We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Maya Holt a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Maya, appreciate you joining us today. We’ve all been there before where things are tight financially and we start asking ourselves in the small/simple joys like a cup of coffee is worth it. Have you had an experience like this and if so how did you think about this sort of spending?

Given the climate of the world, I feel as if me and colleagues around me are experiencing new financial struggles. Being a freelancer, my income has the tendency to be inconsistent. The lack of money circulating in creative spaces does in fact affect this. It can be scary, and the lack of consistent income in a hard time makes me worry about growing my business on my own or finding other avenues to use my skills.

What do I do to combat this? The biggest thing I do is making sure to save when the money is good. The money won’t always be good, and you use the good months to supplement the bad months. I also cut down on eating out unless it’s work related (write-offs, yay!). My biggest thing is to really communicate with a future or potential client to land the job. I want to listen and work within a budget so I can solidify the job. Any job I can pick up matters, and I will make sure that I can lock it in!

Self-care and self-spending can be an odd world to navigate. I have to see what the budget for the following up is, and set myself an “allowance”. I try to remain strict with it as again, you never know when work will get a little slow.

Maya, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I am a freelance photographer and editor! My photography style is usually what I am hired for, as I use a creative style of coloring and skin retouching that’s almost animated. I started out in this field my last year of college. I was working in the social media department at the University of New Mexico while pursuing a degree in journalism. During that, they would give me a camera to photograph events. That camera began photographing my friends and through doing it every day, I fell in love with it. Then along came me learning Photoshop. I realized my photos weren’t reaching a style I was seeing in my head, so I would watch YouTube videos to teach me how to use Photoshop. 4 years later, I am doing photography as a full time job!

One thing I am super proud of is my self portrait series called the 3moji challenge. I did it for fun and it has brought so many new followers of my work and it’s a complete blast to do. What I have people do is send me 3 emojis, and I turn it into a photo. They range in style, and can get pretty ridiculous! My plan with the series is to create a coffee table book.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Cqdcq4LJHDa/?igsh=MWp1d3ppYXc5Nm5s
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZPRTjbugh/
https://www.instagram.com/p/CeBjpbZra47/?igsh=MTljN3FzYTFkbzdqNQ==

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

I grew up in a small city in New Mexico considered as low income. I didn’t have the money or resources to pursue a lot of things I would’ve liked because my parents could not afford it. When I got my first job at 17, I became independent. Through that, learning and building a set of gear to do photography required me to “cheat the system” and get cheaper or easier products. Learning photoshop was cheaper than buying a nice camera, so I used a tiny Canon EOS M and edited the hell out of it to trick that it was a nicer camera. Even today, I am able to get away with more cost effective materials and share my hacks with friends and people like me. My goal is to encourage low income youth to pursue photography, you don’t need the most expensive gear to make it!

How did you build your audience on social media?

This is harping on the same ol’ chord, but truly owning up to who you are is how you can go far. I feel like my quirky photo ideas is what people love about my work. I break a lot of rules in the photography world, and I think it’s what gives a bigger meaning to photography. Photography is an art form that I want to express and share with the world!

Finding out what I liked, continuing that journey, and sharing it fearlessly brings me people who like what I do, and I am so grateful to be able to share a piece of myself online.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://mayaholt.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mayapologies/?hl=en
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maya-holt-321302155/
• Other: TIKTOK https://www.tiktok.com/@mayapologies_

Image Credits
Infared photo- Model is Eli Oormond Apple of My Eye photo- model is Poppy Strapko