A Reintroduction...

Welcome to Medium Format by Madeline Tolle

I started writing on Substack over a year ago, with a newsletter entitled, Oyster World (some of you may have been a subscriber, and for that, I thank you!” The idea was that I could share all of the many many things that make my world big and bright. While I still fundamentally believe there are so many magical things about daily life, I found that as a guiding ethos for a newsletter was a bit too broad and ended up leaving me without too many options and not a clear vision of what I wanted to write or share here Substack.

I’ve done some deep diving and I’ve decided that I want to transition this newsletter to one that will allow me to focus on and expand on my career as a photographer.

Welcome to Medium Format.

Medium Format will be published weekly and contain posts ranging in topics from recent published work, the flushing out of new photography idea, behind the scenes, and insight into how I run a successful business as a freelance photographer. My hopes are that whether you are a fellow creative freelancer, a hobbyist photographer, or even just a friend, that you’ll find something here that can inspire and excite you creatively or professionally.

Hi, I’m Madeline.

My name is Madeline Tolle. I’m a freelance photographer based in Los Angeles. I specialize in interior design and architectural photography, but I also work in lifestyle, commercial, travel, and still life photography. While I fell backwards into this career (more on that in a bit,) it is without a doubt my calling in this world, and I am so grateful to have been making my living as a full time photographer for the last ten years. I get to travel the world making pictures, seeking beauty, and sharing my perspective on how I see things…and I get paid to do it! If 16 year old me could see me now, well she wouldn’t believe it.

How I got here…

For the past few years, my website bio has said

After several years of working in corporate fashion as a buyer, running her own jewelry line, and a series of events that make zero sense, but also perfect sense; she ended up working as a photographer.

So here’s how it all happened…

This is me as a tiny child! Back when I wanted to grow up to be a princess.

I did not grow up in a family of photographers or using a camera before I could walk. In fact, the only formal photography class I ever took was a high school summer school class. I always loved fashion. As a child, all I wanted to do was play dress up and wear “twirly skirts",” that would defy gravity flying parallel to the ground as I spun around in circles. Once I hit high school this morphed into thrifting vintage clothing (way way before it was cool,) and pouring over fashion magazines. The idea of playing organized sports horrified me, so I participated in theater and choir as most kids with misplaced creative energy seemed to do. In high school, it was my absolute happy place, but I also knew I wasn’t the most talented. Even as a 16 year old, a career in the performing arts seemed so excessively challenging, I couldn’t envision that for myself.

When I took my first Art History class (I was lucky that my high school offered it,) it clicked that this was my path. It was studying art without having to draw! Perfect!

In 2007, I started college at the University of Illinois as an Art History Major. As the semesters went on, I thought I might want to work in museums, but after a semester long internship at The Phillips Collection in Washington D.C., I realized that there would be no greater hell for me than a job in an institution driven by grants and donations. Back to the drawing board.

Throughout college, I had been working retail at Anthropologie and Urban Outfitters, transferring locations depending on wherever I was living at the time. I ended up getting the opportunity to intern in the accessories buying department for Anthropologie in Philadelphia. This was way more my speed. As an intern, this was my dream job and I couldn’t believe I had landed it.

I had one more semester to finish at school, but I knew that this was what I was meant to do. It took a bit to find a spot for me, but three months after graduation I moved to Philadelphia for my first job as a Merchandise Assistant at Anthropologie. I couldn’t believe it! An art history major who got her dream job right out of college during the height of the recession. Insane!

Well, it turned out that an entry level job is very different from an internship, and it was awful. I was underpaid, incredibly overworked, essentially alone in a new city, and the work was just organizing samples, emails, and spreadsheets. Definitely not the mood boards and trend predictions I had been doing as an intern.

I’ve always been a hard worker and had been instilled with an attitude to “never quit,” so I did my best for three years, eventually getting promoted to Assistant Buyer. This was the height of the Girl Boss era and I wasn’t feeling creatively fulfilled. I was buying products from independent designers for the shops, and thought why not me? I have experience making jewelry, I know what sells, I know how to run a product business…I’m going to go for it.

So I left my comfy cozy cushy corporate job and started a very very small jewelry business. It was a disaster. We will not go into it, but this is where I really latched onto photography. I had always been a hobbyist photographer taking landscape photos on trips. I used this photography to inspire my jewelry designs on a collection basis. Once I finished a collection, I photographed the pieces to look books. It was here that I started to learn about composition, lighting, and the technical sides of photography.

I LOVED IT.

There were many things about running a jewelry business that I hated, but the photography part was what I loved the most. I’d want to finish designing new collections just so that I could do another photo shoot. I looked forward to taking pictures to post on Instagram. Before long, other designers in Philly were having me photograph their look books and social content.

But then…I ran out of money. I went back to Urban Outfitters looking for a job, and found one very quickly in the denim buying department. If I thought the accessories buying department at Anthropologie was bad, the apparel buying department at Urban Outfitters was absolute hell. I managed to survive almost one year to the day. To this day, my boss while I was in that roll was the single most abusive relationship I’ve ever experienced. I took as much as I could, hoping they would fire me so I could get unemployment and figure out my next steps, but I hit a point where I couldn’t wait it out and had to quit. I had no plan as to what I was going to do next, I just couldn’t do a single other day at that job.

One week after my last day with a full time job, I got a call from a friend of a friend looking for a freelance styling assistant for a shoot at Motherhood Maternity. My first styling gig! My first job in the photo world!

The week after that, I got a call from Lori Goldstein’s office. The iconic fashion stylist and Annie Leibovitz’s right hand was looking for a styling assistant for her QVC line. I went up to her office in New York City to meet with her, and after looking at my website which had featured some photographs I took of a friend in Iceland, she hired me to photograph her editorial content for instagram. I had just booked my first job as a photographer!

This was the photo that got Lori Goldstein to hire me. The one that changed everything, and proof that we all have to start somewhere… Thank you to my dear friend, Obreanna, who agreed to be my model and freeze her tail off in Iceland.

Lori’s team hired me pretty regularly for a day shoot each month. They paid just enough for that one day that I could keep going as a freelancer and didn’t look for another full time job. I filled in the gaps with styling assisting gigs and then about two months later, another ex-Anthropologie colleague reached out asking if I could shoot interiors for her.

I had never shot anything like that before, but I thought I knew the basics of how to do it, so I told her “I’ll give it a go for $200 and if you don’t like it, you don’t have to pay me.” Well, I can’t look at the photos from that shoot anymore, they’re so terrifically bad, but at the time my client liked them, and that’s what matters. She recommended me to someone else, then they recommended me, it all kind of snowballed. Every shoot I’d get a little bit better, learn a bit more about retouching, figure out a new technical component, and it wasn’t very long before I had to start of a portfolio.

And more importantly, I was now a working professional photographer.

There’s a lot more to the story of how I got to where I am today, but that involves moving to Los Angeles, which is an even bigger longer story, so I’ll put a pin in this for now and call this Part 1.

Hope you enjoyed a little insight into the path that makes zero sense, but also perfect sense. Please stick around to see what comes next with my story, and also Medium Format.

See you next week :)