We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Adeline Merrick a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Adeline, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. It’s always helpful to hear about times when someone’s had to take a risk – how did they think through the decision, why did they take the risk, and what ended up happening. We’d love to hear about a risk you’ve taken.

When I first met the love of my life, I was a teacher at an after-school center in South Korea. Mind you, I wasn’t Korean! I had moved to Korea via Australia from my home country of South Africa. Certainly, all of those moves were big risks, but falling in love with an American might have been one of the biggest.

After dating for over two years, we decided to visit America to see if it was the right fit for us. We knew it was a risk traveling to America since it required us to quit our jobs. But, we decided to jump in. Little did we know that we would fail the first time we applied for my visa, and that we would have to wait over a month for the next appointment at the embassy. Despite a deep depression taking us over as we worried about the fear of being jobless and homeless, we tried to stay hopeful as we traveled to the embassy to reapply. Thankfully, we secured a visa for our trip on this second attempt.

Only a few more weeks passed until we arrived in the United States. Despite originally only planning to visit, the ordeal of our visa process caused us to decide to stay in America. While my wife was able to easily secure a new teaching job, I was barred from any work until I received my green card. While resting was enjoyable for the first few months, I quickly felt restless and wanted to study and explore jobs outside of education.

After a year of studying coding, nannying for family members, and creating user-generated content, I kept coming back to photography. The creativity I get to explore coupled with the technical knowledge really excited me! I convinced my wife to buy me the latest iPhone in 2022, but it wasn’t enough to allow me to reach the level of mastery I desired.

When November came around, I finally received my American working rights. Woohoo! My wife encouraged me to research professional photography as my next job. I spent so many weeks consulting with my in-laws, my wife, and other important people in my life about whether or not this decision would play out. Over and over I received the same advice: you have support, so just do it!

After diving in and buying my first camera, my life became a whirlwind. I joined local photography groups, got a photography mentor, began getting leads and taking my first jobs! Now, I’ve served over 30 clients in just a few months. I can’t wait to see where I am in a year!

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 Adeline, I’m a photographer and small business owner based in Dallas. As a former teacher, I really love photographing seniors. I feel that I can literally see them grow-up and glow-up in our sessions together. I love hearing about their future plans, their fears, and their favorite memories of their school days. However, I really just love photographing everyone so you can also see elopements, families, and events in my portfolio. One thing that is really important to me is ensuring that I show off the diversity of my clients in my portfolio. I believe we are all beautiful humans, and I feel so honored whenever someone chooses me to capture them.

As a candid photographer, my style is not about perfect posing, but is about play, movement, and surprising moments. One of my favorite photographs from this past senior season was of a senior who didn’t know how to tie a tie! His charming smile as he started to figure it out was simply wonderful. When I’m photographing events, I love focusing on hugging moments and the joy people show as their loved ones arrive. These unexpected moments always result in the most gorgeous photos. Our tagline is, “You’re worthy of celebration!” which is something we internalize as photographers and videographers. So much of our life is worthy of celebrating whether its personal or professional milestones, and we love being invited to capture the magic.

What people consistently say about me and my wife (who is now my first employee!) is that we bring such a positive atmosphere to taking pictures. We ensure we check in with our clients about their favorite things about their bodies and any insecurities they have so that we can make them feel amazing during and after the shoot.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

My goal is to be able to make people feel amazing about how they appear in photos. This means that I am constantly learning about posing, directing, and editing to ensure all of my clients feel awesome. This is my tenth year being behind a camera, so over time I’ve been slowly growing. I enjoy refining my craft by studying the latest techniques. At the end of the day, I’m a former teacher, so learning is who I am naturally!

We’d love to hear about how you keep in touch with clients.

As a new business owner, I am making some mistakes. For example, once I finally applied for a sales tax permit in Texas, I realized I was charging people the wrong rate! Thankfully, it was only a few percentage points off, so for most clients this was only a dollar or two. But, in this economy? That’s a lot of money! I took the time to reach out to each client who was accidentally overcharged to give them the option of receiving a refund. Only two clients requested it, but I’m happy that I was able to show my clients that I have a high level of integrity and I’m willing to admit when I make mistakes! It also served as a perfect time to reach out to clients and see how they are doing. During any photo session we are naturally getting to know our clients, and sometimes it’s sad that we might walk away from a session and never see someone again, so it’s great to reach out every few months.

As a photographer, I also love the idea of growing with my clients from being their senior photographer, to their engagement photographer, to their wedding photographer, and potentially their family photographer! So for each client, I offer return discounts. I already had one senior mention that she will be looking to book me for her future engagement, and I cannot wait to see her and celebrate again!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://photosbyadeline.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/photos_byadeline
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61555412398261
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/photos-by-adeline

Image Credits

Photos by Adeline (all images)