Hello, my name is Kortney Hinton and I love stories.
And not just your everyday, run-of-the-mill stories – I mean those stories that stick with you for the remainder of your days, those stories that haunt you in the most wonderful ways possible and have you recounting them to friends and strangers alike.
You may know me as the photographer of Kortney Hinton Images (why else would you be on this site, right?!) and I’ve held this role since 2011. It seems like the time has flown by since the first time I picked up my first “real” camera – an old film camera my mom got for me a few years before I decided to go into business and shoot professionally. I remember taking the camera with me different places and just started photographing any random thing that caught my eye.
The feeling of capturing different snippets of life happening all around me was so exhilarating!
It was one of the first times I truly remember “seeing,” in that I was able to capture the world as I a saw it through the lens of my camera in a creative way. Because the camera was film-based, not digital, I had to do my very best to take the right shot the first time around because there was no way for me to see it before I got the roll of film developed. Plus, I learned to be really intentional with each shot because there were only so many frames I could take on each roll before it had run out.
From then I was hooked. I knew that I wanted to take photographs for as long as I could.
As a writer – something I’ve been for most of my life – part of my job is to tell compelling stories to audiences, along with presenting messages to them in an interesting way. Naturally, when I found photography, it served as the visual form of my storytelling and message-giving. For me, this was life changing in that it expanded what I could do creatively and also directly impact someone else’s life.
Through my years in photography I’ve been able to document many stories of people, which has proven to be a great joy for me. It’s such a great chance to record what’s going on in that particular time in their lives – be it a wedding, a new baby, a high school senior on the brink of graduation, or the gathering of a family (for any reason under the sun). Each moment is precious and fleeting and I am honored to be able to capture them forever.
So what is your story? What’s on the inside of you that is just begging to be told to the world? Maybe your story isn’t asking for such a large audience – maybe it’s as small as expressing yourself to an audience of a few of your closest friends and family. Or just yourself.
No matter how ‘big’ or ‘small’ you feel your story may be, the fact remains: it is important and should be told.
