Ep.5 Photography Adjacent Podcast - Creative Change: The Wolf and the Wild Thing

In this episode, I have a heartfelt discussion with Ami Robertson, known online as The Wolf and the Wild Thing, about their photographic and personal journey. 

Ami's journey transcends the boundaries of traditional wedding and portrait photography (which they became known for over the last decade), venturing into the realms of personal evolution, self-discovery, and the power of community through their work with Snap Photo Festival (Snap) and their personal brand, The Wolf and the Wild Thing, which focuses on photography, life, and business coaching.

From capturing the essence of life through the lens to spearheading Snap, a conference designed to foster connections and creativity among photographers, Ami has paved a unique path that melds artistic expression with activism and personal growth. Their story is one of shedding societal expectations to embrace their authentic self, highlighted by their diagnosis with autism, their embrace of their non-binary identity, and their transformative shift towards becoming a trauma-informed somatic counsellor.

Join us as Ami delves into their journey, sharing insights on dismantling a successful business to pursue a life that truly resonates with them, the role of photography in activism, and how creating spaces for genuine connection at Snap has influenced their perspective on community and creativity.

Listen now on Apple Podcasts and Spotify to witness Ami's transformation and explore how embracing change can lead to a more authentic and fulfilling life.

Some key quotes from today’s episode:

I am a survivor of abuse and complex trauma. I have a very complicated history. And I probably say it started in 2018 when I left my ex partner and was homeless for a year. And that was like a kind of, I'm gonna keep repeating these patterns unless I choose to work out why I'm doing them. And I was very different human then. And obviously kind of starting the therapeutic journey. And then working out that I was autistic. This is kind of over the last five years, well, nearly six years now kind of this process of trying to stand on my own two feet. I think a lot of my financial success being six figures and the success of my business was actually coming from a trauma wound for survival. So that kind of constantly saying yes to absolutely everything, kind of wanting to validate myself to not ever want to be in the position again where I have to be homeless. Like a lot of it was from fear. And then like, this last 12 months has been like, there is so much more to life and me than this. And I really want to get to know who that person is, as well as kind of continuing on that journey of like, healing, you know, 35 plus years of quite big complex challenges. So yeah, I can't say it's one specific thing, just I was gonna kill myself with the exhaustion and the burnout and make myself very poorly if I didn't make some sort of a change.

For me, because I spent my entire life moving from different countries, at one point I wasn't staying somewhere more than six months. I wasn't making any form of like meaningful connections or relationships. So to be somewhere where I like can see myself growing old and really settling is really nice. So yeah, Folkestone has been like probably one of the best choices I made in the last couple of years. Amazing.

Snap (photography conference) was already kind of established as a conference for wedding photographers. And I bought it from its previous owner Laura Babb, because she no longer wanted to run it, but obviously, kind of wanted to kind of continue that on. And my friend Rosie also decided to come into it as well. So she's my business partner.

We had a really big journey with that. We, again, we've had to deconstruct that as well, because this whole thing of taking over someone else's brand, right, which is complex, because you kind of want to continue their business model, and then you work out that that's not right for you. So you kind of start changing things. And also, yeah, the community aspect. I feel like the photography industry,

And our long term plan for Snap is to take it out of the photography industry and expand it into the creative community as like a whole. Because as we kind of grown with it over the last kind of two to three years, and Rosie's not a photographer, she's a musician as well. We have found that the photography industry has been too small, like it is felt too small and too restrictive over what we want to bring to people and how we want to connect people. And yeah, the community side, we had our first big conference this, keep saying this year, but it's not now. In about a week, I will stop saying this year. But last year, we had our first big conference in the Peak District, and it was the first time I've ever witnessed on a big scale, authentic connection and safety, like a container for people to be able to really be authentic and be themselves and know that they're safe when they're held in that space. And I just feel like we need more and more communities like genuine communities, not communities where like the motivation is to make like as much money as possible, like communities outside of capitalism. And as well as that, we really aim to give a platform to people, to really diverse voices, people from lots of different backgrounds, and who have so much value to give just from their stories, as well as obviously helping people to kind of build businesses and feel less alone. Because I think when you work for yourself, and you run a small business, it's really lonely and it's really hard. So kind of having a genuine community around you, I think is just really powerful and really important.

And yeah, we also have activism at the heart of what we do as well. As artists, as creatives, and as small businesses, we are political whether we are choosing to be or not. And I think there's just so much power there when you build genuine community, not like the types, I've been in a lot of different spaces over the years. And there's always this pedestal culture, where the people who run it are like, everyone wants to be their friend, it's like a popularity contest, there's like a clickiness to it. And instead of the community being able to be safe, the culture is defended at all costs, and I think that's really dangerous. So that's also something that we really focus on with Snap is creating safe learning environments for everyone, not just the kind of core clickiness, I guess.

I know authenticity is like a big buzzword, and it's overused all the time. But yeah, you know, it's been challenging for the last year, because I've exited hustle culture when I was fully like marketing hustle culture before. So I think my audience on both sides is a bit like what what's going on. And that's the thing, right? We can be fluid, we can change. There's no fixed destination. I think this is kind of the biggest thing I wanna say to people is like, there is no fixed destination. You don't need to be any one thing. You can change your mind at any point. And I think that's kind of what we want to encourage at Snap is this, and it's a very neurodivergent way of being, being multi-passionate. And I think that's probably our community, but also I view it as a form of activism because I really believe that community, slower living, more sustainable goals, like more connecting with yourself and other people, I really do believe that helps on like the bigger kind of impact of the world.

I very much feel that photographers have a social responsibility to show diversity through their work and to dismantle beauty standards. I wholeheartedly believe that because I wholeheartedly believed that every single person regardless of what type of body they have, deserves to be seen and to take up space and have value in the world and to be valued. And I will never forget a wedding photographer I had some very brief mentoring with when he told me that he only booked brides who are under a size 12. And he would never show anyone on his portfolio who was over a size 12.

Like, I really, really believe that how we represent people is so important. So I think that just as photography on its own, that is a form of activism. If you can participate in making the world more diverse and beautiful, rather than adhering to kind of capitalist, patriarchal beauty standards.

And in a way, this kind of like ties into the type of therapy I'm gonna go into, but like the more embodied you are when you're being photographed, the better. Like the more of you kind of comes through, the more comfortable you look, the more at ease you look, the more yourself you look. So I've always been promoting that. So in that sense, it has always been activism.