Meet Julie Pepin | Photographer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Julie Pepin and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Julie, have there been any changes in how you think about work-life balance?
When I started out photographing full time I was single and could edit every day/night, sometimes all night just because I could. And I could shoot anytime, anyplace. I would travel a lot, sometimes every weekend in a month. Then I moved in with my now husband and slowly that shifted to a more regular schedule of editing just during the day and in the evening a bit. After years of putting in 12+ hour days, I would finally take the time to have dinner with my partner and hang out with him in the evening and go to bed at a regular time and I felt like I really had it dialed in just right. Then we had our daughter and everything changed. I made the decision that I would be home with my daughter rather than send her to daycare or pay for a nanny, even though I still have a full time job and a ton of work to always do. There is absolutely zero chance of actually getting any work done during the day now, so I am back to working at night after she goes to bed. It means that my turnaround time is longer, I don’t respond to emails right away, and the list of things to do never ends. But it also means that I’ve spent the most amount of time with my daughter that I possibly could and I wouldn’t trade that for being able to get things done quicker. Things still get done – albeit slowly – and I get to take these wonderful afternoon naps with my daughter before she grows out them, which I am sure will happen any day now.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
I am a photographer based in Los Angeles. I photograph mostly weddings and families and the thing that excites me most about my job is that no two clients are the same and every wedding is like a microcosm of the human condition and I get to be there to photograph it. I get the full gamut of emotions in an 8 hour period. Happiness, anxiety, sadness, humor, the holes in peoples souls that peek out, anger, love, and light. There is something about a wedding day that really brings it all out. There tends to be more happiness, but I’ve seen physical fights and other things manifest in weird ways and my job is to just let it flow around me and capture it without getting in the way.

I would say that getting to where I am today has taken a lot of really hard nose-to-the-grindstone-work, but it has luckily felt easy in that it’s work that I really really love and I’ve been so fortunate that people have consistently wanted to hire me year after year. I would be taking photos and editing them even if no one was paying me to do it, so it’s truly a dream to be able to make a living doing it. I never knew what I would end up doing as an adult. I always figured it would be a little bit of this and a little bit of that, most likely while working a ‘normal’ job to pay the bills. Being an artist is not something that I was brought up believing could actually be a real job. I still don’t really consider myself an artist, but I really love when my husband see’s a drawing that I did with my daughter and say’s to her ‘Believe it or not your mom is the one in this house making a living as an artist.’ Lol.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
Oh my I love Los Angeles. I think it’s one of the best places in the world and it’s too bad that it can be so misunderstood. But showing people around LA and having them fall in love with it too is something that feels really special. All of my friends that have been out here love it now, even the die hard midwesterners, and if one of them were in town for the weekend I would head to the east side after picking them up from the airport and take them to Joy for dinner and then out for drinks at Block Party in Highland Park. In the morning we would pick up some coffee from Blue Bottle, hop in the line at Courage Bagels and then head over to Pt Dume in Malibu to lay on the beach for a bit and then hike up for some gorgeous views and dolphin spotting. Heading back to the east side we would pick up a pizza from Triple Beam, some wine from Cookbook, and probably just have a great al fresco dinner on our porch. One of my friends is the coordinator for American Cinematheque and they are always screening amazing films, so that might be in the cards followed by some late night House of Pie and coffee. Mmm what a perfect day. Sunday would be breakfast at Nicks Cafe downtown, followed by a hike at Griffith Park before heading back to the airport. Good food and lots of outdoor time is what LA is all about.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I would like to dedicate my shoutout to my friend Lisa Kepler who was the first person to see my work and want to hire me. If it wasn’t for her, I don’t think I would have ever plunked down the cash for a professional camera. She changed everything for me. It was because she hired me that I got another job and another and then another … and here we are today.

Website: http://www.juliepepin.com/blog/

Instagram: @juliepepinphoto