Photographic Collective Podcast feat. Charmi Pena and Miles Witt Boyer

Episode 9 // Setting Better Boundaries
Miles Witt Boyer sits down with Charmi Patel Pena. Charmi is a world renowned wedding and portrait photographer specializing in multicultural and specifically Indian weddings living in New Jersey. Her work is vivid, bold, and compositionally dynamic but alongside being a Nikon Ambassador, educator, and photographer she is also a mom and wife struggling to juggle the pressures of living in both worlds. This episode is all about the lessons she has learned after a year dealing with the Covid-19 Pandemic as a mom and business owner and how setting boundaries around her professional life is letting her be more present at home and more creative at work.
It's a huge honor to have candid conversations like this with photographer I so respect but the ultimate goal of this podcast is to educate and Charmi is an absolute class act at giving us all nuggets of wisdom she's picked up on how important it can be to not simply be an artist, but to respect your art and photography enough to put parameters around it. I think you'll enjoy the conversation and as always I'd love to hear your thoughts over on instagram @mileswittboyer or in my inbox [e-mail] or check in at www.mileswittboyer.com
Follow Charmi Patel Pena at @charmipenya on instagram or at her website www.charmipena...

[@highdesert-boy]

Great interview! Very interested in hearing her talk about her culture so nonchalantly, almost as if she isn't entirely clear why that "loud love" (great term!) and chaos that is normal for her is confusing for others. Now I want to know how she gets what look like very composed images from the chaos. Is it her "cultural eye", for lack of a better term, that instinctively finds the moments? Are the moments that she shows singled out of a bazillion others that are blurs of motion and emotion?

[@mileswittboyer.photoco]

Oh I so agree. I was trying to get at that question but the truth is I think she is really just both that good and that in control. Charmi has this presence to her that really absorbs the chaos and organizes it and yet I’m not totally sure she even sees that. I think he work is really a beautiful mix of how organized she keeps it and when she lets the reins out a bit.