Meet This Week's Judge: Bjorna Hoen

This week, we have Bjorna of Bjorna Hoen Photography with us. Her talent for finding glorious pockets of light make her the perfect judge for this week's theme. Read more here:

1.   Tell us about yourself...

I’m a Dutch (born and raised) girl who fell in love with an American boy and shortly after that followed him to the US. We are now married, with two awesome littles, a 3,5 yr old girl and an 18 month old little boy. I’m a natural light lifestyle photographer located in Southern California.
My heart gets happy from spending time with my kids, the ocean/beach, drawing, art, sunshine, being in nature, snuggling, good conversations with friends, family, welcoming babies into the world (I’m a birth doula too) beautiful light and photography.

What ignited your passion for photography, and what fuels it now?

     I’ve always been fascinated by photography, but I never thought I could actually do it as a job so I never really gave it the attention it should have gotten. When I was pregnant with my son I decided to take it serious and really learn my camera, so I did, I became obsessed and I still am.

Photography is so much more for me than my passion, I need it to be happy, it makes me appreciate life and the silly things my kids do so much more.

My daughter and my son are the ones that fuel my passion; I want to capture their childhood for them (and for me) as best as I can.

       What's in your camera bag right now, what do use the most? the least?

Nikon D600, Nikon F100 (film camera), Instax mini, 50mm 1.4, 35mm 1.4 and a speedlight.. I would like to say I use my d600 the most but it’s been more in repair at Nikon than in my bag so lately I use my instax and my film camera a lot. I don’t use film for client sessions yet but hope to do so in the future one day. I rarely use my speedlight, but I have it for when I shoot births and there is almost zero light or bad lighting.

     What's your dream project or shoot?

My dream is to get more into documentary photo journalism, it would be a dream to be invited to another country and do a documentary on how people/families live there or on the circumstances people give birth in other countries especially third world countries and help raise awareness. I love traveling and I am fascinated by different cultures so that would be awesome.

     What is the biggest challenge you face as a photographer?

Self-doubt, I stopped comparing myself to other photographers because you don’t get anything out of that except more self-doubt.

If you had $500 to spend on photography...

How should you spend it? 

I should save it for a Nikon 4D and a new Imac

How do you wish you could spend it? 

I wish I could buy some more film camera’s to play with.

How would you really spend it? 

Probably towards a nice photography workshop.

Is there any one thing you wish someone had told you at the very beginning of your photography journey?

That rules aren’t everything, yes I guess you should know them before to break them as they say, but the emotion in a photo is so much more important than rules. A photo that is perfect technically doesn’t mean it does something for you or for others. I really need to keep reminding myself this constantly, because it happens still way too much that I say ‘no’ to a photo because the focus isn’t spot on or the colors aren’t perfect and so on.