For Sarah Howard Gerber ‘10, photography has always been a risk.
She risks her health, money, and future security for the sake of recording untold stories and sharing them with the world.
From Berkley, Calif., Sarah’s love for photography and people is sending her all over the world as she pursues her dream to be both a photojournalist and a storyteller.
Beginning in her college years, Sarah Gerber explored many types of photography, working for the college’s External Affairs department, yearbook, and student newspaper. After graduating, she began working as photographer and registered her business, TWENTYTWENTY Studios.
“The first year was really starting out wide — seeing what sort of opportunities came up and what things really captured my interest,” Sarah Gerber said.
She photographed weddings, engagements, families, pregnancies, food, and events. During this time, she also discovered the capacity of her camera’s ability to capture high-definition video.
“I was captivated by the idea of using my photography eye for moving pictures as well,” Sarah Gerber said. “I hadn’t thought of it before how similar photography and moving pictures are. The combination of still and film photography to tell a story is what compelled me to pursue it more seriously.”
In 2011, Sarah Gerber realized she was not passionate about being a photographer for the sake of taking photographs.
“You have to go after your passions,” her husband Dave Gerber said. “This year, Sarah’s wondered what she is really passionate about.”
“I decided to take a step back and see what has emerged as most interesting to me because I knew that to be to be successful, I can’t do it all and I need to have a specialized focus on what I want to capture,” Sarah Gerber said.
“You have to run in the path of what brings excitement to you,” Dave Gerber said. “It’s definitely going to cost you, but that’s where you’re going to find yourself.”
As she reflected on her passions and photography, she realized that there are two aspects of photography that draw her interest. She loves the idea of capturing ethnic weddings and documenting and presenting stories that are not being told.
“Something that came up for me was the diversity of wedding traditions across cultures,” she said. “If I could do ethnic, cultural weddings, I would want to put everything I have into that. Whereas if I was doing traditional weddings, it wouldn’t have the same passion or pull.”
Along with working to build her business as an ethnic wedding photographer, she will also begin a blog to explore the traditions of the cultures.
“It has an academic aspect to it,” Sarah Gerber said. “That pulls in even more of my interest. There is an academic attraction, more than if I just pursue traditional weddings.”
These cultural weddings are just a microcosm of Sarah Gerber’s bigger passion, which is to capture stories through film. This interest has already sent her to both Sudan and Honduras. Her work records the stories of people who have found ways to affect their cultures.
Sarah Gerber’s traveled to South Sudan in May 2011 to capture the story of a Sudanese man who is building a school in his home village. The primary goal of the project was fundraising opportunities and awareness.
This week, Sarah Gerber returned from a two-week trip to Honduras. She traveled to a small mountain village to capture the incredible effort that the Honduran farmers exert to make coffee.
“It’s the idea of bringing people back to the source of things and thinking about where the stuff comes from,” she said. “Right now there’s an interest in that. There’s a number of companies that love to sell coffee, and their main objective is to connect people to the source of their coffee.”
When Sarah Gerber met the woman who started the coffee company, she knew she wanted to capture the story. Sarah soon found herself in the mountains of Honduras.
“I was really compelled by it,” she said. “That’s the main component of this part of what I’m doing. It’s more of a personal, guided pursuit. When I find a story that’s compelling, that I feel like isn’t otherwise told, that’s what I pursue.”
“We started taking risks in Sudan, and now Honduras,” Dave Gerber said. “Sarah didn’t know she was passionate about rural coffee farmers in Honduras, but she is. We took a huge risk launching our companies. We invested in them. We realized, if we don’t do this, we can’t pursue our dreams. There’s no free passes in life.”
And Dave Gerber knows why Sarah Gerber is so successful.
“What it comes down to is that you have to take risks,” he said. “Some people want there to be an easy way to have a successful or fulfilling life, and I know I feel the same way. The whole process of Sarah doing this is it’s a huge risk for us. Part of the reason she’s so successful is she’s willing to risk.”
Sarah Gerber’s business is still in the building stages. She is working on a possibility of a Ugandan wedding and has a traditional Jewish wedding already booked.
To see her work, visit www.twentytwentystudios.com.
sodell@hillsdale.edu
