We recently connected with Meryll Hernandez and have shared our conversation below.

Meryll, appreciate you joining us today. Do you think folks should manage their own social media or hire a professional? What do you do?

Social media has always been one of those subjects for photography where you either manage it all yourself (website, instagram, Facebook, tik Tok, YouTube, etc) or outsource to another company and hope they do right by you. To this day, I have been managing it myself, ever since back in 2015 of revamping my Instagram account. Not that I don’t see the value in hiring a social media marketing team for myself or my company – but I tend to find myself OCD when it comes to uploading and posting my own content. I’ll hire someone or get one of my friends to take photos or help in recording content for myself, but posting has always been something I can’t really let go of… – yet, Between selecting the correct photo/video for content, creating a caption for the post to even selecting all thirty hashtags, it takes a lot of time out of me personally to come up with it. It sounds weird to say it, but I always found coming up with the caption to be the toughest part of actually posting.

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?

My name is Meryll Hernandez, or as some of the people online may know me, as Akindredheart. I was born onto a Naval base in Japan, and growing up for the longest time – I remember everyone in my family being some sort of creative in their own right, whether it was art, drawing, singing and composing music, or even being musically talented in playing instruments. I’ve dabbled in playing the guitar or attempting to draw like my family members only to realize I wasn’t as good – and didn’t even love doing so when attempting. And I remember randomly back in my junior/senior year of high school back in Europe, I took a photography and videography class, didn’t even think much of it back at the time. I enjoyed it and breezed through it pretty easily – and while I did enjoy it, I never thought much more of it. Fast forward to 2015, I remember Instagram just started booming and there was this one day where one of my influencer friends wanted professional content for his page and I offered saying that I had taken some photography back then and I could help. He ended up loving the content I took and I started taking all of his photos for him and there was this one point where he commented that I should start charging people for photography since his and my work was blowing up. I created my own Instagram page and posting some of the work I’ve done – started getting tons of DMs from his page and mine, and the rest became history. I launched Akindredheart Photography a couple of months after. From there, I was all about my craft. I started networking and doing as many shoots as possible, learning up on different styles and editing, and one day at my old retail job around Christmas, I was helping a customer buy some clothes for his daughter, turns out he was a big time wedding photographer out here in the Hampton Roads area. I showed him some of my work and he took me under his wing, showing me all the ins and outs for developing a creative eye and the wedding photography scene for two years. Fast forward to now and Akindredheart Photography is undergoing some creative changes, but the mission has always remained the same: creating and proving the highest level of professional content to our clients in all facets.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

The most rewarding aspect of being a creative to me is when my clients love the outcome of our shoots and it ends up becoming something as simple as a wallpaper on their phone or table or pc – or even when they print it onto a canvas or place it in a frame in their home. Knowing I captured that moment in time for them that they love it so much that they would frame it or put it up in their household, it makes it all that more special to me.

What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?

The old way is still the best way. I’ve realized the old formula for getting new clients has been the saving grace since I started the business. Through word of mouth from my clients and posting on social media and marketing what I love to do.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://wwww.instagram.com/akindredheart
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/akindredheart