We were lucky to catch up with Allison Prince recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Allison thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Looking back, do you think you started your business at the right time? Do you wish you had started sooner or later

I believe everything happens for a reason, so I do not wish I had started my photography business any sooner or later than I did. I had been a nurse for a little over 3 years and had been doing photography as a hobby for the same amount of time when I first opened my photography business in 2022. At the time, it was my side hustle. I never imagined that photography would later become my full time career.

To begin, I will explain why I am glad I did not start my business sooner and then explain why I am glad I did not start it later.

If I had started my business sooner, I do not think I would have had the confidence I needed to put myself out there. Because of what I went through as a travel nurse, I got used to diving into unknown situations and got rid of attachments that I had to ideas about what my life should be like. I believe this experience opened up my mind to where I was able to see myself as capable of being a business owner.

In addition, I believe those first few years of doing photography while I was still working as a nurse were so crucial to building the foundations of my passion for it. I would often teach myself new techniques and did a lot of my learning on YouTube. In this way, photography slowly became my passion and my creative outlet.

During the time in my life that I was travel nursing, I made a lot of discoveries about myself. I realized that I am a deeply spiritual person who yearns to connect with other people and inspire them to see the good in themselves and the beauty around them.

On the flip side, if I had started my business any later than I did, I am not sure that I would have had the energy to take risks and I do not think I would have lasted much longer in my first career. I was starting to experience severe burnout, so I am glad that I took time away from being a bedside nurse to pursue this dream of mine. I am not ruling out returning to work as a nurse in the future, but I needed to prioritize being creative and channeling my emotions and feelings about life into beautiful images.

I think maybe the only thing I would have changed in my journey would be to seek a business mentor a little bit earlier on than I did. This would have helped me with back end organization and the financial aspects of running a business. I now have a photographer mentor who also used to be a nurse and I am looking forward very much to going through this mentorship program over the next few months. I tend to have the kind of personality where I want to do everything myself, and I love that I am self taught, but it can be hard to sustain that. As business owners, we have to constantly change, learn and grow in order to provide the best service.

I am excited for what the future holds for me in this business, and feel very lucky to have had the chance to follow this path.

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 am a wedding and portrait photographer based in the greater Boston area. Right now my books are open to untraditional or intimate weddings, elopements, destination weddings and individual portraits.

I believe my versatility as a photographer, my communication skills and my creative approach are what sets me apart.

I try to encourage and empower my clients to make decisions regarding their photo session for themselves and truly listen when they talk about what they want from their experience. One of the ways I do this is by asking clients to think about what they would like the images to accomplish for them or to say about them.

I also love helping people feel comfortable in front of the camera and showing them that they can have fun during their session. Often I am functioning like a creative director during the session and have my couples do a lot of movement-based prompts.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

Honestly, I think a lot of this just came from word of mouth and trying to be kind to others wherever possible. I always feel so grateful that I’ve been able to make so many new friends and for all the people I’ve had the opportunity to meet and get to know.

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

In the beginning, the best source of new clients was through facebook groups. Now, it is definitely through word of mouth and SEO/blogging. Maintaining a consistent blog over several months was where I started to finally get inquiries resulting from google searches. The easiest inquiries to convert are people who have met you in person before or those who found you on google and connected with your work, in my experience!

I am just now starting to get a few inquiries from social media, but I feel with those that found me on social media it is a bit more accidental and less intentional compared to someone who searched for a “photographer that does __x__” on google.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.artistsinalchemyphoto.co
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/artistsinalchemy/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOU8zaAkRqGSxjLQ65nfaJA/videos