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

Ansony, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s start with a story that highlights an important way in which your brand diverges from the industry standard.

I feel like a ton of photographers tend to focus on one niche with their photography, whether it’s doing weddings, couples, elopements, sports, brand work, etc. A common question photographers get is “what kind of photographer are you?” and they will usually respond with their specific area of focus with “photographer” attached to it at the end. Nothing wrong with it, but when I decided to take photography seriously and pursue it as a career I knew that I wanted to be different because one of my personality traits in general is to try and be more unique or stand out. So I like to tell people that I’m a people photographer,, which means as long as it involves people I probably do it or have at least tried it.

The biggest reason why I don’t focus on one niche is because I feel like it limits me. Yes, I can tell you that portrait and lifestyle are my favorites, but I don’t want to be known as a photographer who’s only good at one type of photography and only focuses on that one thing; I want to be known as a photographer who’s good at all kinds of photography!

Ansony, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

So I’m Ansony — and no that is not a typo haha! I like to call myself a people photographer so I do anything that involves people and I’m based out of Tennessee, but travel all over! So people ask me all the time how I got into photography, but I’ve told people different things because there were a couple reasons why I picked up a camera and I would just tell them one of those reasons. The two main reasons why I picked up a camera was because 1) I came across a Youtube video from a well known videographer named Sam Kolder and I remember just being completely speechless by his work because I didn’t know videos like that were possible; it’s seriously some next level stuff! 2) There was a time when my sister was also pursuing a career in photography and had a DSLR camera, but then my competitiveness decided that I wanted to pick up a camera as well so that I could try and be better than her.

So I originally started out wanting to be a videographer and would practice by making vlogs and fun videos to learn editing techniques, then would upload them onto Youtube. I knew I eventually wanted to challenge myself by making a wedding video and when I got that chance it ended up being the only paid and last video I ever made. I used to like making videos, but after shooting that wedding video it made me hate it and I tell people it ruined it for me.

After that I didn’t pick up my camera for a couple months and it was just on my table collecting dust, then one day I remember just looking at it and started thinking about how much money my mom spent on this camera as a gift and felt like it was wrong to let it go to waste. That was the day when I decided to try out photography and found that I loved it, so then when I was finishing up college I knew I wasn’t going to pursue being a clinical psychologist because I didn’t want to go back to school, but at the same time I didn’t know if pursuing a career in photography was going to be possible, but after learning more about freelance photography and talking to a couple freelance photographers I decided to start taking it more serious and try to make it my career.

I love doing portraits the most and really wanted to get good at them so I used to post on my Instagram story and reached out to people who would maybe want some free photos to practice and for a couple months I did between 4-5 shoots a week so that I can work in different environments, settings, lighting, and really develop my eye and editing skills. Through that I just built a clientele because the people who modeled for me would post my photos and that eventually lead to people booking me!

I would say the main thing that sets me apart from others is my editing style. I feel like most photographers in my area have one of three styles: warm, light & airy, or vibrant/colorful. I’m not saying those are bad at all because I do love those styles, but for myself and my work I felt like I needed to have something different. I’m proud of how far I’ve come in my photography journey because finding my style took me a couple years of experimenting and playing around in LightRoom and ultimately being able to do this full-time is truly a blessing and I have so many people to thank for that.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

I would say the most rewarding aspect of being a creative is getting to connect with so many people all over the world who also love to create. When I got into photography I didn’t expect to meet so many artists; whether those people are photographers, videographers, writers, podcasters, musicians, etc. I love how all artists have their own special story on how they got into that particular art and their creative process. I have to thank social media for being able to connect with so many people all over the world and it’s surreal to me that so many people whose work I’ve admired since the beginning are now friends of mine. I wouldn’t even be here being interviewed by you guys if it wasn’t for that haha — shoutout Meg, thankful for you!

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

I wouldn’t say I have a huge audience on social media nor do I have a presence, but two things that I feel like helped me grow was consistency and learning! I think posting consistently helps a ton and I don’t mean you have to post every single day, but set up a realistic goal for yourself to post “x” amount of times per week. Although if you have the ability to post every single day, then go for it because I’ve seen friends who post every single day who have grown exponentially in one year just by doing so. Make sure the things you post are quality stuff because it’s better to post high quality stuff once a week than posting poor quality work everyday.

I didn’t know a ton about marketing or communications, but luckily have friends who have a background in those fields and I asked them a ton of questions about strategy and ideas. I even met up with one of my friend’s marketing professor’s so that I could ask him for advice/tips on what he would do if he were in my shoes, which helped a ton! Try to keep up to date on social media algorithms and keep track of what works for you because what works for one person might not work for you. So reach out to people, especially to those who are successful in the type of field you’re pursuing, but also don’t expect to always get an answer because unfortunately some aren’t willing to share and some will gatekeep information.

Last thing about social media is to not get caught up on numbers. I know it can be hard not to pay attention to those things, but the amount of likes and comments a post gets doesn’t matter as much as you think because you’re not the only who is affected by algorithms.

The numbers you get don’t define you.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: instagram.com/ansony_kim