I recently took part in another SLR Lounge collab article regarding motivation and what keeps our creative drive going as professional photographers. Since there were 14 other photographers participating in the article, which you can read HERE, I kept it as short as I could. I immediately had a few photographers reach out and ask a few questions so I wanted to go a little deeper into this topic:

From the very beginning of my professional career as a photographer, I’ve always tried my best to keep my love for photography alive and not have it ever feel like work. Being that my wife is also a photographer and shoots with me, I definitely found that it made that goal a lot easier. I was raised in a creative home where my Mom was a wedding photographer and my father an engineer who designed aircraft carriers and warships for the US Navy. I’ve been an artist for as far back as I can remember so my love for photography after my Mom passed came easy.

On the other hand, my wife graduated from Rowan University with a degree in sociology & psychology (I never graduated from college) and has always had a love for running a business. While we both got into photography at the same time, her mind was focused on creating a business with a new approach that focused primarily on the experience offered to clients and creating a connection between them and the memories we would capture through photography. It was much more about the psychology part that sparked her love for photography.

Once we started the business, she was instantly drawn towards the business side of things and speaking with the clients helping them plan their wedding day. This made it easier for me to keep my focus on my art and continuing to push things creatively and in new directions to help build a unique brand that would help us to book our ideal clients.

After a couple of years shooting weddings, I quickly found myself struggling to keep that passion burning. All of my time was spent working, and most of it was from behind a monitor. My time behind a camera quickly became a small fraction of what it used to be and when I was shooting it was either for an engagement shoot or a wedding. This started to take its toll on my creativity and I needed to make a change before it was too late so I created a separate brand altogether for all of my other projects that were outside of the wedding business. Since I didn’t want to mix side projects with the wedding band, Twisted Oaks Studio, I needed a creative outlet and place to share other projects. This was how the JAY CASSARIO website started and the reason behind it.

Creating a completely separate brand from Twisted Oaks Studio that was 100% focused on wedding photography, I was now able to build a platform to build other portfolios and show off any personal work. This gave me a new drive and motivation that had no negative effect whatsoever on the wedding studio or my personal wedding photography. In fact, it did the opposite and helped push me more creatively for my wedding clients.

I was able to use my personal brand/website to quickly work on projects that I would use to land me jobs as an affiliate and gear reviewer for B&H Photo, a Pro Photographer with Leica Camera USA, and brand ambassador for SLR Lounge.

When it comes to the business side of things, there are certain aspects that I do enjoy such as marketing. You can be extremely creative with your marketing which is my primary job with the studio nowadays. But, to be completely honest, if it was strictly the business side of things that I loved than I could have simply gone out and started any business. Shit, I could have opened a smoothie bar if that was the case. Thank God that my wife decided to take an adventure down this creative career path with me or I would have easily crashed and burned.

A perfect example of a personal project outside of the wedding studio that keeps my love and passion for photography kicking ass is the video you see below. It’s a promo video for the new Leica SL2 mirrorless body which I was given full creative freedom to shoot however I wanted. I found an epic shooting location that no one has (legally) been given access to, an abandoned warehouse in Philly. I did some digging, made some phone calls, and got legal access to shoot in the beautiful and completely abandoned Budd Plant Warehouse. These are the types of shoots that still get me excited about photography today. My wife and I have successful built the wedding studio into a business that I don’t have to be as hands-on with as I used to be. We have enough staff in place that allows both my wife and I to spend more time with our family and other projects just like the one below.