Today we’d like to introduce you to Britt “BZ” Hanowell.
Hi Britt “BZ”, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
This is such a difficult question. NeverStill Studio and my journey with photography is sprawling and hard to define. I was born in Bellingham, raised in Lynden, and then as an adult moved back to Bellingham with my wife. Photography, writing, and art have always been with me.
Photos have always been my dragon hoard. If I were a dragon, my treasure would be every photograph I’ve taken, every photograph that tells the story of my loved ones, and every image of the people I’ve loved and lost. That hoard would now include the old film cameras I collect, love, and try to fix. Photographs and cameras are one of the ways I tell stories. Stories told with light. And I love the art of storytelling regardless of what medium is being used.
I remember taking an intro to documentary filmmaking class in the community recently and being asked how long I’d been a photographer. My mind went blank in buffering mode because I was trying to figure out what I was really being asked.
Were they asking when I fell in love with photography? Was it the first time I picked up a camera, which was a Kodak my family had when I was a kid? Was it the disposable cameras I saved up for afterward? Were they asking when I started getting paid? When I designed my first photo shoot? When I first realized I was in love with the art and science of photography?
I’m entirely self-taught. I love the whole process, from picking up a camera to editing an image, framing a print, or watching a piece of instant film emerge from a Polaroid before I hide it from the light while it develops. When I realized I was holding up the class, I finally said, “I don’t know.” Then I asked, “Are you asking me the first time I picked up a camera? The first time I was paid? The first time I designed a shoot? The first time I realized I loved photography?” The instructor laughed and said, “That tells me everything I need to know.”
Later that same year, I asked a young photographer how long he’d been a photographer. He became shy and said, “I don’t know.” So I asked him how long he’d been framing scenes with his eyes and freezing moments of light and shadow in his mind. He said, “As long as I can remember.” I told him that’s all I need to know. He was born one.
I feel similarly about being a mixed-media artist. Because I never had formal training, I never learned what wasn’t “supposed to go together.” I’ve worked old keys into paintings, incorporated Polaroid emulsions into watercolor pieces, sewn, made jewelry, experimented with fiber arts, and created with whatever was available to me. I’ve been making things for as long as I can remember and will continue to grow that practice as I get my hands on interesting textures, tools, and knowledge.
Some of that comes from my mother. Cameras—any photographs really—were a luxury when I was growing up. Art supplies were a luxury too. We had what we needed for school, but we learned to make art from what was around us.
That mindset followed me into high school. During a bookbinding project, I didn’t know there were limitations on what materials we were supposed to use, so I incorporated clay for dimension, moving pieces for pop-out puppets, magazine cutouts, and my really angsty teen poetry into a single project. I’ve called myself a “nicheless nuisance” for years, and that’s true across nearly everything I create, whether it’s photography, genre-wandering writing, or mixed-media art.
For most of my life, I made art for myself and for a small circle of people I loved.
At some point, I started asking people if I could photograph them. Friends, loved ones, strangers. When I wasn’t photographing rivers, mountains, or mundane magic, I was drawn to moments that felt fleeting: sunlight on a coffee shop chair, shadows in a room, my cats being ridiculous, or the way water in a bathtub can feel magical in morning light and like a gritty movie scene twelve hours later.
My wife and I have been together since we were teenagers. They are probably my longest-standing muse. They’re the first person I designed photo shoots with, the first person I experimented with light and ideas alongside, and the person with whom I’ve created both spectacular failures and private magic that was never meant for anyone else. For the longest time, they were the only person, other than myself, that I designed art for.
In my twenties, people began asking me to photograph them. That was the first time it occurred to me that other people might value something I’d been doing quietly for years. I rarely shared my work publicly because photography felt deeply personal. Something so special was especially difficult to talk about, and the one time I submitted a painting to an art show, it went “missing.” I didn’t want feedback. I didn’t want outside opinions interfering with something I loved or imposing limits, but I was also accidentally cutting myself off from community.
Around that same time, I became a nurse, a profession I still work in on an on-call basis. Over the years, I’ve often reflected on the contrast between those two worlds. As a nurse, I’m usually with people during some of the hardest moments of their lives. As an artist and photographer, I’m often invited into some of their brightest, most creative, and most joyful moments. Both require trust, communication, and connection, but they exist on opposite ends of the human experience.
Photography slowly grew through relationships and opportunities. Through writing and independent publishing, I met a friend who introduced me to a couple looking for a wedding photographer on short notice. I told them honestly, “I’ve only photographed a couple of weddings, and I don’t know what I’m doing, but I will be the best photographer I can be for you.” They said yes.
Soon after, another friend asked me to spend a day documenting their life. When they asked what I charged, I told them to pay whatever they thought it was worth because I genuinely had no idea. Up until then, photography had mostly been gifts, trades, and acts of love. If I gave photographs away, I gave them away. I didn’t keep copies.
As I grew more confident, I started asking more people if I could photograph them. That was harder than it sounds. Sometimes it’s difficult to explain that your eye got excited by a moment without it being misinterpreted. You’re not in love with a person, but you might be in love with the light, their energy, their profile, or the way they’re caught in a particular second. Sometimes all you want is to preserve it.
That instinct to document has stayed with me. The power of being able to document the world we live in and the people we love has never been lost on me. Some of the photographs I took simply because I felt compelled to capture the people around me became some of the only photographs we had after they died unexpectedly.
In 2024, after years of talking myself out of it, I finally decided to launch a photography business rather than just half-heartedly watermarking a rare photo I shared on Instagram. In 2025, I attended an author retreat, realized I was never going to feel completely ready no matter what kind of art I made, received some really tough love and encouragement from close friends, and decided to rip the bandage off.
I kept reminding myself that even in a community full of talented photographers, there were still people I was uniquely suited to work with. People who would feel comfortable with my sense of humor, my creative process, and my particular way of seeing the world.
My wife and I launched NeverStill Studio together. We do almost everything together. The name is a little nod to my hyperactivity, photography, and the fact that life never holds still. At first, our studio was entirely portable. We packed our lights, backdrops, cameras, and everything else we needed and brought the studio to our clients. Eventually, we needed a dedicated space for more creative projects and mixed-media art that we didn’t want our cat’s help or opinions on.
Today, we operate from a small art and photography studio in downtown Bellingham. The space is located inside Makeshift Art Space, a place that already held significance for us long before we rented there. We spent years attending art walks, admiring the work of local artists, and visiting our favorite studio in the building. Now we rent a spot there: Studio 17. It’s our place for mixed media art, photography, and whatever else we are collaborating on with other local artists.
Since putting ourselves out into the world as photographers and artists, we’ve had opportunities to work at conferences, festivals, private events, branding sessions, and creative portrait shoots. We’ve photographed everything from family portraits and local performance artists to large-scale event coverage, art installation photo stations, weird themed mini sessions while in drag, and branding work for both local and out-of-state businesses, artists, authors, and festivals.
We enjoy variety and are always excited by opportunities to travel, collaborate, and photograph something we’ve never photographed before. Some of my favorite projects have started with either saying, or being told, “Hang on, I’ve got this wild idea.”
At the heart of it, though, not much has changed.
I’m still fascinated by light. I’m still collecting moments. I’m still building my dragon hoard. And I’m doing it with the love of my life, Annalee, who is equally a photographer, mixed-media artist, and my co-photographer. We can communicate across a large room with a waggle of an eyebrow.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
No. Not really.
I think one of the hardest things about being an artist of any kind is continuing to make art when the world feels heavy and isolated. Another challenge has been learning how to be visible with your art.
As a queer artist, it has become increasingly difficult at times to simply exist in public spaces. I’ve received death threats directed at me and my family. I’ve had people tell me they didn’t want a queer photographer or that they didn’t want someone who visibly presented as queer documenting their event. I’ve had people assume my skills couldn’t possibly match those of the men around me. Then on social media, I am often assumed to be a man.
Those experiences can be disconcerting, but they also remind me why art matters. When the world feels dark, art becomes even more important. Being a visible queer artist becomes more important. Art helps us document, process, and survive the times we’re living through. Whether I’m holding a camera, a paintbrush, or a pen, I’m still trying to make sense of the world around me and connect.
For most of my life, photography, writing, and art were ways I connected with people. Now, as a small business owner, I often have to create those connections before I get to make the art I want to make. Networking, introducing myself, cold conversations, and putting myself out there have all been skills I’ve had to learn.
As a neurodivergent person, I don’t think that part will ever feel completely natural. I accept that it may always be the case, but I want it badly enough to keep trying.
What’s funny is that once I’m actually doing the work, people often tell me it’s like meeting a completely different person. When I’m photographing, collaborating, teaching, speaking on a topic I know well, or creating, I know exactly who I am. It’s the doorway into those mind spaces that’s difficult to access through reciprocal conversation with a new person.
For a long time, I didn’t have much of an artistic community. Like many artists, I spent years creating in relative isolation. I don’t want that anymore. I love being around people who are making things. I love being around people who are excited about what they’re creating and eager to support what other people are creating. That’s the community I want to be part of and help build.
I sometimes joke that I’m a socially awkward extrovert. I need people. I need creative collaboration. Looking back, I think I would have been very happy among the theater kids had I not dropped out of high school.
Today, I’m fortunate to have growing communities through photography, aerial arts, mixed-media art, volunteer work, independent publishing, and the local arts communities here in Bellingham. Building those connections has been one of the hardest parts of the journey, but it’s also been one of the most rewarding.
I’ve also always been drawn toward challenges.
As a nurse and as a photographer, I love learning. In photography, that often means deliberately choosing difficult situations. One of my favorite examples was photographing Paper Whale’s Fire & Story event. A year earlier, I was standing on a bridge trying to photograph fire performers from a distance. The following year, I was part of the content team, photographing performers, firelight, and even a black goat moving through near-darkness illuminated only by intermittent flames.
I constantly find myself chasing situations that push my limits, whether that’s the limits of my camera, my technical knowledge, my editing skills, or my understanding of light itself.
Eventually, you find the edge of what you know. When that happens, I learn something new and keep going.
That’s probably been the common thread through all of it. I’ve never really been interested in staying comfortable. I’m interested in the adventure of learning and creating.
Eventually, you find the edge of what you know. When that happens, I learn something new and keep going. Usually, that means taking whatever I’ve learned and folding it into whatever strange thing I’m making, writing, photographing, or ideating next.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
NeverStill Studio is a photography and art studio that my wife, Annalee, and I run together in Bellingham. We photograph conferences, festivals, private events, branding sessions, creative portraits, families, artists, authors, performers, and occasionally projects that are difficult to categorize. Like when someone pitched an idea involving a clawfoot bathtub and sprinkles. More to come on that one. I recently received an offer from an author to be a sprinkle sponsor. I squeed.
People often ask what our niche is. “What do you photograph?”
The answer is… the world around me. People. Movement. Life. Everything. If I had to narrow that down, I would say events and portraits.
My magical power is being in the right place at the right time with my camera. My other superpower is being comfortable enough in myself to move with people through chaotic, joyful, awkward, and unexpected moments without getting in the way of everyday magic. Maybe I have a third magical power: helping people feel comfortable in front of the camera.
I think part of that comes from my own experience in front of a camera.
My parents jokingly called me the blonde Wednesday Addams because I never smiled in photographs and couldn’t smile on command. Looking back, I think some of the pressure I felt around having to perform certain facial expressions for celebrations, surprises, or simply because it was photograph time shaped how I work with people now. I often tell clients they don’t have to smile if they don’t want to. My sessions tend to be longer because I want people to have time to settle in and get comfortable. And if being a clown helps someone feel more at ease in front of a camera, I’m happy to laugh with them. I think that younger version of me would love what eventually came out of that discomfort.
What I’m most proud of is creating photographs that people love. It feels really good to hear that someone had an amazing experience, loves a photo of themselves when they usually don’t, or simply feels seen when they look at it. When you deliver a gallery and the same day one of those images becomes their profile photo? That feels amazing.
With event photography, what sets me apart is that it becomes a flow art for me. When I’m photographing an event, I’m moving with the energy of the room, the people, the performers, and the speakers. I’m watching for the moments that are happening and the ones about to happen. I love that deeply.
What were you like growing up?
A lot of my report cards described me as quiet, polite, and creative. I loved writing, reading, and drawing. I was definitely the child who wanted the deep history of the world, objects, and every person in every photo in our family album. Cameras were rare and precious things. As a kid, I spent most of my time with my extended family and cousins and didn’t really develop close friendships until I was a teenager. Eventually, I found a group of friends through our shared love of anime, drawing, and writing fanfiction.
I was teased growing up. Not for being queer, interestingly enough. I’ve never really been in the closet and have always been publicly open about my understanding of my gender identity and sexual orientation. Instead, I was teased for my vocabulary, for being fat, for being “too smart,” and, depending on who was talking, somehow also “too dumb.”
Fortunately, tenacity is a core characteristics of mine. If someone told me I couldn’t do something, I was probably going to try harder. Sometimes because I genuinely wanted to. Sometimes because I dreamed about it. And occasionally out of rebellion against someone else trying to place their limitations on me.
I think having difficulty with reciprocal relationships made friendships harder to maintain and made dating feel largely irrelevant. But once I formed a deep connection with someone or developed an interest in an activity, I was all in. Annalee was a love I never expected, but has been as natural to me as breathing. We are still all in.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://NeverStillStudio.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/neverstillstudio/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/neverstillstudio/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@NeverStillStudio
- Yelp: https://m.yelp.com/biz/neverstill-studio-bellingham-7
- Other: https://neverstillafterdark.substack.com
