What do you do for your photography business?

I started my photography business a year ago, and this year my niches are mainly senior photos. I’ve done a couple photoshoots or grad photos, I’ve done a couple (other) things, but mainly senior photos is my niche.

How did you get into photography?

I have always loved taking photos, just for my family or friends, and I really wanted to get a real professional camera, so a year ago I bought a super cheap camera. I started doing free photoshoots and just experimenting with it, and I really started to love it. I got more invested and got a better camera with higher quality, and bought different editing softwares, and that’s how I really got into it.

Where do you shoot your photos?

I mainly take photos at parks, so I’m more of an outdoorsy photographer. I’ll go to West Park a lot, Cool Creek, Elm Street Green, just a lot of different parks around the area.

How do you take your photos?

I usually just bring my camera, and my client will bring different outfits to change into–they might bring certain props like a blanket, just certain things they can pose with. Usually I just bring my camera and we take different photos around the parks. I usually have to upload (the photos) to my computer and I go through the photos, so I usually end up with around 600 to 1,000 photos after I’ve done the photoshoot, and then I have to bring it down to around 100 photos, which I’ll give to the client. So I start the editing process, do a bunch of tweaks, and send them to the client in a gallery format.

Gallery • 4 Photos

A photo taken by Kathleen Williams.

How do you get your clients?

It first started out with word-of-mouth, and then I started my social media platform which has grown quite a bit since then. So I get a big following from there, and people might repost my work, so that creates more of a client base because of that.

What is the biggest challenge of running your business?

Trying to find my own personal style, because there’s so many styles of photography and ways to edit, so I still haven’t found my own personal way of editing. Also marketing and pricing is also hard for me to figure out sometimes, like what price points to give my clients and also how to market and reach different audiences. I’ve gotten a lot of help from different friends, like I had a mentorship with a friend and he helped me figure out a lot of different ways to market. I’ll also pull ideas from people online, so I’ll look at other photographers and how they brand their businesses, so I pull ideas from there and get inspiration.

What have you most improved in your business since you started it?

Taking the literal photo, like composition, lighting, depth, and using the settings on my camera (is what I’ve mostly improved in). When I first started out, I didn’t even know how to click the button to make (the camera) work, but now I’ve gotten a lot better at composition and things like that.

What do you enjoy the most about your photography?

I mainly like just meeting new clients and new people, because that gives me more connections to other people. I love seeing results from what I do, like I love editing photos afterward and editing it to my own style. I really find a lot of joy in that.