A career as a photographer was not something Lara Hotz considered when she was growing up. Her life seemed set to follow painting as a creative direction. “I was always ‘Lara, the talented painter,’” she says. Hotz studied painting and drawing at the College of Fine Arts (COFA), completing a Bachelor of Fine Arts. However, photography had been a lifelong interest. Her father was a keen photographer and passed on the passion for photography. “Growing up I always had a film camera with me pretty much everywhere I went: I documented everything.”
The switch from painter to photographer resulted from what Hotz describes as an increasing frustration with the medium of painting. “I had visions in my head of what I wanted my paintings to look like, but while creating them I could never quite get it right,” she explains. Photography offered her the chance to produce the artistic results she desired.
Her entry into wedding photography came about almost by accident. “I got a phone call from an event planner I knew. A photographer she had booked pulled out of a function at the last minute.” Hotz says she did not even have a digital camera, but that was not a problem: “The payment for the job was enough to buy myself a Canon 30D and a 17-85mm and flash. I bought all the gear and shot the entire event on automatic; I was petrified for the entire job. But it turned out great!”
Now a full-time professional wedding photographer, Hotz sees her role as bringing inspiration and originality to every wedding she shoots. “Each wedding is an individual project. They are all unique and different,” she says.
Hotz was runner-up, in the wedding category, in Australia’s Top Emerging Photographers competition in 2014.
