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

Hi Natasha, is there something that you feel is most responsible for your success?
The most important factor behind my success is trusting God and His plan for me. I know he gave me this talent for reason so ever since I got real serious about taking photos and wanting to make this a career, that was when I had to really put all my trust in God my career. Also, taking risks and getting out of my shell really helped me get the connections that I have had throughout my whole career.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
Everyones journey will be different in any profession that they plan to go on. My journey to get where I am today has never been easy. It has been a handful of trails and errors. Everything that I have been through has been worth it though. I would not be where I am today if it wasn’t for all the hard things I had to go through, they all taught me something that helped me become a better photographer. One thing I hated when I was in college was failing in anything but as I continued to keep going in my career I learned that the times that I “failed” at something was when I learn the most about myself and how to grow.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
A little back story, I attended an Arts school and majored in Digital Photography but within all the photography students, I was the only one that wanted to focus on mostly sports. Not even my professors knew the ins and outs of taking a good sports photo so it was hard to learn what I needed to learn to become the sports photographer I wanted to become. Also, going to a college that did not have any sports didn’t help either.

I was starting to get close to graduating, I knew I needed to get some more experience with photographing different sports. So I took a leap of faith and sent out a email to every university that I could think of in North Carolina. I got back from a few but that one person that got back to me that literally took me under his wing was Reagan Lunn at Duke University. Reagan is one of the head athletic photographers at Duke and he really gave me a chance to get experience photography sports at a D1 school . Ever since then he has always been that person that I can go to for advice and he has taught me so much about my craft. This industry is all about helping others and Regan is always down to help other photographers in this industry.

Website: nlssportphotos.com

Instagram: _youngtash

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natashaswanson/

Twitter: _youngtash

Image Credits
Taylor Banner, Reagan Lunn, Corrie Huggins

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