We recently connected with Joni Buyes and have shared our conversation below.

Joni, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you tell us a bit about who your hero is and the influence they’ve had on you?

This might sound funny as we typically see a hero as someone older than us that we look up to. Someone who’s gone before us and paved the way. My hero is actually my little sister. She is the definition of perseverance and determination. She has overcome so much in her life, fought through very difficult circumstances and roadblocks that would have stopped a lot of people, and came out of it on the other side victorious.
My little sister had a completely different life sitting in front of her. She fell into the wrong crowd at a very young age, made a lot of poor choices, and we both had babies very young. She got into some serious trouble, faced jail time, and had her son taken from her. Hitting her lowest rock bottom she evaluated her life and the choices she made to get where she was and made the decision to turn it around completely.
I watched her come out of jail a new person. She went right back to school while completing everything she needed to to get her son back. She made it through 3 solid years of zero tolerance probation, which is extremely difficult. After a couple years she transferred from community college to Oregon State University where she was told on her first day by a professor that given her situation and background she wouldn’t make it through her program and she should just give up right then. This fueled her. No one has ever been able to tell her she can’t do something. I watched her as she worked harder than anyone I know. She fought against constant struggles that came her way, almost like the world was out to make sure she failed. But she pushed back. She made it through her program, with two little boys, commuting back and forth over an hour each way all the while. She finally did it.
I cried my eyes out the entire way to her graduation from OSU absolutely in awe of this person she fought so hard to become. I kept thinking about that professor that told her to quit and truly hoped they remembered their words and saw her graduate with her bachelor’s degree – the first in our family to do it. This girl is my constant inspiration. She’s the one that keeps me going and has been a pillar of love and support in everything I do. Any time I think of giving up I’m always reminded that if she can make it through what she’s been through I can certainly do anything I put my time, effort, and hard work into. It won’t always be easy, things worth doing rarely are. But it will be absolutely worth it. She taught me that, my little sister.

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’ve always been the creative sort. I loved taking photos as a kid and remember my first point and shoot film camera I got for Christmas when I was 11. As I grew up, I loved baking and creating beautiful things for people and decorated cakes on the side for years. While I loved it, I wasn’t able to be around people very often. My husband gifted me my first DSLR camera for mother’s day one year as I had been saying I wanted to be able to take photos of my kids. Though it was super intimidating with all it’s buttons and complicated menu options. It was like a foreign language to me. I was overwhelmed and ended up putting it in the closet for two years before I decided to finally learn how to use it. I invested and took course after course and found a love and passion I didn’t know I had. I could create beautiful things for others and connect with people at the same time!
From then I focused a lot of my business on honing my style and brand and creating a full service experience for my clients. I want them to absolutely fall in love with their images and I feel it all begins with building a relationship with them! Getting to know my clients on a personal level and creating a relationship truly affects how the session or wedding day flows. If clients are not comfortable with the person taking their photos it will show up in their images. I want to make sure they love their images and feel their absolute best. That all starts at the beginning and through all of our interactions. So I strive to provide the very best experience I can from sending my style guides to help with choosing the right outfits, always being available to help answer questions, and going above and beyond for them in ways a lot of people wouldn’t. I truly love all my clients and I’m so blessed to work with some amazing people! I’m so grateful to this business and for bringing me some of my best friends I have in my life! That’s the true gift. The friendships we end up with after the session or wedding day is all said and done. It’s about gorgeous images but it’s also all about the people.

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

One of the greatest things I had ever done to grow my wedding clientele was actually in the midst of covid. It was coming out of the shut down and things were very, very slow. I decided to reach out to several venues in my surrounding area and beyond that I would love to capture weddings at. I was creating a new blog series called Feature Friday where I was focusing on vendors to recommend to potential wedding clients. When I reached out to these venues I offered to come out and take photos of their venue and gift them to use for marketing purposes as long as I could use them on my blog and use them as a new vendor to recommend to my clients. I had several respond so I went and took photos of their properties and venues. By doing this and not requesting any kind of payment in return, I fostered relationships with these venues and was placed on quite a few preferred vendor lists! I have since gotten the majority of my clients as referrals from these venues.

How do you keep in touch with clients and foster brand loyalty?

Keeping in touch with my clients and getting to photograph them from engagement, wedding, and all through the growth of their family is something that is so special to me. I get to do this with so many of my clients and I am so touched that they choose to keep coming back to me over and over again.
This is also why it’s so important to me that I provide such a great experience from the very beginning. I make sure they know that I am available for all of those in between life moments as well, not just their wedding. I also keep them on my email list so when my information for sessions and bookings go out they keep me top of mind. Connecting with my clients and forming that relationship allows me to see their family grow. I invest in them, comment on their posts, sometimes I will send them little birthday gifts and messages and always tag them in my social media posts as well, reminding them that I loved their day and being part of it.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://joniloraine.me
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jonilorainephotography/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/joniloraine

Image Credits

All of these images are mine, with the exception of the headshot of myself, which was taken by Samantha Shannon Photography and edited by me.