Conversations with Gaby Scheer

Today we’d like to introduce you to Gaby Scheer. 

Hi Gaby, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
Hi there, and I photograph humans and their love stories. I am living in the midst of my dreams coming to life. I am grateful, giddy, and downright humbled by the opportunity to pursue my passion. Here is my love story with photography in a handful of words… 

My mom took countless photos throughout my childhood, smiling siblings, national park camp trips, all of those rich real-life family moments. She was effortlessly drawn to making meaning out of our memories by capturing them to keep. I have always been inspired by the way her photographs reflect the fullness of life she sees and lives. I got my first camera around age 7 (thank you Santa, that was very prophetic of you). It was rainbow, plastic, and unfortunately, it went untouched indefinitely, though it is charming to credit the cute toy for starting it all. Fast forward through all of grade school, better known as the years of drawing and daydreaming instead of listening. Equations and spelling rarely found their way into my doodle-filled notebooks. And likewise, studying and calculations rarely found their way into my curiosity-filled time. Academia is endlessly admirable to me, and learning itself is essential, though school’s contents were never quite as compelling to me as the world of art was. Any fruition of my creative touch is foundationally the expression of a deep curiosity. During high school that curiosity carried me into the world of photography. Upon diving into photography, portraits instantly stole my heart. People are tirelessly interesting to me; one will inevitably find that no two people are the same and no one person is the same twice. I was, and am, enamored by the stories that are told through a stare, a laugh, a face full of freckles or a look shared between two people in love. I continued to take hundreds of thousands of photos throughout the rest of high school, and into the years that have since passed. It was not until this past summer, however, that I finally decided to direct my creative curiosity towards couples and weddings more specifically. In July of 2020, I started a new Instagram for this fresh phase of my photography pursuit, @gabyscheerphoto. I quickly became invested in the cultivation of community with other photographers and with my incredible clients, muses, friends, and all of the above. It is so rewarding to have people choose me to photograph them in all of what makes them them. Creative portraits always have a place in my heart, though it has been empowering to see that creativity has a wonderful and purposeful place in wedding photography, as perhaps many have known and I only more recently experienced for myself. Having such wonderful people trust me with their love story and have faith in my vision to capture what makes them who they are only further encourages me to pour into this ‘new’ niche of my photography, wedding photography. I started off as a curious and creative kid, years have since passed, roles have changed, I have changed, my work has changed, and yet I am confident to confess that it all comes back to me still being, at the core of it all, a curious and creative kid. 

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not, what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
I would not say that the road to full-time photography has been particularly smooth. My high school self ‘began’ photography back in 2012, though it was not until the end of summer 2020 that I stepped into it as a real career path. It took a good eight years of wandering, traveling, floundering, doubting, working, creating, learning, unlearning, and wondering for me to finally embrace the world that awaited me at the other side of truly pouring into wedding and portrait photography the way that I am today. I have always found so much mystery and whimsy in the beauty that I am already immersed in, and it is a great gift to see that such can extend beyond my own witness. I spent a great deal of time assuming that I probably would want only to travel the world and take photos without actively putting that desire in place. I thought that a true photography business had to look a certain way and follow specific rules. Though I have relished realizing that I do not have to take photos, or structure my business, the same way as others do in order for me to find my success. Beyond that, I have redefined success as the active pursuit of what sparks my soul, rather than acquired recognition, or any other outward reward. That is something I equally wish for and admire in, all of my fellow creatives that are choosing to embrace their art as their ‘job’. A willingness to be unafraid of staying true to their creative conviction and confidence despite external achievement-oriented persuasion. There is so much freedom in returning to the allowance of the experience of joy and passion for creating to be the very core, and not placing success solely upon the outcome of such. I trust that I need only chase beauty, chase ideas, and work hard from that place knowing that the shape of my medium or ‘goal’ of art will expand and evolve in the trajectory it is meant to. My road to full-time wedding and portrait photography has been far too ‘all over the place’ to be considered smooth, though I rather figure that if my journey had been promptly ironed out, I would be missing the dimension of passion that I now carry into my daily pursual of this dream. 

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
Hand me a camera and put me in front of two people who are madly in love and try to tell me that I am not living the dream. I absolutely adore wedding photography, I love that creating in that realm gets to be a clever way of pausing a memory for people, something far greater than just me. Along with that I really love dreaming up ideas and painting peoples’ stories. Though photography, for me, has never been just a means of creating. Pardon this for being absurdly cheesy, though I will venture to say the cliche of perspective, that it is a way of being, of seeing the world differently. And yet sometimes the world does not so much as ask to be seen differently. It would seem that the world, without begging, simply must be seen. I delight so fully in doing such with every breath, every camera shutter, every story told, and every moment collected into art. I feel truest to my craft when I know that I am honestly seeing people, seeing their love, and immersing myself in the privilege of capturing it. I believe, too, that creativity can be curated and still not antithetical to candor. That a cinematic and dreamy approach to storytelling is not fictionalizing reality, rather it is a brilliantly magical way of telling the truth. So that is what I do, I tell the truth. Through photographs of dream wedding days, playing dress-up, dancing through the mountains, tears on a first look, through every pose of ‘dramatically looking off in the distance, every meaningful glance into the lens. I do not create love or magic, that has been so beautifully done for me. I simply sit in awe of it, I interact with it, and then I freeze it into a fairytale. I am certain that in one way or another I will do this for all of my days, gather the beauty I see around me, savor it, share it, save it. Today I am a wedding and portrait photographer, and every day after, if not too that, I will at least be a curious, amazed, overwhelmed, and grateful girl living life fully and creating amidst it all. If the earth was not so magnificent, if people were not so stunning and complex, then perhaps I could get away with a camera-less life. But by gosh, I am compelled to cherish and create, for now, the camera is my paintbrush, and for all one knows it is the world to blame for me being drawn so near to a heart of photography. So let the beauty and depth of it all be guilty for my passion, I can live with that. 

What makes you happy?
Many things make me happy. Take my love for photography, for example, it is really just an artistic way of seizing my love for life. I love many things, lots of things make me happy, and along with both I am ultimately drawn to what makes me feel alive. So, I will say what makes me feel alive, what fills me, fuels me. Let me put it this way: I get chills when I see dust caught in the light when I watch a mountain sunset run its fingers through windblown hair, when I see flowers blooming through cracks in the street when I wake up in the wilderness when rain falls through sunshine. I get emotional when I see smoke painting the air above a freshly blown-out candle, or really look into someone’s eyes, or cry each of my tears. I feel present and alive when I drink watery campfire coffee or gas station coffee, or neither of those really, for honestly, I just crave the moments in their periphery. I love to laugh, watch the moonrise, try new things, and learn the same 1% of French 100 times. I love to go night swimming and read 25% of lots of books, and all of some. Maybe one day I will add creamer to coffee, become fluent in French, write a book, or read a library. Who knows? There are lots of things that I do love, and more so I love that there are more things that I have yet to love. For now, I am chasing what sets my soul of fire, in the mundane and extraordinary. Amongst the many things that bring me joy, The thought of living fully is something that I would say makes me very happy. 

Contact Info:

• Email: gabyscheerphoto@gmail.com
• Website: https://www.gabyscheerphotography.org/
• Instagram: @gabyscheerphoto

Image Credits
Gaby scheer photo