texas environment. Because my background is in photojournalism, and not art photography, storytelling is central. My photography doesn’t feel complete without people. I shoot now almost exclusively in a digital format and mostly process photographs for full color, but my foundation – the way I think about making a photograph – is in black and white photography and printing. And, I REALLY love making portraits.
After graduating, and a short stint in New York City where I met my wonderful husband, I came to Houston and attended the University of Houston Law Center. I worked and practiced in a very busy small family law firm for several years. I loved the challenge, but I missed making art. (It’s a bit funny – but one of my college photography professors – someone I admire deeply – visited me in a dream as a spirit-guide and asked me why I wasn’t making pictures.) In 2014, I welcomed my first child, a daughter named Flora, left my law practice, and followed a dream of shooting full-time. It’s been almost five years now, and I’ve grown so much as an artist. In the beginning, it was so hard to find my voice – collaborating with clients and not shooting solely for the love of making photographs. I just wanted to recreate styles and images my clients loved so they would be happy and feel satisfied with my work. Now, I feel so much more confident and trust in my own artistic instinct and style. It has been such a pleasure to collaborate and grow with brides, families, moms, grandmas, non-profits and huge organizations to make pictures that I hope make people really happy. I LOVE working with little businesses or brands and trying to capture their vibe, tell their story and make pictures to help get them there where they want to be. It has been a blessing to photograph so many beautiful faces and capture so many special moments.
Can you give our readers some background on your art?
I am primarily a portrait artist, and I use photography to make portraits. (I also make pictures of events and performing arts, and, at times, buildings and products and trees and landscapes.) I shoot A LOT of headshots. My favorite portraits are environmental portraits made in natural light outdoors. My portraiture is heavily influenced by my love of the natural world and often incorporates natural elements – flowers, foliage, shells, fruits. I love surrounding newborns with plants I collect around their homes or adorning the hair of subjects with fresh cut flowers and foliage from our surroundings. My personal photography is also influenced by Mexican documentary photographers and portrait art photographers – especially Flor Garduno – as well as a number of Texan photographers including Michael O’Brien and Keith Carter. It’s also certainly influenced by my love of Wes Anderson’s films.
I want my portraits to capture something unique about my subjects. My hope is for subjects to feel comfortable enough to get a little bit vulnerable and reveal the special differences that make each us of unique. I always want to get to that next-level of intimacy with a subject. It doesn’t always happen, but my most powerful images are made when I’m able to get closer to an individual’s authentic self. (Just one reason I LOVE photographing babies and children – it is much easier for them to let their lights shine.)
As I’ve matured as a person, and especially through my experiences parenting my two young daughters, I appreciate more and more deeply the immeasurable value of each person. Houston is an AMAZING place to make portraits – the diversity is just absolutely stunning and so inspiring. I love meeting people from all around the world and making their portraits – hoping to tell a small part of their story – to capture a culminating moment of where they are and who they are in these tiny split seconds we find ourselves together across a lens.
I hope people will take away from my art – a quiet reflection on individuality, a sense of fun, whimsy, and quirkiness. I hope I add beauty to the world and to lives. I hope I make people feel beautiful. I hope for clients that my photographs will capture a special time in their lives, be passed down in beat-up-old-albums, show up in funny slideshows at rehearsal dinners or retirement parties. (One very funny pair of grandparents kept joking that my portraits would probably eventually run in their obituaries.) I hope for other clients that my photographs will tell their stories, share their unique take on the world and give them great images as they grow their businesses or organizations. I love taking what I love in photography and collaborating with other artists and clients to execute a vision and make something really special together.
In your view, what is the biggest issue artists have to deal with?
Time – for sure. We are all so challenged by the busy pace of our lives – by meetings and birthday parties and trips to IKEA and family vacations and making dinner and packing backpacks and making Valentine’s – that it can feel almost impossible to give yourself the time you need to think about art and to make art thoughtfully. For me, the thinking part is absolutely crucial to the success of a session. Making time for myself and prioritizing time for art is the greatest challenge. It can be difficult to tell others that you need time to sit and think or to create quietly and independently because we don’t place the proper value on that time. It doesn’t seem important – even though it’s the most important to the artistic process. It feels like a radical act to sit quietly and think about portraiture. Finding time – finding balance – is the biggest challenge facing us.
I define artistic success as being true to myself and making pictures that make me happy. For me, the quality most essential to the success as an artist is fully embracing change, growth and personal evolution of a craft. That change comes from being brave and being honest, being unafraid to try different things and knowing that nothing bad is going to happen. I love quirky, funny, personal images that capture a time and place and tell a story, and I’ve learned that the way to make those images is to trust myself, my experience and training and to feel confident and whole-hearted. Having fun is essential – I cannot make meaningful art if I’m unhappy and not whole. I’m not sure this is true for everyone, but it is for me. Looking back on times when I’m unhappy, or something is seriously wrong or out of place – there isn’t any art. I don’t think that’s a coincidence. Making pictures (or paintings or pots or quilts or loaves of bread) makes me happy and when I’m unhappy, I don’t make things. Artistic success to me is loving the pictures that I’m making and having as much fun as possible.
What’s the best way for someone to check out your work and provide support?
My work can be found on my online home at www.lightningwhelk.com – and on Facebook and Instagram @lightningwhelkphoto
Most importantly, my work can be found in the homes of clients, friends and family – framed in big wall displays or on mantles – in offices framed next to computer monitors – on cellphone wallpapers – in lockets – on Christmas cards – on refrigerators – and all over personal social media accounts. There are a few homes in my life that as soon as I walk in, I’m greeted with a wall of my pictures. I always joke that they put them up because they knew I was coming over, but almost nothing in the world makes me happier than seeing my work surround people I love and people I have loved to work with.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.lightningwhelk.com
- Phone: 512-468-9770
- Email: sarah@lightningwhelk.com
- Instagram: lightningwhelkphoto
- Facebook: lightningwhelkphoto
Image Credit:
Lightning Whelk Photography LLC
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