Amy Pearson

Women's Festival Pacific Northwest storyteller and photographer

Stories are compelling. They’re what move hearts and shape the world. They’re what make you love people and brands and products. And the stories we tell ourselves are the most important of all.

As a photographer, Amy refers to herself simply as a storyteller. She loves digging in and finding out what makes people who and what they are, but the art of interesting portrait photography means she must set aside much of her personal interpretation of the world and instead try to see it through the eyes of her subjects, allowing them to bring to the lens what they believe both about themselves and values they represent. She believes it’s the melding of their views and hers that make these portraits unique.

“It’s this curiosity about the collaboration of views that makes me ask questions, and ultimately shapes the way I frame subjects when I shoot, and it dictates how I light them. Photo shoots are all about the conversation, and capturing that “it” thing in the lens that tells as much as possible, that shouts ‘this is real’ and forces people to respond,” says Pearson. “This is my craft. And it’s the ever-changing nature as the flood of people come and go in my life that compels me to keep shooting, and to keep learning, and to capture the ‘now moment’ as truthfully as possible.”

Amy’s Project During the day…
Story Portraits

Amy is both a writer and a photographer. For this event, she’ll be exploring both written and visual storytelling and how it fits into our culture: how people think, establish values, and develop culture based on the stories they see and share. She’ll lead us through an individual study on the story we’re each telling ourselves and how that story impacts our interactions with others.