Interview with Marie O'Mahony, Photographer

In August when I was in Ireland, I got a professional photographer to take some photos of me. This was a first for me. Always before now, I have done my own author photos by taking selfies, but Marie is an old friend of my friend Claire (author and audiobook narrator C.S.E. Cooney), and I had seen some gorgeous photos she’d done of Claire in the past, so I figured I should take advantage of the fact that I would be in the same country as she was.

Here's her official website, Marie O'Mahony Photography.

I’m just sharing the one photo on this post, but next week, I will share a couple more. This one was the one I ended up using the most recent time someone asked me for an author photo. I love the way Marie captured the colors of the flowers behind me in a way that feels both bright and understated, and I also love the way I am obviously thinking of something that amuses me in some way. That’s extremely true to my general outlook. All my life people around me have pulled me out of reveries to ask what I was laughing about, and usually my thoughts race by so fast I can’t even begin to explain!

You can also see that I have big dark bags under my eyes. This is because the photo session happened the day after WorldCon and right as I was coming down with a cold. Alas! One always hopes one will be glowing with healthful vigor when one has a photoshoot, but life doesn’t always cooperate. And, perhaps, another big factor is that I don’t really wear makeup much, so the small amount of lipstick I put on here was about as much as I knew how to do. Even that felt strange to me since I do it so infrequently! But I knew I wanted to have some chance of my lips matching my top, just for the sake of the color pop. I really love colorful things, as most anyone who has ever really met me can attest.

I’ll talk more about what the process was like next week in a paid subscribers only post, but for now, please enjoy the interview I did with Marie in which she talks about her journey as a photographer and gives a few tips for how to get started with photography for anyone who is interested, but has no idea where to start.

One of her big tips is to search for photography groups on Facebook! There are apparently a lot of them where people share knowledge. She also recommends taking online classes at Creative Live.