We were lucky to catch up with Taylor Breinholt recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Taylor thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We love asking folks what they would do differently if they were starting today – how they would speed up the process, etc. We’d love to hear how you would set everything up if you were to start from step 1 today.

If I was to press a restart button on my business and do everything over tomorrow there are quite a few things I’d do the same, but a handful of things I’d change about my experience growing. The biggest thing is I wouldn’t be afraid to connect with other photographers in my community. When I first started out in photography I thought every other photographer was just my competition. I didn’t think I should talk to other photographers, Follow them, Like their posts, or interact in any way with them because they were purely just my rivalry. Unfortunately this made the industry so lonely and isolating for me. I didn’t have anyone to connect with or confide in who truly understood the struggles I was going through or accomplishments I wanted to celebrate. In 2021 when I began taking photography more seriously and realized it was something i eventually wanted to do as a full time job i began to slowly connect with others in my area. Since then I’ve been able to make so many amazing friends in my industry. I love that there is this mindset of ‘Community over Competition’ and we can all support each others businesses while still running our own very successful businesses. Theres more than enough room for us to all thrive!

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’m a natural light portrait photographer. I’ve been doing photography since I was 14 so 12 years now! As a business I’ve been doing it officially for 4 years now! The most common types of sessions that I offer are Families, Senior/graduation, couples, maternity, and boudoir! My personal favorite types of photoshoots are couples and maternity. Especially now that I’m pregnant and soon to be a mom myself I’ve been able to see a huge change in my maternity photos. I feel I’m able to connect with these other mothers more and capture much deeper images. Clients don’t usually come to me with huge problems to solve. If they do it’s things along the line of when they need their photos back by, trying to figure out locations for photos, or what to wear to their sessions. It’s important as a business owner and a photographer to make sure that my clients feel comfortable with me and like they can communicate their worries about their sessions with me. It’s my job to make sure they feel and look comfortable and natural in front of the camera for their photos!
I’m Proud of how far I’ve come in the last 4 years with my business. I use to feel so uncomfortable posing clients and you could really see it in those early photoshoots I did. Now after years of practice, learning, mentorships and communication there is such a huge improvement in my photos and the way my clients look in front of the camera and in their photos!

Are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

As a photographer there are so many useful resources ready and just a fingers tip away I really wish I knew about when I first stared out. first off, there are so many facebook groups you can join for photography. Typically you can find one for your area where you can ask other photographers, or there are some great ones for photographers that are worldwide. I’ve foud these super useful as I’ve grown into my business and had some growing pains along the way. If theres a road block that I’ve never had come up before in my business or with a client and i’m not quite sure the best and most professional way to go about it I can easily reach out to others to see if they’ve come across something similar or have suggestions on the best way to proceed. They’re also great ways to draw inspiration when I feel I’ve reached a point where I might be stuck or uninspired in my bunnies

We’d love to hear the story of how you turned a side-hustle into a something much bigger.

All throughout High School I loved photography. I took classes, most weekends I would go out and take photos of my friends for fun, and I even had a few friends ask me to take their senior photos. After high school I explored different aspects of photography more to see what it was I truly liked about this hobby. For a while I did film photography and learned quite a bit from it. But in 2019 when I moved back home to Arizona I wanted to do portrait photography as a side business to make some extra money. In all of 2019 I maybe did 20 shoots total. I didn’t really market myself and I always found it to be such a chore. I didn’t really love doing it and I was constantly getting frustrated at my work. I had a certain expectation for my work and what I wanted it to look like and it just wasn’t turning out the way I wanted it to, At the same time I constantly had people asking me if one day I wanted photography to become my full job and I’d tell them all no. I thought if it became my full time job I wouldn’t love it as much and eventually I’d get bored of it. After getting married to my husband I started to take photography more seriously. I reached out to several other photographer’s who offered mentorships, I invested in better gear, and began to push myself out of my comfort bubble. Eventually I saw more and more improvement in myself and my work. As I began to learn more and improve I began to fall in love with photography again. I’m happy I stuck with it, I’ve been a full time photographer for over a year now and it been a dream come true. Its by far my favorite job I’ve ever had.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://taylorbreinholtphotography.mypixieset.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/taylor_breinholt_photo/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/taylorbreinholtphoto