Cydil Waggoner Photography Blog

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From her unusual first name to her thoughtful photography, Cydil Waggoner’s life and art are marked by family: the farming family she grew up in, the young family she and her husband have created, and the families she photographs.

Cydil’s parents named their oldest daughter after the oldest daughter, Tzeitel, of the fictional Russian-Jewish family in the musical Fiddler on the Roof. Americanizing the spelling and pronunciation produced “Cydil,” pronounced like the words sigh-dill.

An unusual name isn’t the only thing Cydil’s parents gave her, of course. The early roots of her present photography vocation were cultivated by her parents and grandparents who always had a camera in their hands. “I think it stems from being a very sentimental family and recognizing that life is fleeting,” Cydil explains.

Her dad was a photography hobbyist who, during her growing-up years, coached Cydil on such important photography basics as good composition. She tagged along when he took a photography class at a local community college and she continued to follow that interest through 4-H competitions. “I always wanted to be creative,” Cydil says, as she remembers being inspired by her great-grandpa, a commercial artist who painted watercolor images for Sears catalogs. But she knew drawing wasn’t her creative talent.

During college she continued to chronicle life with her camera, though she studied business and later economics at the graduate level. Post-college when she and her husband, Nathan, began guiding teams of college students on international mission trips, her souvenirs were the photographs she took. After each trip she made CDs of the images for the students, which turned out to be unintentional advertising. These students began asking her to photograph their weddings.

The age range of her photographic subjects changed as her wedding clients started their own families. It also changed when she chronicled the Waggoners’ 2006 journey to Albania to adopt their now-five-year-old daughter Elisona. The photographic record not only documented their early days as a family, but was to give Ellie a picture of her birth country and culture as it looked when she was a child.

Now firmly established as a favored wedding and family portrait photographer, Cydil prefers a timeless style of photography. As she documents other families’ stories, she is well aware that she is helping them establish a sense of family history. “I know the photos I take will likely be with a family for generations,” she recognizes. “That’s why I want them to be timeless.”

While Cydil enjoys editing photos nearly as much as taking them, she keeps her editing pretty simple. “I try to do whatever I can to enhance what caught my eye in the photo: the emotion, the scenery, the heart of the moment.” Her goal is “to make a picture look good but not look like I spent hours in Photoshop on it.”

The best compliments, she says, are when a mother exclaims, “You captured how my kids really are!” Or when someone comments with surprise, “I didn’t know I looked that good.” Connecting with people enough to capture their real essence is what makes Cydil’s work so intensely personal. From their photo shoot or wedding to studying their faces in the digital darkroom, “I feel like I really get to know my clients,” she says. And while her subjects share themselves with her, she also shares a little piece of herself with them in each photo.

Cydil loves the opportunity photography gives her to slip into other families’ lives for a little while and to live out the creative nature she inherited from her family. “I’ve heard all my life that we’re created in the image of God,” she says. “I think the desire to create is part of reflecting that image. I get so much fulfillment from that creative capacity and think how much more fulfillment God must have had when he created us. My creative work helps me understand another side of God.”
By Kami L. Rice

Cydil is a member of Wedding and Portrait Photographers International (WPPI) as well as the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP).