Alena Heath

Tell us a little bit about yourself.
I am ASH, a digital designer and photographer. I am also a moderator for IGBoston, an Instagram hub for Boston and the surrounding region. My handle @burnASHburn comes from my initials and serves as a constant reminder to myself to keep my passion for creativity & life always burning. I have a constant need to explore, whether that’s ideas, places, or people. Learning, discovering and understanding (a.k.a. curiosity) is what fuels that passion. The quote in my profile from Dorthy Parker says it best.

When did you realize your passion for photography?
I have always been fascinated with images – beginning with drawing and painting from a young age – to every art & craft in between. I was that teenage girl with her bedroom wall covered floor to ceiling with photos of my friends, pictures from family vacations and magazine images that caught my eye. Back then, I would mostly just use cheap disposable cameras, but I also got an old film SLR from my dad that I would experiment with, along with a Polaroid camera.

I got more serious about photography in college, after I studied design fundamentals such as composition, color theory, scale etc. and found myself in an introductory digital photography course, which just happened to be mandatory for my major. I really took to the class and found photography coming very naturally to me. The feeling of true passion for photography came once I got more immersed into photo manipulation and editing; I realized I could finally create the images I would see in my head but could never bring to life with pen/brush & paper with the kind of power I wanted. Photography allowed me to do that for the first time.

What is your advice to aspiring photographers on Instagram?
Don’t feel like you have to do whatever the photography trend of the moment is….or do! Bottom line is do you. Try out different things and notice which things you are gravitating towards, both in terms of the subject of your photos and the methods & techniques that you use to create them. The magic of your own style will come out in it’s own way and it is different for each person. Keep exploring whatever you feel drawn to. Look for others who are excelling at that and learn from them, but don’t compare yourself directly to them. The awesome thing about photography is how anyone can take a picture, but everyone’s perspective is unique, making the results so diverse. Cultivate your own unique thing! That’s what makes the Instagram community so rich, it’s that diversity. Without it every thing would start to look the same and how boring would that be?!

Anything else you’d like to share?
Instagram politics can be daunting at times, but at the end of the day it comes down to the work. If you produce photography that you enjoy, that’s all that really matters at the end of the day! 🙂

Instagram: @burnashburn | Website: burnashburn.com