Today we’d like to introduce you to Lyndsay Mcniff

Hi Lyndsay, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.

My path to photography was a winding one. I didn’t intend to become a professional photographer and actually went to school for both Public Relations and then Hospitality Management and Marketing. After college, I began my career working in hotels and luxury event spaces in the sales sector. My story as a photographer started later, in 2015, after the birth of my first son. After he was born, I had every intention of returning to my career with sales management. He ended up being a more challenging baby than I could’ve ever anticipated. As my maternity leave came to an end, I still felt barely able to function…never mind commute to an office and successfully work a 40 hour workweek. I left the workplace to become a stay at home mom, still without a single thought towards professional photography.
Prior to having a baby, photography had been a long-time hobby focused on landscape, nature and travel photography. With a new baby in my life, I slowly began to experiment with taking photos of human subjects. My husband and baby were my very first test subjects. Over the course of the first year of motherhood, I fell in love with photographing families and opened my (very part time) business in early Spring 2015, around a year post-partum. My business grew alongside my family over the next decade. I added two more sons and grew my business each year, eventually adding newborn, brand, and elopement photography. Today, I run a full-time, multi-six figure business and I couldn’t be more proud.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?

I am very thankful and fortunate to say that my business has somewhat easily grown each year. It’s taken a lot of hard work and dedication, but it never felt fruitless. What has been a struggle has been managing a balance between being a parent and a creative entrepreneur. As a mother, there is a lot of societal pressure to be there for every kid activity, every playground meet-up, and every school function while also juggling keeping the house clean and preparing meals. While my husband is extremely supportive, he works outside of the home with traditional hours. A lot of the kid stuff, meal prep, and household tasks naturally tend to fall to the parent who works from home with non-traditional hours. Because my hours are different than the average job, it took me years to realize that hiring help for household tasks and childcare was normal and necessary. That my job *was* full-time and deserved support even if it isn’t always Monday through Friday from 9 to 5. Once I overcame the mental stigma of being in the creative arts (lots of people think it’s ‘just a hobby’) and treated my full-time job AS a full-time job, my life became much more manageable!

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?

I am a lifestyle photographer located just outside Boston, Massachusetts. The lifestyle genre falls somewhat in the middle of documentary (unposed) photography and traditional portrait photography (posed). In the middle you’ll find photographers like me who strive to capture everyday life, emotions, and interactions in a beautiful way. This means that I guide my clients with wardrobe advice, select beautiful locations, and provide advice on the best time of day for ideal lighting. I loosely pose my clients and then use a lot of prompts incorporating laughter and movement. The results are beautiful portraits that are candid and natural looking, and unique to each client. The bulk of my business comes from family, maternity, and newborn lifestyle photography but I also apply these same lifestyle techniques to the branding and commercial arm of my business. The feedback that I get most often from my clients is that my images made them *feel* something. The something they feel might be the raw love of a family for their new baby, the pure joy of their two year old running in a field, or the pride of an entrepreneur as they look through dynamic images of the business they’ve worked so hard to build.

We’d love to hear about any fond memories you have from when you were growing up?

It’s hard to pick one favorite childhood memory…so many come to mind. What’s interesting is that most of the ones that immediately popped up happened on vacations with my family. I recently saw some instagram post about how they’ve done studies and core memories in kids are often from family trips….perhaps this is why I love traveling with my kids so much! I’d say my two favorite memories both happened during our yearly trips to Acadia National Park in Maine. One year, a humpback whale breeched out of the water right in front of our boat. I’ll never forget how amazing it was to see such a huge creature crash back into the waves. The other was the year we were sitting on the rocks at Otter Point with sandwiches from our favorite bakery. A seagull swooped down and stole my mom’s sandwich right out of her hand. My siblings and I died with laughter and I’ll never forget the look on her face!

Pricing:

• Families starting at $1550
• Newborns starting at $1650
• Elopements starting at $2000
• Personal Brand Sessions starting at $2000
• Commercial Jobs starting at $4,000+

Contact Info:

• Website: https://lyndsayhannahphotography.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lyndsayhannahphotography/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lyndsayhannahphotography
• Other: https://branding.lyndsayhannahphotography.com/