Luna Sweetheart: Sara Cronin
THE JOURNEY TO FINDING YOUR PURPOSE CAN BE A WHIRLWIND OF EMOTIONS — and a path of uncertainty. Like watching a new movie, you're dying to know how it ends, but you don't want to spoil it. You watch all the highs, lows, and unexpected turns. But once you get to the end, you realize it was worth it — the ending you hoped for. Or maybe an ending you didn't expect, but it is exactly where the universe wants you to be. And when you feel like there's more to be done, you've been on the journey of the sequel.
Living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Sara Cronin is a film photographer who focuses on portrait and landscape photography. Photographing for four years now, Cronin has already garnered the ability to create stories through her landscapes and has mastered how to make her models look and feel comfortable in front of the camera, no matter what walks of life you come from. She combines her love of travel with the art of photography to create beautifully vibrant landscapes with eye-catching saturation and portraits, showcasing models of different ethnicities and sizes.
Being a true creative at heart, Cronin takes us on a journey through her lens and takes her camera everywhere she goes. She has the talent of capturing the most simple views and turning them into the most memorable and vibrant moments.
Read below to get to know Sara Cronin and learn how she began her photography journey.
LUNA: Tell us about yourself, Sara.
CRONIN: So, I’m Sara Cronin, and I'm a photographer; I primarily do film. I do portraits and landscapes. I think overall as a person, I'm just very creative. I love to do anything creative! I love to travel a lot too, so that pairs really well with photography because I just love to take my camera with me no matter where I go. So I feel like I'm always traveling, always taking pictures. Hobby-wise, I love to play piano and stuff like that. I have two jobs right now. I work at a coffee shop in my hometown. I do marketing and communications for them and I love doing it! I'm also a film lab technician. I love that too because I can develop film and stuff. So yeah, that's me right now in life. Just traveling, taking pictures, and having fun (laughs).
LUNA: How did your journey with photography begin?
CRONIN: I didn't start photography until I got into college. When I graduated high school, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. So I went to school for nursing, which is so wild (laughs). I just had no idea what I wanted to do and I felt like I had to please a lot of the people around me, and I just felt pressured that I needed something for my future. I felt like I needed to decide something for my future self and needed to set myself up for success and have a good job. So I went to nursing school. And I was there a little bit and I just remember one day my professor was like, “If this is not for you and you can't picture yourself here, you need to leave now,” and I asked myself, “What am I doing here?” as I was literally sitting in class. I started to think, “How did I allow myself to get here?”
And like I said before, I've always been creative. So I finished the semester off, transferred schools, changed my major, and I went for photojournalism. I had to buy my first camera for school. I'd never had a camera before. I just never thought I had the eye for photography or could be a photographer. But my one professor in particular, she caught on very quickly. I'm very grateful to her. She saw something in me that I had never seen in myself. She recognized right away that I could be a photographer so she pushed me to challenge myself. In school, we had to do black and white film photography. I've had just one professor while I was taking photo classes but I feel like I owe everything to her because I was just in a really weird spot in life where I didn't think I would be successful, but she pushed me. So I ended up taking five-plus classes with her, and they weren't even counted towards my degree. But she just really taught me a lot of things and taught me how photography can be an art form and things like that. So transferring schools ended up working out really well. I really fell in love with being in the darkroom!
LUNA: You have a very vibrant portfolio! What inspires you?
CRONIN: I feel like a lot of different things inspire me. I get a lot of inspiration from a lot of photographers, and I still feel very new to everything. Since I started in college, I don't know why, but sometimes I feel like I'm behind. I just kind of wish that I had gotten into it sooner because I just have this new appreciation for it. I love getting inspiration from people and other photographers. Even other people on Instagram. Growing up, I would always be drawn to photography in museums. So just going to museums and seeing other photographers’ work. I remember when I went to New York City with my best friend. This was right after I switched my major. I went to the Modern Museum of Art and Stephen Shore had a display there of all his photographs. I was so new to photography at the time, and for whatever reason I was just really drawn to his work. I thought it was so inspiring how he could take the normal things of life and just make them cool! He was one of the first color photographers I liked, and I just thought it was really cool to see how he used that in his work. Also, people on Instagram and going outside inspires me. Just looking around and seeing what I can find and trying to make it into something that's memorable. So I just constantly keep my eyes open for things like that.
LUNA: What made you choose landscape and portrait photography?
CRONIN: I don't know, I think landscape really surprised me because I never thought I could be a landscape photographer. But after going to college, I would have classes where we would sit down and literally just go through slideshows of photographers' work and it would always be landscapes, and the whole class would analyze them. I just don't think a lot of people realize how important composition is and how to tell a story in a landscape. So that always really intrigued me. And I want to be able to have that eye. So that's kind of how I got into landscape photography. Like I said before, it was combining my love for travel and then adding the photography part to it. So it's like a way to capture memories and also have the photography part, which I think is really special. Then with portraiture, I just felt like I've always loved taking pictures of my friends, and it kind of just expanded from that. I've always been camera shy, so I'm always the one taking pictures of my friends, even if it's on my iPhone. It just went from there. I'd tell my friends, “Hey, I just got a camera! Can you model for me?” From there, I started branching out to models and working with other people. I ended up liking this too, so it worked really well. I love doing both in their own way. It's a good time (laughs).
LUNA: What message, emotions, or story do you hope to portray in your work?
CRONIN: I think something I've always wanted to focus on is just making sure people that I work with feel like they can be a model. I don't know if that's a particular message. But I just think it's really important for everyone to feel comfortable because I think sometimes, certain people feel like they can't be a model because they're not tall enough, skinny, six feet tall, and white and blonde. I want everyone to feel like they can be a part of something. And people are so creative. I just love giving people a collaborative element to make them shine and let their personality shine. Photography is fun for me, but it's also fun to collaborate with other people and really bring their personalities out. So I tried to highlight them. That's my goal when I'm photographing. I hope it does. I want people to feel like they can step in front of my camera and feel fully confident … just seeing them valued for who they are.
LUNA: What advice would you give to photographers looking for their style of photography?
CRONIN: I think maybe not to look too much into what other people are doing. Because I think that's something I did for a long time. I would hear from my other peers on YouTube or Instagram, “You need to find your own style,” and I would also question what that meant. So for a long time, I would just copy what a lot of other people were doing. And this was before I even got an Instagram or any of that. I wasn't sharing my work just because I was trying to find my footing and my style. I was just seeing a lot of what the other photographers that inspired me were doing. I was trying to edit my photos to look like theirs. I was getting frustrated because it wasn't me, it wasn't lining up. It wasn't making me necessarily stand out.
So I think my advice would just be to think about what you're passionate about and what you feel like lines up with you and just go with it. It's super cliche to just say don't look at what other people are doing and copy them, but I mean that's really how you have to do it. You have to see what makes you just take pictures of what you love and what you like. And then eventually it'll happen. I was just going on photo walks for hours by myself with my camera. I would walk miles, like, no joke (laughs). Miles and miles, just by myself taking pictures that I never shared online. I just use that time to figure out things that I like and what I didn't like. I think that worked really well. Because I think if I had an Instagram at that time and if I was seeing that my photos aren't getting any likes, or this photo is getting like 100 likes within this one, it would have messed up with how I viewed myself at the time. So I think my advice would just be to stay low and do whatever you can to work on it yourself. Because it is your work. It's not everyone else's work. Everyone shouldn't have to decide what's good and what's not. You are the ultimate judge and you just have to be confident in that.
LUNA: What brings you joy?
CRONIN: Oh my gosh, I love this question! I think for me, it's literally just spending time with two of my best friends or spending time with my family — that's really it. I enjoyed spending time with the people I love. As long as they're around me, anything and any day is a joyful day. So I just really love being with them. I'm the type of person who loves to spend quality time with people. So as long as they're around, I have joy! Also just by doing the small things… I’m very much the type of person who truly appreciates the small things, even if it's just going on a lot of walks by myself, and we'll just be in the middle of nowhere — that brings me true joy. I like living life slowly. I don't even know if that makes sense (laughs). But the smallest things matter because you never know when certain things could happen. I feel like my whole life is just taking things slow and just appreciating every little moment because those are the moments that matter. And just some random things that bring me joy like movies and music, just stuff like that makes me feel really good.
LUNA: Any upcoming projects?
CRONIN: I don't have anything major coming up. In a week or two, I'm going to New York City to visit my best friend who just moved there. So I'm gonna be doing some shoots up there, which I think will be fun. Then right after that, I'm going to be on this week-long trip up to New England for the landscape photography side of me. So we're driving up to Maine and back. I think that'd be beautiful. My birthday is the 15th of October, and I think it'll be nice since it's fall and all the leaves will be beautiful. It'll be such a good time! I'm excited about both of those trips. But other than that, nothing huge or major that I'm working on.
LUNA: Where do you see yourself (or your work) five years from now?
CRONIN: I find something new about myself every day! I feel like I don't even know how to explain this without it sounding negative, but I feel like I'm never fully satisfied with my work. Not in a terrible way, but I just feel like I'm always growing with each shoot I do. I always say, "I did this a little bit better than I did last time!" Or "Oh, I like this just a little bit better than last time!" So I think that's part of the fun. It's almost not really knowing because, like I said before, I've only been doing this for like four years now. So I feel like five years from now, it’ll be nine years of me doing photography. So I would hope that I'm still staying true to myself, which is just making sure that all the people I work with feel like they can trust me and work with me without feeling like they're held back or anything like that. So yeah, I hope that all stays true. But I think that's part of just finding myself. As each year goes by, I see improvement. I just feel happy with where I'm at. It's fun not knowing in a way because it's like whenever you're watching movies if the end of it is spoiled then it's not as good. So that's how I kind of view my life. I don't want my ending to be spoiled. I don't want to make a specific point. I don't want to say five years from now I want to be photographing famous people. I want to just work as hard as I can now and I'm sure I'll be happy with the work that I'm producing in the future. So I don't have anything in mind where I'm like, I need to be here. I think it's just in time, and I think it'll all work out how it needs to.
LUNA: Question for fun: You can only shoot with one camera for the rest of your life, what camera would it be?
CRONIN: I don't know, because I haven't used too many cameras to be honest (laughs). I only have two that I work with. I have a 35-millimeter camera. It's a Canon EOS 650, I believe. I think I would choose that one. My grandma gave it to me so it has some sentimental value. And then I have a 120-millimeter. It's an RZ, which I really like too. But I think I would choose the little Canon camera because it was my grandma's. She wasn't a photographer or anything. She just got it after she retired to try to be a photographer, but she gave up and she found it one day. She was like, “Sara, do you want this?" and I was like, "Sure!" It's such a good camera and it's never failed me. I've had it for nearly four years now. It does a really good job, and it's never failed me yet. I just really like it because it's easy to use. It has a light meter inside. So you don't have to do that part yourself, which saves time. And so it's good with models when you're working really fast. It's super lightweight so I bring it when I'm traveling versus my other camera that's kind of heavy. So I think I choose that one just because I haven't shot other film cameras — I just love that one guy. It'll carry me through (laughs).
CONNECT WITH SARA CRONIN
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RT @oliviaborch: new @LunaCollective out todayyy shot by @alltookev ✨ @P1H_official editorial design by me ! https://t.co/cvSCKsWB5D
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RT @rlyblonde: @AnnieDirusso for @LunaCollective shot by me #35mm #portra800 https://t.co/0UUJSCBGcH