Melissa Bring: 2010

It was an honor to be interviewed by Liz Kearney over at the Livingston Enterprise in Livingston Montana in late June 2010; Check it out!! (Plus ... I made Page 6!)

Photographer Melissa Bring

The Article:
Like many young people, Park High graduate Melissa Bring moved to Los Angeles to make it big in fashion photography. And unlike many of them, she has come far in her five years there. She moved to L.A. on the advice of her first photography employer, Michael Sanders, who hired her to take photos for his tour guide business while she was still in high school. “He told me to get out of Livingston and check out the opportunities in L.A.,” Bring said in a phone interview Monday. And that she did. Her brother Kyle was already living there, so she went for a visit and applied for photography jobs. She was immediately hired by a wedding photography studio. Just four months

there was enough to “get a foot in the door,” and she moved to her next job, with Industrial Color, a large scale digital and video photography company. Bring worked her way up quickly to Director of Operations, running the West Coast division. “This was a great opportunity to learn what goes on behind the scenes, in the business side of the industry,” Bring said. Then, in February of this year, she left to start her own company— Bring Media

— in partnership with her brother, who is a videographer. With so many clients needing both still photos and video, Bring said, she and her brother can offer both to their clients. Bring has worked with such clients as the cable channel Showtime, Victoria’s Secret and Old Navy. Something that will be readily seen in Montana, she said, is an ad for Romeo and Juliet Couture, which will appear in the August edition of Allure magazine.

The early years

Bring grew up in Livingston and is a 2002 graduate of Park High School. She said she became interested in photography when she was in elementary school, taking photography training through 4H starting in the third grade. “When I was in the fifth grade, I started using my sister and her friends as

fashion models so I could take their pictures,” Bring said. After high school, she attended Spokane Falls Community College, in Spokane, Wash. “ I had heard great things about their photography department, and it offered me the best opportunity at the time,” Bring said. After Spokane, she had the opportunity to live in Florence, Italy, for a while and practice her craft. The time she spent there, she said, helped her ease into the pace and lifestyle of Los Angeles after spending her childhood in Montana.

Life in Los Angeles

“L.A. is definitely a different pace,” she said. “It’s fast and furious and very competitive.” And coming up, Bring has been honored by RAW, an online arts organization that “provides a platform for independent artists in Southern California to be seen, heard, and loved,” according to RAW’s website. RAW has chosen Bring as an up-and-coming young photographer and will feature her work in a show opening Aug. 5.

Bringing it home

Bring is proud of her Montana heritage and posts it prominently on her website, www.melissabring.com. When Los Angelenos ask her about growing up in Montana, Bring says their stereotypes are amusing. “They ask if I rode my horse to school,” Bring laughed. Bring manages to come home about once a year. “I love Montana, and I am proud of where I came from,” she said.