I’ve been playing around with cameras my whole life. I always had an eye for finding “the moment” and found that the art of photography was something that inspired me. I shot for a few newspapers and took photos of friends for fun, but never took my skill very seriously as anything more.

I moved into a new apartment and wanted something to decorate the bare walls. So, I took the backing and glass out of a picture frame and made some friends pose for photos. They loved the pictures. I loved the pictures. I named the project “Friends in a Frame” and began sharing the portrait project on Facebook, and just kept shooting.

I disciplined myself to shoot consistently for an entire summer. 3 months later, I’d done 100 shoots, become a better photographer and had built a project people were begging to be part of. I stumbled into a freelance photography business.

Soon, I was booking portrait and family sessions, covering events and licensing my work for use on websites and publications. Less than a year later, I’ve been published all over the place online, in major magazines and even a book. 

None of that would have happened had I not stepped up and taken the Friends in a Frame concept seriously, stuck with it and shaken my concept of how photography fit into my life.

I freelance when I want to and have plenty of decoration for my apartment. Not too bad for a kid with a camera.

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Becky Johns is a communicator, storyteller, blogger, photographer and media maker. By day, she’s part of the Agency Public Relations team at Cramer-Krasselt in Chicago. In her spare time, she’s a freelance photographer, creator of the Friends in a Frame project and has had portrait work published in Entrepreneur Magazine, Advertising Age, PR Week, a book and across the internet. She carries a camera everywhere she goes.