We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jenny Crofton. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jenny below.

Hi Jenny, thanks for joining us today. Can you open up about a risk you’ve taken – what it was like taking that risk, why you took the risk and how it turned out?

Risks are never easy to take or they wouldn’t be risks, they’d simply be everyday decisions. I think the reason I was able to take one of the biggest risks I’ve taken –making the move to be a full-time photographer and stepping away from my safety net in the restaurant industry– is because someone once took a chance on me and believed in me. I’ve been snapping pictures since I was eight years old and I once had a neighbor whose trash and newspapers I took in for him. He was a photographer during World War II and once he found out I had a knack for photography, he approached my parents told them I needed my first real camera. He later took it upon himself to purchase me my first DSLR camera for my birthday and really jumpstarted my passion for photography. It was an exorbitant gift for him to give me, but it’s one that I’ll never forget and because he decided to invest his money and time into me, that risk he took has inspired me to take so many more over the course of my life. I began photographing professionally by seventeen and started to work at a studio in Greenbrier right around that same time. With the guidance of a few driven women, I was given the opportunity to hone my skills and build a client base while freelancing on the side. I began second shooting for weddings and eventually left the studio around 2013 to go out on my own. I moved to the Outer Banks around that time and took a bit of a break from photography, it had begun to feel too much like a job and not enough like the thing I had so loved not long ago. I had a lot of things to juggle and needed to support myself, so the inevitable happened: I began working in restaurants on the beach. My hiatus was around four years long before I came back to my camera.
In 2018 my sister encouraged me to pick it back up. I started shooting for a few local boutiques and product shooting completely refreshed my love for taking pictures and also started getting my name out on the Outer Banks. I began shooting for other small businesses and then got back into portrait photography. Luckily, people were liking my work and the jobs started to roll in without me really trying to get back into it. A mixture of word of mouth through the small beach grapevine kept me busy and I slowly got busier and busier until I was confronted with a big decision to make: is it time to take the leap into photography full time?
In March of 2021 I launched my website and started picking up clients I hadn’t met before, out-of-towners and the like. I was fully invested in my business and ready to take the time necessary to grow it, but in order to do that I needed it to be my primary focus. So I took the biggest risk of my career and decided photography would be my primary income. This step was incredibly difficult to make because I knew it meant I might struggle in the beginning, and I would no longer be scheduled to be somewhere so in addition to becoming my own boss I knew I’d have to work on my time management, discipline, and to cut myself slack when I needed it. It was critical to have faith in myself and my abilities just as my neighbor had in me when I was so young.
Now that I’ve taken this risk, I can look back and know that it fully paid off. By giving myself the time and space to grow my business I have opened doors to entirely new sides of myself. I am now a yoga teacher, something allowed to me only now that I create my own schedule and can balance several of my passions. The marrying of these two, yoga and photography, has now taken me around the world as a retreat photographer, an experience I never could have imagined for myself in my early days at that Greenbrier studio.
I cannot urge people enough to follow their passions and believe in themselves. The risks may seem tremendous, but confidence and diligence go a long way professionally.

What’s been the best source of new clients for you?

Instagram is an amazing tool for getting your work out there as a photographer. The platform is free, which is obviously a bonus, but the innate visual nature of it is a photographer’s dream. Posting pictures from my shoots and tagging clients, geotagging locales, and living in such a beautiful place are all incredibly helpful in gaining and retaining new clients.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

My favorite part of my job is meeting a client who doesn’t think they’re good in front of the lens and totally watching their 180. Making people comfortable has always been an area in which I shine and being able to capture that and then showing it to them completely makes any hardship of the job worth it. When they book me to shoot them or their families again, and I watch them grow from year to year and blossom in front of my camera, I can’t help but crack the biggest smile.     

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.jennycroftonphotography.com/
• Instagram: @jennycroftonphoto
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JennyCroftonPhotography/

Image Credits
Photo Credits: Jenny Crofton Photography