Am I Worth It? The Story Behind Becoming A Photographer

How I became a photographer — and the question that started it all: am I worth it?

In this episode of Unwritten, I share my honest origin story: buying my first camera while pregnant, building a photography business through divorce and single motherhood, learning marketing and SEO the hard way, and finally learning to charge what I'm worth. If you've ever wanted to start a creative business but feared you weren't "enough," this one's for you.

🎟️ Join my one-day business workshop, the 4 Pillars of Success — July 30, Baraboo, WI. Four women teaching what it really takes to grow a business. Link below.

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/1992439066884?aff=oddtdtcreator

#WomenInBusiness #PhotographyBusiness #Unwritten #Entrepreneur #WisconsinPhotographer

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey, it's Stephanie. Thank you so much for tuning in to another episode of Unwritten. I'm super excited to share with you all the story of how I became a photographer today. And I think it's a really nice little chat as well because I have a business workshop coming up on June 30th that I've invited four women that I know that are really masters in their own field to come and demystify what it takes to get a successful business launched. So I'm putting a link to the show notes there, and I would love to see you sign up today. Now let's get started. So photography has always been a backbone in my life. When I was younger, I took photos, and my mom was always taking photos, my grandpa, my great grandma. And when I was pregnant with my third son, I just had this feeling that it was going to be my last birth child and that I wanted to capture it all. And to do that, I needed a camera. So I don't remember how long this was going on, this back and forth. Should I buy a camera? Shouldn't I? But I do remember specifically walking around Walmart, being very pregnant, trying to make up my mind whether I'm gonna buy this camera or not. And honestly, it was probably more so that am I gonna trust this urge to do this creative thing or not? It was more of a question of am I worth it or not? Is this worthy? So I ended up buying the camera and buying a memory card, you know, all this wild stuff that go that happens when you buy one nice thing. Of course, then you need other nice things. And my son was born shortly after, and I started taking pictures of him all cute and posting it on Facebook. And then I would take pictures of my other kids. And then pretty soon people at the my work, I was a massage therapist at the time, they started asking me to take pictures of their family and their kids and their weddings. And all of a sudden, I was documenting life for all of these different people, different life events, and I felt like I was really good at it. That this was something that I was good at. Other people thought I was good at, and I just wanted to see where it went. And so I started building up clientele, not anything business-wise yet, but just making some extra cash, right? A little mom side hustle, mom photographer type of thing. And it wasn't until my my youngest son, so when he went to kindergarten, so five years I was doing this kind of mom talk stuff, and I had this necessary urge to make sure that I was available for my children at the time. And there's some serious stuff going on in my personal life. My ex-husband, the first ex-husband, had done some really awful things and was in and out of jail, which eventually led to deferred prosecution being taken back, and he ended up in prison. And I didn't know he had a drug problem. A lot of people say, like, well, you don't you didn't want to know. Like, you probably just didn't see the signs because you didn't want to know. And I didn't know. I had no idea that I was married to a drug addict. And when we got divorced, obviously you can go one of two ways. You kind of do a glow-up, or you kind of maybe, maybe what was propping you up before isn't propping you up anymore, and you have to you rely on something else. So my ex-husband was stealing, he was doing drugs, he was driving around with children, including my son and his youngest son, in a vehicle. And at one point he even crashed that vehicle, and it was just so much. And at one point I had, and you're probably wondering, right? Like, well, why why did this guy who had a drug problem, like, why why didn't you get custody of your kids during this time? And I tried. I had waited until his sentencing, until he got convicted. I am not a lawyer, obviously, so these words are probably not quite right, but to see, or I wanted to wait and see if he was going to be convicted of these horrible crimes. And when he was, I went to the judge and I had a court case and I did all the things and I had all this proof and I had asked for full custody of my children because now my ex was a convicted child abuser, steal theft, uh, all this stuff. And um the judge looked at me and he said, if you were really that concerned about your children's safety, you should have come sooner. And he denied my request for full custody. So that is why I, even after this conviction and but before he's actually going to prison because he was put on a deferred prosecution, that I'm going through a lot emotionally as a mother. And I decide that I have really no other choice in my life if I want to be a good mom and be present for my children while we're all going through this difficult time that I'm gonna become a photographer full-time and I'm gonna quit my job as a massage therapist. So this was in 2011, 2012, something like that. And that's what I did completely had no idea what I was doing. I I got a website and I got, I think I got a Facebook page, business page. What else did I do? I joined kind of like a I can't think of what it's called, but it's a group of people that meet every few weeks, and your job is to refer people out that are in your group, some sort of club. And I had a sign that I paid $20 a month for at the county fair that my stepshanks photography was would come up on the board along with everybody else that paid their $20 that month. And that was about it. And when I got my first client, I remember it very vividly. Her name is Sarah, and she's a wonderful human who has I'm so happy to be part of her life through these years. But I that was my first job was as a professional photographer, now full-time photographer, was a family shoot that she had called because she saw my name on that board. And she knew my kids from kindergarten, and that's how it started. It was bumpy, it was really rough for a while. I I suffer from this thing called comparison to others. So I was constantly looking at my own photography as a point of failure instead of the point that I should have seen that I was capturing people's most wonderful moments. And I struggled with charging money because again, I just need to not feel worthy enough to charge money because I didn't think I was good. And I struggled with, I guess, everything lighting, posing, people, timing, everything. Nothing, nothing about starting a photography business for me was easy. It's just seemed like everything was just such a struggle. But I believed in it and I knew that I just had to for my children. I had to be there for my kids. I my son was my youngest was, yeah, he was maybe he was four, four or five. Maybe he was going into 4K. And, you know, when one parent just goes MIA, that's one thing. But when one parent, like you're trying to co-parent with a drug user and and you don't feel like anybody else has your back, that you just have to, like the court systems don't have your back. You know, I remember when we went through the stuff with the child abuse case, the detectives came to my house asking me questions about my ex-husband. And I was very honest. And, you know, I really felt that everything I was doing was not enough. And I felt that, well, I suppose then that's why photography felt like it wasn't enough because it I didn't feel like I was enough of a parent for my children, or and I didn't feel like I was enough of a responsible parent for the court systems, and there was just a lot for a young 30-something-year-old woman to take on. Eventually, I made my way into wedding photography. It just worked out really well because I after my first marriage was over, I immediately got into another relationship and got married pretty quickly. And my ex-second ex-husband has four kids. So there was just a lot of children and special needs son. My son Drew is in a wheelchair, and my youngest has a lot of stuff too, just because of his situation with his dad. And so wedding photography seemed to be a good fit because it was like a weekend thing and I could handle that. And I did that for a while, and I was like, oh my gosh, what if I like get really, really good at wedding photography and I'll just be a wedding photographer? And I I did that for um a few years until I got really, really tired of dealing with people's emotional trauma that occurs seem seemingly only on a wedding day. The moment I know there's always a moment, right? The moment that I decided to not be a wedding photographer anymore was a wedding that uh was dodging lantern Chinese lanterns, I think they're called. So everyone was so drunk at the when they decided to let off the Chinese lanterns that most of them were coming back down and starting um little fires on hay bales that were set out. And I was trying to take pictures of this exit of this couple and dodging falling fire. And that was the moment. I was just like, you know what, this isn't for me anymore. I'm I have to figure something else out. And of course, that takes time. What I learned about myself during that process, though, as it pertains to business, is that you have to hustle your booty off to get noticed. I started writing blogs, started submitting blogs, started submitting weddings that I was shooting to magazines. And I was doing all this stuff that um almost like PR work for myself. And that was the first time I realized like shit, like this is this is a lot of work just to just to get seen so that I can have a little bit of traction with um website stuff. I was learning website and backlinks and and trying to get my site, you know, on page one. So this is where all of that comes in with search engine optimization. And, you know, when you get a magazine, a wedding magazine to feature one of your weddings, it's clout. It looks good. And that's what I was doing. So I learned a lot about website and SEO during that time. So so far we've got the beginnings, right? The at least getting seen a little bit and then learn learning a little bit more about website and then getting searched, you know, all that stuff. Okay, so that kind of brings us up into COVID almost. And I knew that if I wasn't going to be a wedding photographer, that I had to figure out a a different angle so that I could still do photography full-time. And mind you, I was always applying for jobs during this time. Like I never really actually believed that I could be a photographer. I wanted to do more, nobody would hire me. And what when was I supposed to have the time? So, you know, my my two oldest, they they turn 18, and then my ex-husband and I, and my youngest son, we moved to California, and I try to do some photography there. We moved back, we started Airbnb, and I'm trying to do photography still. And just kind of any photography, right? Like I wasn't picky, just give me something. I was doing, I remember I got some jobs where I was photographing herbal witch tinctures. Like they came, they were like almost like powder. And, you know, like if you want to put a hex on your ex-boyfriend, stuff like that. So product photography. I even did some dog food, some pet food, some family fo photography, uh, some real estate. Like I was just all over the place, just hustling, just trying to make ends meet. And, you know, I guess like with photography, it's always just it's just such an interesting thing because I never, I never thought I would be a photographer, I guess. Like this is just my life. And I think of myself as more than a photographer, but again, it always it all goes back to taking pictures. So, okay, so after California, we move back, we start the Airbnb, and COVID's kind of starting. I'm kind of getting into social media a little bit more and really learning the ins and outs of how to promote my business on socials and end up going to San Diego to like a big social media marketing class uh event thing, and that's when COVID starts. So, mind you, my second marriage was not like the most greatest, and it certainly COVID just killed it. So COVID's starting, marriage is ending, and I gotta figure out what the fuck I'm doing, right? Because I don't know how I'm supposed to leave this thing and throw this thing and how it's all gonna work out, and how I'm not gonna be freaking broke living in my car. And it's not it's not a joke. A lot of women r stay in relationships because they cannot afford to leave, and it's an actual thing. So kudos to to the women out there that they're just grinding it out, waiting for that day to happen. And I just trust that it will for you. But what was interesting is that the marriage is failing. I'm trying to grow my business, and it almost because I I really wanted to put my business first, I started taking marketing. I started hiring hiring coaches during COVID. This was like the first time I had hired anybody to really help me. And I read this book called Your Prince Charming Isn't Coming or Prince Charming Isn't Coming, something like that. And it was all about this exact thing. This thing that a lot of women are not in charge of their finances. A lot of times when they get divorced or somebody dies, they go bankrupt, they have to move, they have nothing, they find out their husband was a serial gambler and they were like $100,000 in debt. All this stuff happens. It can happen. And I'm like, okay, I get the message. I gotta learn the business part of photography. I have to learn how to run a business. And that was the scariest thing to admit that I didn't know what I was doing after 10 years in business. I just had to take stock of where I was. And then I decided that if I want to do photography full-time, if I need to leave my husband, if I need to start my life over, I have to find a way to make this all work. And it's COVID. And because I'm putting myself first and I'm like learning boundaries probably for the first time ever, and I'm putting my business and myself in a space where I can thrive, then that really plummeted the marriage. So it was just this constant, my life has always been like this constant um tension of just trying to stay above water. Because I I mean, up until the end of that marriage, up until about two years ago, a year and a half ago, like I was really just in struggle mode all the time. And that's such a sucks to say that because I just feel bad for that person that was just in that. Anyway, so I get a studio in North Freedom, and that's exciting. So one of my husband, my ex-husband's friends, Fred, comes over one night just to chat, and he's telling me about North Freedom, this cute little town not too far from where I live, and like there's a huge studio space for sale or for rent. And he was just like, you shouldn't call. And I went to North Freedom. I mean, North Freedom's small, and but this building is huge, and it's all these north-facing windows, and it's been it's been fairly redone. There's nice carpet, there's a nice bathroom, everything about it is nice. And I negotiate with them to get it to $500 a month. This huge old general store. And you know what? I fucking made that work. I made all these little spots in this huge space feel like little studio um vignettes, and I really made it my own. It was really special to me. And but the timing, timing wasn't right. I knew I knew when I signed the lease that it was about a two-year thing. I'm like, you know what, this is about a two-year thing. And well, it did, it was, it was a two-year thing. And it I had a lot of amazing clients come into that space, but well, I haven't cried about that in a while. But I had to I had a choice I had to make. This was then the the beginning of the divorce, the end of the divorce, I would say, I guess, because papers were signed very shortly after that. But I was living on my own, and it was just my son and I now, my youngest son, and I had a lot of bills to pay, and I couldn't keep the photo studio. I just it was I wasn't successful enough to keep it. And but truly that has that space changed my business because it forced me to become a business owner. And the same things that I learned by having that space are principles that I apply today. Like I, you know, you just have to you have to keep expanding your creative space, whether it's in your home or in your head or on a piece of paper. Life doesn't really exist if we cannot expand into something. So I'm super grateful for that, that that happened. And the business, the business did well. The business is doing well. I have now been on my own for four years and it has its ups and downs, but I'm surviving, if not thriving, if not so grateful, even in the moments where nobody is calling, and I'm wondering if I can stay afloat. I I'm just so grateful because when the clients do come in, I have the best clients. I have the best job. And it's still growing. I after doing a lot of headshots and corporate events and getting my feet wet in that direction, I decided to pull back now and do more one-on-one, more intimate sessions, going into people's homes and photographing them with their families, with their books, with their kitchens, with their cookies, and really just taking a step to because I appreciate my life so much. I want to help other people appreciate theirs through photography. And and I do hikes where we use photography as a tool to be more present in the in the space, the current moment. And I have a retreat coming up where we're gonna do the same thing, just on a deeper level of using photography as a way to be to see yourself. And I also have the workshop coming up for businesses because, like for so long, I did not have support and I didn't know what I was doing. So if I can help other people find that support and and and create that space and hold that space for other business owners that are starting up or just need a refresh or just want to connect with other business owners, I get to hold that space. You know, it's very similar to when you heal a childhood wound, you know, you mother your your younger self. And I feel like by me doing all these new things and bringing new people into my circle, I'm healing a part of me as well. So it it's always just been a journey. And I want to say that I'm doing what my soul loves, that I'm I'm appreciating her. I'm allowing that creative space to flow through me. Because if I if I'm blocked off from that life that is creative, that is me, I don't know who I am. And I think as a human being, we always just want to know who we are. And for me, I find that through photography and through talking and through writing. But the whole, the whole business, the whole art of photography has mirrored my life in so many ways. And the contrast of the highs and lows, you know, I could be having the best photo session ever, and my life is falling apart. But while I'm taking photos, like it doesn't, like I'm present, I'm in the moment. There's no judgment against what's going on at home. And the opposite is true too. I could be having the best day at home and just have the worst fucking shoot ever, right? And it's just it, it all balances out somewhere. And if you're thinking that you want to start a business and you think that it's not for you, that is just fear. That is just your ego trying to keep you safe. When you have those little sparks of creativity, daydreaming, of love, of life, all that stuff. That's heart, that's soul, that heart and soul just want to come through and sing you a good old song. So just allow it to happen. Allow yourself to dream without the fear of getting in the way. And when that fear pops up, just give it a big old hug, right? It's just doing its job. But do not let fear run the show. Anyways, I hope you guys enjoyed this little trip down memory lane with me. And thank you so much for listening. And I look forward to hearing your comments. And if you feel like this could help somebody else out, please like, share, subscribe. And I will see you guys next time. Thanks so much.