Daily Inspiration: Meet Cameron Sarradet

Today we’d like to introduce you to Cameron Sarradet.

Hi Cameron, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
My story has not been linear, or even very concise at all. I haven’t taken a traditional path and don’t have a singular interest which has driven me towards specific goals. What I do have is an insatiable curiosity about how we can live our lives more intentionally and care for ourselves amidst the chaos that can be modern life. The main ways I try to create that intentionality are through my work as a yoga teacher and my time spent in nature taking photographs or gardening. I’ve been practicing some form of yoga for about a decade and pursued a teaching certificate back in 2019, which took me on a journey of self-discovery that I wasn’t expecting. It challenged my relationship to fitness and to the practices of yoga that we are often presented with here in America. Now as a teacher, it’s my goal to provide a space for people to connect to themselves and increase their awareness of their own bodies through the movements of yoga (Asana). I’ve been lucky to find a strong community here in Grand Rapids of yogis, wellness practitioners, and lovers of intentional connection that inspire me to keep growing as a teacher and student. My photography has been with me since I was a teenager, beginning with running around my small farm town in South Louisiana, eventually morphing into conceptual portraiture, then commercial portraiture, until it finally came full circle where I am today…a soft mix of my origins taking photos of beautiful nature around me and helping other creatives with branding and marketing visuals. I think my through line, the connecting thread of my life and all these things I’ve mentioned, is really rooted in a feeling I’ve had since I was a child. I have always been someone who cared deeply for the people and beings around me. I didn’t know it at the time, but obsessively watching Animal Planet as a child was the seed being planted that grew into a strong conviction about how we treat our planet. It all comes together because each of the aspects of my life are rooted in sharing information or knowledge that could help each of us be more WELL. When we have a physical and spiritual practice like yoga, we can show up with grounded-ness and understanding in our daily lives. My photos are inspired by nature because I want to document the intense beauty around us and try to capture the feeling I get when spring blooms start to pop up or the light hits the trees a certain way during a Fall golden hour. The time I spend in my own yard, or the yards of friends who want to learn more about sustainable landscaping, connects me directly to the natural world around us and the community of people we share it with. My work and my passion projects intersect and meld into a life full of ever-changing experiences that shift with the seasons of my life and this planet.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It has certainly been a winding road, if not a difficult one at times. As I mentioned before, I’m a transplant from Louisiana, but there was also a 9 year period that I spent living in Los Angeles before making my way to Grand Rapids in 2023. I sometimes envy people who knew exactly what they wanted to do as a young person and stuck with it through the standard milestones of life. For example, my Husband, who knew he wanted to be an Architect at 9 years old and has been practicing it now professionally for a decade. I think the struggles I faced have largely been internal, second-guessing and questioning why it’s been difficult for me to commit to one thing. I still have those moments, but the older I get the more I realize that I am not destined to do or be one thing, and neither is anyone else. Even the people who seem to know exactly what drives them are multi-faceted beings with doubts and fears about their journey just like us ‘jack of all trades’ types who’ve never held down a regular job for longer than a few years. I’ve lived in three states, five cities, 10 different apartments/homes, and had over 25 different jobs in different industries. It’s a lot to juggle, but my instinct is to always reach for the next thing that will spark my interest and fulfill a need I have. It has meant that I have an ever-flowing, sometimes unstable, road to travel down, but it has also provided me with an expansive wealth of experience and knowledge that plays right into my core value of sharing helpful information with the people around me. I love the idea of being a mentor or a wisened neighborhood weirdo with the answers to any random query you can imagine (ahhh, a vision of my future to work towards!)

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
Funnily enough, I still find it difficult to call myself an artist. I have remnants of false belief that art and creativity is only valid when it’s financially successful or acclaimed, but I am a creative through and through. I prefer to call myself a curator more than what I refer to as ‘out of thin air artist’ (think drawing, painting, music, etc.). Through my photography work I capture what is already around me, whether it be nature or images for a small business brand, I craft visuals that convey the story that I want to tell or feeling I want to share. As someone who has bounced around a lot, I’m proud of my photography work because it’s been with me the longest and withstood the many tests life has thrown at me. I’m proud to have held on to the love of it and allowed it to ebb and flow from hobby to profession and back again many times. It has also led me to other creative pursuits as well, like helping build websites for friend’s new ventures or designing marketing materials for my own pursuits as a yoga teacher while trying to build a client base. Learning how to take photos in a time before we had high quality cameras in our pockets made me scrappy and highly independent. It has provided me with the know-how to do many aspects of creative work and the confidence to learn new things when the situation calls for it. I also can’t forget that my work as a yoga teacher ties into this because each time I step into a room to share that practice with people, I am assessing the most creative ways to convey the flow as well as keep people engaged with themselves. It’s a dance I do, just like trying to find the perfect angle to capture a captivating image of a bee buzzing around a pollinator garden. I’m a hummingbird creative, on a mission to try as much nectar from as many different flowers (of life) as possible.

What does success mean to you?
My personal definition of success is a life well-lived with people you love and an authentic approach to each and every thing you do. It’s a broad-scope idea that we should all be able to pursue the things we love, take care of ourselves and our family, and feel connected to the world around us as well as it’s inhabitants. I don’t wake up every day feeling strongly that I’ve reached this myself, but when I zoom out, I know that I’m on my way there if not already right in the thick of it.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://cameronsarradetphotography.myportfolio.com/ and https://www.homebodiyoga.com/