Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Casey Martinez. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Casey, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. So, let’s start with trends – what are some of the largest or more impactful trends you are seeing in the industry?

In terms of photography, the world was a different place 10 years ago. Instagram was brand new with only a collection of your friends low-resolution filtered phone images. Magazines were still commissioning huge fashion photoshoots to print monthly. The gap between amateur and professional photography was vast. I started my company, Private Editorial, along side a group of fashion industry professionals in 2013 to provide access to magazine worthy photo shoots. We do full editorial photoshoots for families, complete with a creative director, videographer, hair and makeup, on-set styling and professional retouching. Services exclusively reserved for famous models and celebrities are now available through our company. The result is a polished fashion editorial of your family. Art for your home. Over the last ten years we have had the opportunity to work with many incredible families and have traveled all across the US, Europe and Asia. But the fashion editorial world is changing. Social media and the need for constant content has made it more challenging for thoughtful photoshoots to keep up with the pace of posting. More clients are wanting reels over a beautiful image. Quantity over quality. The need for the perfect holiday card is diminishing, with younger clients wanting to skip them all-together. What used to take our retouchers hours to fix in post-production now takes minutes to complete with ai. The technological advances over the last decade has given access for more and more people to create high quality photoshoots at a cheaper price point. Is fashion editorials a dying industry? No. Now there just a lot more content created around the photoshoot. Something that my business is also adapting to by offering clients more behind the scenes video and content, interviews and even bloopers. It’s beneficial to the society to get to see models and celebrities as a whole, verse the perfect images in only being shown in magazines a decade ago.

Casey, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Casey Martinez is a portrait and fashion photographer who resides in the New York City area. Her work has been seen in national publications, including People Magazine, US Weekly, E Entertainment, CBS and ABC. She works with celebrity clients as their private family photographer. Her photography business has given her the opportunity to travel the world. Casey is currently the owner and creative director at Private Editorial.

Casey Martinez and Michael Fusco came up with the idea of Private Editorial over a few bloody marys at the Ace Hotel in NYC. Casey, an established photographer and Michael, a renowned stylist and creative director decided to combine their expertise to create one amazing concept—high fashion family photography. Soon after, Beth Hitchcock and John Kenney joined the team. Beth is a wardrobe stylist and fashion expert, and John is a fashion editorial videographer. John’s work ranges from television commercials with clients like Pepsi and Smirnoff, to award-winning music videos and short films.

Our goal at Private Editorial is to offer an alternative option to traditional family photography by taking the glamour and fashion you see in high-end magazines and bringing it into your home. We have coined ourselves the “Vogue of family photography.” We bring our fashion expertise and knowledge directly to our clients to create an experience akin to a shoot for a major fashion publication while enjoying every step of the process.

How’d you meet your business partner?

Casey Martinez and Michael Fusco came up with the idea of Private Editorial over a few bloody marys at the Ace Hotel in NYC. Casey, an established photographer and Michael, a renowned stylist and creative director decided to combine their expertise to create one amazing concept—high fashion family photography. Soon after, Beth Hitchcock and John Kenney joined the team. Beth is a wardrobe stylist and fashion expert, and John is a fashion editorial videographer. John’s work ranges from television commercials with clients like Pepsi and Smirnoff, to award-winning music videos and short films. We pitched it to a few of the wives that Casey knew in Major League Baseball and world of mouth spread from there.

Where do you think you get most of your clients from?

Word of mouth. For a long time we felt that having a huge social media presence was the most important marketing tool that we could foster. We spent money and time building our online profile. Spent money on ads and sponsored posts. We hired a PR firm and did free photoshoots for influencers in exchange for social media referrals. None of that came as close as our word of mouth referrals. Because our target market was limited to affluent families who could afford to produce an editorial, almost every lead we got through social media ultimately didn’t book with us after they were sent the pricing. Even people with more expendable income would not book because editorial photoshoots was an entirely new concept provided to families. The market price of family photoshoots in 2013 was $250-$3000 for a family photoshoot. The market price for an editorial would start at 10k. This was a hard sell in the beginning to justify for anyone considering working with us. But once one family did a shoot with us, they set the new market price for all of their friends and family interested. Nothing has been more powerful than word of mouth for Private Editorial. Even better, almost all of our clients we have worked with have rebooked us yearly.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.privateeditorial.com
• Instagram: @privateeditorial
• Other: www.caseymartinez.com

Image Credits
Casey Martinez