Exclusive Interview With Ruth Chornolutskyy

It’s an honor to speak with you today. Why don’t you give us some details about you and your story. How did you get to where you are today?
Thank you. I’m a photographer and digital artist and I have a particular passion for fairytale photography and creative portraiture. I’ve always been quite a creative person. As a child I loved drawing and painting. I also enjoyed reading stories and fairytales. I was a dancer throughout my childhood and I think the lines and shapes the body can make are very beautiful, and through dance and music you can portray so much emotion and really tell a story. Later in life, I found the same enjoyment in photography and digital art, as it is about creativity, composition, shapes, use of light, emotion and stories. I began the photographic business “RR Photographic” with my husband Russ about four years ago. About a year into my photography journey, I began the creative portraiture and fairytale style which you can see today on my Instagram and social media. Creative editing is always a big part of my work. It lets me use my imagination like I did as a child. With Photoshop I can create a vision I have in my head, (which perhaps I don’t have the resources to put together at the time of the shoot), or it allows me to simply exaggerate what is there in reality and create mood and atmosphere in post-production. I enjoy styling and do put a lot of planning into my photoshoots. Whilst I get as much information as possible in the initial RAW photo, I see that as my blank canvas which I can then enhance with editing and take in different directions. I find photography and digital art very inspiring and it’s a constant learning experience and my style and techniques change over time.

I’m sure your success has not come easily. What challenges have you had to overcome along the way?
My main problem at the moment is that there are not enough hours in the day! I am a wife and mum to two little boys, I also work as a solicitor in corporate and commercial law with law firm Lester Aldridge LLP, I run the photography business and I also run styled photography workshops through Enchanted Evermore www.enchantedevermore.com. I have so many big plans for the future and things I want to do to develop my photography business and so many places I want to go, but just sometimes it’s hard to fit everything in! Unfortunately, I lost my mum about three years ago to cancer and that was a very hard period of my life. I actually found photography very therapeutic in the period leading up to her death and certainly after, as it gave me a bit of escapism and enabled me to just put my mind into creating something beautiful and not focus on the horrible things going on. Life can be very cruel at times. My father went abroad shortly after my mum’s death so I have no family here now and my husband’s family lives in the Ukraine. That can make things tricky with juggling all our commitments and all the things we want to do around our family commitments, particularly while our boys are still so young. We always find a way to do the things we want to do though. Like most people, I think I am my own worst critic. I will usually like a photo I’ve created for about 24 hours and then I’ll start seeing lots of little things about it that I don’t like or wish I would have done differently! However, overall, I’m proud of the work I’ve created and I use the things I don’t like in my work as motivation to learn and improve constantly. I actually hope that in a year’s time I’ll not like the work I’m doing now as that means I’ll be a year further forward and producing better work! I enjoy experimenting and trying new things with my work. I think we are all on a constant big learning curve in life and that keeps things interesting.

What’s your best piece of advice for readers who desire to find success in their life?
I would say that if you have something you want to achieve, then just go for it. Don’t sit and think about it forever as if you sit for too long you’ll never actually do it. Don’t doubt yourself, I always think it’s better to try and fail than not try at all. I would strongly recommend networking and building relationships with other people in your field as this can open so many doors and lead to many new opportunities.

Speaking of success, what does the word mean to you?
For me, success is achieving happiness and fulfilment. It is about living comfortably, enjoying my life together with the people I love, working and spending time with fantastic people and feeling satisfied when I go to sleep at night! Watching my mum lose her life at a fairly young age when she still had so much to give really hit home for me on what is actually important. I have big ambitions and a lot of plans for the future and it would certainly be a bonus to achieve all of those, but ultimately, I will consider my life to have been successful if it’s been a happy one!

What’s next for you?
As you know I love creative editing and I have a lot of people asking me how I edit and can I teach them my ‘style’ of photography and editing. I therefore plan to create some photography and editing tutorials and digital products in the very near future. I love to teach and share knowledge and it will be a real pleasure to teach people who are passionate about photography and editing about my thought processes and techniques in Photoshop and Lightroom and how I create a photo from the planning and styling stage to the final edit. I am self-taught in photo editing and quite experimental, so many of the techniques I use are my own way of doing things! I like to use overlays a lot in my work and I already create some of my own overlays so I plan to put together some packages and show how I apply them in my work. If, like me, you enjoy digital art and creative editing, the editing process is very exciting as you can take a photo in so many different styles and directions. Your imagination is really your limit!

Finally, how can people connect with you if they want to learn more?
You can find me on most social media platforms, but Instagram under @RRPhotographic is probably the best place to get in touch with me (and that also has my Linktree to all my various pages and resources).