The Winding Road to the Perfect Shot: A Photographer’s Guide to Honoring Burnout, Capturing Moments, and Finding Your Way to Food
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In the creative world, we often imagine a career path as a straight, upward trajectory. But for many of the most talented and resilient artists, the journey is a winding road, full of unexpected pivots, brave leaps of faith, and seasons of rest that ultimately lead to the most fulfilling destinations. This is the beautiful, inspiring story of Nashville-based food and lifestyle photographer Rebecca Denton.
On a recent episode of the
Style to Set podcast, host Callie Blount sat down with her dear friend Rebecca to unravel a career path that has moved gracefully from English teacher to photojournalist, from preschool teacher to sought-after wedding photographer, and finally, into the vibrant world of commercial food photography. Rebecca’s journey is a masterclass in listening to your inner voice, honoring burnout, and discovering how every seemingly unrelated experience can weave together to create a unique and powerful artistic perspective. Her story is a testament to the idea that sometimes, the most scenic route is the best way to get where you’re meant to be.
From English Teacher to Photojournalist: The First Pivot
Rebecca’s road to photography was anything but direct. She began her professional life as an English major, a practical choice encouraged by parents who viewed an artistic career as less than viable. Though she always loved photography, she followed her degree into a job as a high school English teacher in inner-city Arkansas. The experience was tough. “It was very, it was rough, it was difficult,” she recalls. “And I just thought, I just, I don't wanna do this”.
Honoring that feeling, she pivoted, leveraging her English and journalism background to become a writer for newspapers. But the love for photography never faded. She took a class and had a profound realization: “This is really what I wanna do with my life”. Lacking a formal photography degree, she took an unconventional route to make her dream a reality. While working her day job as a writer, she spent her nights job-shadowing the photographers at the newspaper, learning the art of photojournalism through hands-on experience. Her dedication paid off, and she eventually worked her way into a full-time photojournalist position, a job that took her to newspapers in three different states. Her first love was photojournalism, a field that would lay the foundation for her incredible ability to tell a story and capture a fleeting moment.
The Preschool Years: A Season of Rest and Organic Growth
After moving to Tennessee for her husband’s job, Rebecca’s career took another turn. She worked as a writer and editor for
The Tennessean and a magazine, but after a while, she found herself feeling deeply burnt out. More than that, she felt a powerful pull to be with her two young children. “There's nothing wrong with that,” she says of working and using daycare, “but for me, I just thought there has to be something different”.
In a move that her husband and others thought was crazy, she left her comfortable editing job and took a position as a preschool teacher at the school her children attended. This pivot wasn’t about climbing a career ladder; it was about honoring her needs as a mother and creating space in her life. The job gave her more time with her kids, summers off for travel, and most importantly, the mental bandwidth to figure out her next move.
It was in this no-pressure environment that her love for photography was rekindled in its purest form. She started taking pictures of the children in her class, not for money, but simply because she loved to do it. “I wanna take pictures of these beautiful children in front of me,” she remembers thinking. “Not for anything, just because I'm, they're beautiful, I'm enjoying them”.
What happened next was completely organic. Parents saw the beautiful, authentic moments she was capturing and started asking her to photograph their families. She began practicing, building a portfolio before she started charging, and her side hustle grew until she couldn’t do both jobs anymore. She took another leap of faith and launched her full-time family photography business. All of her past experiences—her photojournalism background for storytelling and her teaching experience for being comfortable with the chaos of children—came together in a way she never could have planned.
From Weddings to Weekends: Another Shift to Honor Family
Rebecca’s family photography business quickly evolved into shooting weddings, a genre that felt like a natural fit for her photojournalistic style. She loved it and was very well-suited for it, building a successful career as a full-time wedding photographer for many years. But once again, the demands of the job began to clash with her desire to be present for her family.
“I kind of looked up and my kids were growing up and then I was like, where am I on weekends and nights?” she reflects. “Not at home with them”. The wedding industry requires a life planned a year or two in advance, with nearly every weekend booked. She realized that this wasn’t the life she wanted anymore. So, for the third time in her career, she honored that feeling of burnout and began planning another pivot—this time, into the world of food photography.
The Leap into Food: More Scared of Not Trying Than of Failing
The seed for food photography was planted when Rebecca saw the work of Ditte Isager, the photographer for Gwyneth Paltrow’s cookbooks. She was captivated by the gorgeous, film-like quality of the food and lifestyle images and felt a strange pull. “I just thought, wow, that feels like I wish I could do that,” she recalls.
As she transitioned out of weddings, a process that took a couple of years, she began to explore food photography on her own. She started from scratch, taking a lot of “really bad photos at first”. Her first attempt was a bowl of chili, which she now knows is a notoriously difficult subject, shot in her garage with less-than-ideal lighting. She admits to feeling the fear of starting over, of having to go through the humbling process of taking terrible pictures again in pursuit of good ones.
But her desire to do it was stronger than her fear of failing. “More than being scared, I wanted to do it,” she says. She dove in headfirst, taking online classes, hiring a business mentor, and doing shoots for free to practice and build her confidence. Her story is a powerful testament to the idea that our work is always a process of growth, and it’s never too late to humbly start again.
The Santa Hand Billboard: A Lesson in Last-Minute Magic
Every creative has a story about a last-minute, high-pressure request that turns into something unexpectedly wonderful. For Rebecca, it was the Santa hand. She was at the end of a long day shooting for a hotel restaurant when the client asked for one more shot, something that wasn't on the original shot list: an image to promote their upcoming "Tea with Santa" event.
The request was a photographer’s nightmare. In a dark restaurant, they wanted the food and beverage manager to wear a Santa suit arm with a white glove, hold a cookie over a plate, and have a shiny, reflective teapot next to it. It was a complex lighting challenge. With the help of her assistant, umbrellas, and reflectors, she pulled it off. A couple of weeks later, the chef texted her: “Hey, your photo's on a billboard at Fifth and Broadway”. It wasn’t one of the beautifully planned hero shots from the day; it was the last-minute, slightly strange Santa hand image. It was her first-ever billboard, a hilarious and humbling reminder that you just never know which shot will be the shot.
From Freelance to Full-Time: Lessons from a National Brand
After a decade of freelance life, Rebecca once again felt the pull for a change. This time, she craved the stability of a set schedule that would allow her to have her nights and weekends free for her family. This desire led her to a full-time photographer position at the iconic Southern brand, Cracker Barrel.
Working for a major national brand was a huge and valuable learning experience. She was immersed in a large-scale production environment with a full team, including producers, a digital tech, prop stylists, and, for the first time, a team of dedicated food stylists. She also worked alongside a culinary team responsible for ensuring every dish met the brand’s strict standards, down to the exact number of green beans a customer would receive.
The single biggest takeaway from her nearly three years at Cracker Barrel was the immense value of planning. On these large shoots, every detail was meticulously planned, every person knew their role, and every shot was mapped out. This level of pre-planning and communication, she says, is the difference between a “lovely shoot or a train wreck”. Now at her new role at Delta Digital, which produces content for sites like BudgetBytes.com, she’s taking that planning expertise and combining it with the creative freedom to have more input on the direction of each shot—a perfect synthesis of her corporate and freelance experiences.
The Definition of Beauty: Authenticity and Connection
After a career spent capturing moments, people, and food, what does beauty mean to Rebecca? Her answer has evolved over the years. “More and more now, for me, beauty is just like real and it's connection. It's authenticity,” she shares. “It's a little bit of imperfection. It's a feeling that you get with other people”.
For her, beauty isn’t a specific look; it’s a feeling of realness, of being seen, of connecting with another person. It is the authentic emotion that shines through when you guide a family into a real hug or a genuine laugh. It is the story told in a perfectly imperfect plate of food. It is the culmination of a long, winding journey that proves that every step, every pivot, and every moment of honoring your own truth ultimately leads to a place of profound and authentic beauty.
