We recently connected with Isabel Wallace and have shared our conversation below.

Isabel, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What do you think it takes to be successful?

First of all each and everyone needs to define what success means for them. For me, it is growth, personally and professionally. That I am living my purpose. A purpose which serves myself and other people. Which allows me to be happy, to live the lifestyle I consciously choose to live and which supports the people I care for.

Given my personal definition that success is growth, it oftentimes means I need to step out of my comfort zone.

If you can visualise things in your head, then you are capable of doing it in reality.

There are many things I never thought I would be able to do in my life.
I grew up as a rather shy girl, not talking to many people and in constant fear of speaking in front of others. I decided to study brand and communication design because I thought I would never make it as a photographer. I thought I’m not a real photographer because I did not officially learn it. That I can be grateful when other photographers recognise me as being one of them.

Today, I am self-employed in my 6th year, making a living of my biggest hobby, constantly meeting new people (and loving it!). I’ve been elected as a representative of one of the biggest german photography associations and in fact teaching students photography and explain what it takes to be successful in this business. I co-founded align studio, a multidisciplinary creative agency, together with my best friend. If you would have told me about it 5 years ago,…

I believe it is all a matter of visualisation, manifestation, vision boarding, call it how you like. But don’t mistake it with a dream!

There is a difference between a dream and a vision.

Dreaming is nice, but dreaming means it’s just a dream. Not a vision. A vision makes you plan your next steps, makes you define goals, makes you work on how to get there. Makes you question “How strong is my will to get there?”.

And if you found that one thing: Decide to take that path and more importantly, stick to it! Even if it means that you need to step out of your comfort zone regularly (which is unavoidable btw).

Another thing which made me realize what true success is, is watching the people I get to work with. I love seeing successful people. They inspire me tremendously! I am lucky to be working with both business partners and clients who are successful with what they’re doing. It makes me happy and feel successful as well to witness, to see, to feel and eventually to photograph those people doing their thing.

Sometimes I wonder how the earth would look like if more people would do what they love.

Some questions I keep asking myself regularly:

– Who am I today / what did I achieve / how did I improve / what is the version of me compared to one year ago?
– Did things improve, stagnate or even decline / became more fragile? Why, how do you feel about it and how can you change that if necessary?
– Do I even notice when successful things happen and do I properly celebrate these / acknowledge what I achieved?
– Who are the people that support you in your success? Who are the ones ignoring or even downplaying it?
– Are there some things or people I need to let go because they’re stopping me of becoming successful or just don’t align with my current / future version of me, my values and my priorities?

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I am a freelance people & lifestyle photographer and working with my creative agency “align studio”, mainly in the health, well-being, sports and design industry. Through my background as a former martial artist and having studied brand and communication design, I became deeply interested in body-mind connections, well-being and sustainability from a creator’s and brand’s point of view. The beauty of nature and light inspires me just as much as the people I get to work with, their energy, passion and dedication.

If I had to describe my photographic style, I’d say it’s natural, emotional and contemporary, but also more than only aesthetic. I create images that capture the essence of a (personal) brand while conveying the core values. Whether it’s needed for a website, promotional materials or social media campaigns, my focus is on aligning the initial purpose with an authentic story and my creative approach.

My design background, understanding and experience of how brands work made me want to have a bigger impact within this consumption-driven industry. So there are basically two things I chose to do in order to achieve this.

First of all, in 2019 I started teaching students about photography. Spending time with the next generation of people working within the creative industry makes me feel like I can be a small influence to shape them according to my values and point out the responsibility they’ll be bearing. Also it is always a good idea to see and hear how the younger ones think.

Second, I felt the urge to not only provide the brands I chose to work with with my photography but rather support them on a more holistic level. Therefore my best friend, business partner and brand designer Tanita Schneider and I founded our multidisciplinary creative agency called “align studio” two years ago. We combine strategy, empathy and creativity to identify the essence of authentic, meaningful companies, make them emotionally visible and tell stories – that touch, move and stay in the mind. We “align” our competencies in brand strategy, corporate design, photography and videography to create distinctive, emotional brands in the digital world.

At align studio, my responsibility is everything that has to do with cameras. Capturing moments and letting them come to life. To make visible what others do not (yet) see. With photos or moving images. And of course the post-production afterwards, to really bring out the essence and to perfectly match the work to Tanita’s brand development. For a seamless, authentic and unique brand experience.

We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.

I first met Tanita in 2014 when we both started to study brand and communication design. The first two semesters we barely talked to each other for actually no apparent reason. But December 2015 we participated at a 24h creative challenge where we created a team. It was our first time working together and eventually we won the first prize! I think that day marked the beginning of our friendship and paved the way to being business partners in the future. In our semester abroad in Milan, Italy we shared a flat and continued to work in teams many times. After we graduated she sticked to the brand design career while I shifted and decided to become a photographer. Already back then we realized how well these two skills matched.

It was very important for both of us to establish our self-employment and work on some projects together as freelancers before deciding to officially combine our competencies.

Can you share your view on NFTs? (Note: this is for education/entertainment purposes only, readers should not construe this as advice)

I love that question because it’s a controversial topic. There seem to be two kind of people who either find it’s completely unnecessary or believe it’s the next big thing. Which I can totally understand because the internet is a wild place and so are NFTs. We are at the beginning of these things and only few can grasp what it could change in the future. It is a lot of time you have to invest to make a deep dive into that topic and to actually understand – not only technically – what are NFTs, why do they exists, what are the benefits, risks and chances and why the heck does someone pay millions of dollars (or a certain amount of “fictional crypto money”) to buy a picture of a weird looking ape I could take a screenshot of.

Fair enough! But you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. I used to also think like that but I am a curious soul and always had a bigger interest in new technology. So this is when I started learning a little more about crypto, the web 3.0, blockchains, bitcoins and NFTs.

One of the big chances of NFTs is how they can support artists. Nowadays there are so many artists creating digital, animated artworks. How to sell them? How to own them? Or how about young emerging artists that want to exhibit and sell their work? How about artists in third world countries? You might have an idea about how much an exhibitions costs and how hard it is to enter the world of big art galleries, curators, auctioneers and being recognized or even noticed by the big ones. NFTs and the metaverse can solve this problem.

In times where we are all affected by AI technology, where we cannot say for sure if the image or video we’re seeing is computer generated or real, where we cannot properly track back the source,… this is exactly the time where crypto, blockchains and yes, also NFTs in my opinion are needed more than ever.

One of the problems of NFTs are how the media is covering it. The average person at home might think it’s only about some pictures which can be “bought” online and believe screenshotting it, is the smarter way. But an NFT is not a picture neither any other piece of art. It is a certificate of ownership. You could proof your ownership of anything. It can be art and images, but it could also be a house or a car. It could be a concert ticket or a membership to a club. It could be a website domain or a skin theme at an online game. No chance for black markets, no chance for hiding transactions, no chance for claiming art as your own when it’s actually somebody else who created it.

There are many possibilities with NFTs which would be too much to mention all of them here but I truly believe we are just at the beginning – like the internet in the 90s. Times are changing fast, just think about social media, artificial intelligence and now crypto in general.

The simple fact that you can verify with 100% public transparency that you are the owner or the source of something can change this world incredibly in my opinion. A world were credibility and transparency is more worth than ever before. What a time to be alive!

Contact Info:

• Website: www.isabelwallace.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/isabelwallace__/
• Other: www.align-studio.de/en

Image Credits
Tanita Schneider