Story & Lesson Highlights with Devin Tanksley of Birmingham

Devin Tanksley shared their story and experiences with us recently and you can find our conversation below.

Hi Devin, thank you so much for joining us today. We’re thrilled to learn more about your journey, values and what you are currently working on. Let’s start with an ice breaker: What do you think others are secretly struggling with—but never say?
Being authentic and real with themselves. From what I see just from interacting with people and talking to literally almost everyone, I think people who are in pursuit of their dreams, careers, etc. lose sight of their sense of self in the process; then we deny what we truly want out of life versus what we think we want or need to do to survive. That being said, people do a lot of weird things and behaviors trying to be someone when we are who we need to be in that very moment. I’m learning this lesson myself and am working on changing my perspective when it come to – well me. Giving myself grace to figure things out, make mistakes, and just lean more into what I need in moments from others and self. This has really helped me become more real and authentic with myself because I’m giving myself the time and space I need to do so versus focusing on all the noise that doesn’t matter.

I don’t know if that got too deep for a icebreaker lol, but that’s what I think.

Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
Awe man, the hardest part of an interview – talking about myself. So, I guess for starters, my name is Devin Tanksley a.k.a The Rose Hat, and I am a photographer born and raised in the magical city of Birmingham, AL. I’ve been doing photography for roughly 8 years with two of them being an official business so we’re still very new to this thing haha. I started with the only goal/focus being to take cool photos and now my photography has grown into capturing experiences, history, and community here in my city.

The Rose Hat started from literally a black hat with a red rose in the middle and I needed a new name for my Instagram profile (kinda anti-climatic I know) but my philosophy with rose goes from my grandmother. My grandmother has a rose bush outside of her house and I would always like to gift them to people. As I grew older I realized that we do two things to rose because we admire them: cut them from their bush and take the thorns off. By doing this we removed the rose from its collection of other roses and its source of life so it slowly begins to die; removing the thorns takes away its only form of protection. We do the same thing to people and especially people we love. The bush is their community (source of life) and sometimes we want to keep our person/people to ourselves so we unintentionally remove them. The thorns are their boundaries they set up to protect themselves. Ideally, we should want to admire people as real and authentic as they come and in the spaces we find them. So yeah, that’s the story behind the rose hat that led to The Rose Hat.

With all that being said, that’s what I try to focus on with my brand, my business, and my life – to just allow people to grow as they need to and capturing what that looks like across events, performances, portraits, etc.

Appreciate your sharing that. Let’s talk about your life, growing up and some of topics and learnings around that. What did you believe about yourself as a child that you no longer believe?
Ooooh, that’s a good one. I stop believing that I’m not creative. As a child a really struggled with arts and crafts. When I tell you I hated coloring in the lines; I HATED coloring in the lines. I wanted to rush through it to get back to doing math or whatever was not arts and crafts. I would always have ideas or stories that I would come up with but never share because I would never think of myself as creative, especially when comparing myself to others. Now, I do a lot of creative things and I am a creative. From photography to poetry and spoken word, I am allowing myself to pursue any thoughts and endeavors that come to mind while enjoying process of it.

Was there ever a time you almost gave up?
Oh all the time! I’ve GIVEN up and taken breaks plenty of time early on in my journey. I would find myself becoming so frustrated with clients. people, other photographers, and myself that I would put my camera down and not pick it back up. Then I realized I was only hurting myself because no one else was affected by me giving up. I also learned that sometimes breaks are needed and keep you from burning out when everything seems to happen all at once. The breaks I took allowed me to reset and check my alignment; I realized that most my frustrations came from me doing things/work that I didn’t want to do but felt like I needed to do because I thought it would get me somewhere. Yeah, I have definitely given up a few times however, there is a time for everything and those times were needed.

Sure, so let’s go deeper into your values and how you think. Is the public version of you the real you?
I would say it’s becoming the real me. I think I’ve mentioned something in an earlier questions about authenticity and that’s one thing I’m really working on for myself. Whenever I go places or talk with people I try not to make connections based off of what this person can do for me. I literally can’t because superficial interactions annoy me and I can easily weed them out. It is because of that I always aim to just show up as myself in whatever space I’m in and whatever is called of me in those spaces. That may look like being really reserved or being really interactive and I can exist in both those spaces. I’ve found when I’m more of myself, my interactions with people are more genuine – on both parts. It allows other people to show up and interact with me as their authentic selves; there has been and will be people whom still put on a front and I just take them for who they show me they are, where they are, and do not allow it to affect how I show up in the space. Yeah, I would say just that – all of that. That my public version is becoming more of the real me.

Thank you so much for all of your openness so far. Maybe we can close with a future oriented question. What are you doing today that won’t pay off for 7–10 years?
Worrying and caring about what other people think. Those two things are never going to pay off in any amount of time. I’ve spent so much time on worrying so much about situations, people, and caring about what people whom are not in my shoes think that I’ve passed up so many opportunities and risks that I should’ve taken. Yeah worrying and caring about what other people think is a very dangerous combo and they will never pay off. Chase your dreams and opportunities and circle back around later.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.therosehatphotography.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/therosehat
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/devin-tanksley-0807531a4/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheRoseHat