Today we’d like to introduce you to Mason and Savannah Summers.
Mason and Savannah, please kick things off for us by telling us about yourself and your journey so far.
My husband and I met in college at the University of Maryland, he graduated from Architecture school, and I graduated with a Broadcast Journalism degree. After he graduated and while I was still in school, we both started shooting weddings. The job market in 2008 was awful, and a lot of our peers started getting freelance and part-time jobs. It definitely wasn’t as common of a thing to work several jobs on the east coast as it is for people here in LA, but we did it so we could continue to shoot and build our portfolio. He worked for a major DC photographer and videographer for a few years, as did I, but we started getting requests for just the two of us. For about four years we photographed and filmed weddings on the side around the DC-Maryland-Virginia area.
We had always loved to travel, and we had an itch to move. We shot a wedding out here in LA, and after that, we couldn’t shake it. We up and left everything, moved to an old but super charming one-bedroom Echo Park apartment with our little pup, Penny Lane, and decided to rebrand our business and give it a go full-time. This was in 2014. I worked for an amazing Interior Designer for a couple of years, shooting on weekends, while my husband Mason built the business side of things. After two years out here, we were so busy we decided to take the scariest leap, and both go all in and work full time for our company. It was the most terrifying thing, but we have been so so lucky with all the people we’ve met and couples who have allowed us to share in the most beautiful day of their lives. We now live in a little bungalow in Pasadena and work from home creating and editing during the week and shooting on the weekends.
A lot of people don’t perceive wedding photography and videography as art. In LA, it’s almost as if people in the photo and film industry find it as a last resort when you can’t make it anywhere else, but that’s completely untrue. We’ve never tried to make it anywhere else because our heart is in telling the story of these couples who have decided to share their lives together, and not to be corny, but honestly what better art is there than the expression of love? Isn’t that one of the main inspirations for all art? Finding love, seeking love…
Anyway, we just honestly find so much purpose in meeting couples, capturing their wedding day, and telling their story so that in years to come it can serve as a goal to always aim for more in your relationship and to also inspire other people to know that love can be so sweet if we open ourselves to it.
Can you give our readers some background on your art?
We create wedding films. We love to learn about people, about couples and aim to tell their love stories by highlighting moments from their wedding day. Every couple is different, and every couple’s story is different. Regardless of who you are, what age you are when you get married, or where you’ve been, the story is about how you found each other, what you mean to each other, and where you want your future to go with one another. That’s what we try to grasp in our work.
We do it because we truly feel love is the largest expression of art in the world. It’s what inspires everyone, and it’s what inspires us every day. It brings us together in our marriage, and we always hope capturing couple’s wedding days will remind them years later what they once had while going through rough times and how much they’ve grown through good times. The power of commitment is something we feel is taken for granted in our culture, and that inspires us to continue doing what we do. Also, we just love working with each other 🙂
In your view, what is the biggest issue artists have to deal with?
One of the biggest challenges facing artists today is something I think has always been a challenge since forever, but it’s just coming out in different forms in our culture, and that’s finding your value and worth outside the means of what most people see in the word “success” or “successful.” In yesterday’s culture, it was mostly just feeling valued in what you produce and not always making a buck from it. I don’t think true artists do it for the money, but it’s always that struggle of wanting to feel creative and produce from your heart, and that may not always, in turn, lead to financial success. And that’s okay. It’s always going to be a constant struggle for artists- the monetary side of things. You feel you have to sell out in a way to become financially successful unless you’ve had the largest stroke of luck. But we truly feel if you work hard and passionately love what you do, it works out. This doesn’t mean you don’t have to work random jobs you don’t like in order to pay bills because we have both truly been there. In order to get our business started, my husband taught at a private school making pennies, and I worked at a bagel shop. But we learned things during that time, and it stretched us. We’re always so grateful for the work we’ve been given and that we’ve been able to do what we love and not be in debt. In today’s culture, I think it’s mostly Instagram and social media. While it’s a double-edged sword of good and bad, it’s just something we feel in a way is destroying art if we’re all not careful with how we use it. When it’s all about followers, it makes you feel like you’re just a number. I think we all as artists can agree it’s deteriorating the value of things in a way. So we’ve tried to find a good balance of allotting time for marketing and allotting time for creating fresh things without any intention of posting or “getting likes” because we never want it to be about that.
What’s the best way for someone to check out your work and provide support?
IG: @anchor.pictures
Website: anchor-pictures.com
Blog: https://anchor-pictures.com/blog/
Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/anchorpictures1
People can support our work just by watching our films! Also, tell all your engaged friends about us!
Contact Info:
- Website:Â https://anchor-pictures.com/
- Phone:Â 2135348634
- Email:Â [email protected]
- Instagram:Â @anchor.pictures
- Facebook:Â https://www.facebook.com/anchorpictures
- Other:Â https://vimeo.com/anchorpictures1
Image Credit:
Image of Mason and Savannah by The Gathering Season (Kat & Leo Evidente)
Mason and Savannah Summers
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