We were lucky to catch up with Ashley Durham recently and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Ashley thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Are you able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen?
Being a small business owner is not for the feint of heart, or for those who don’t want to work harder than anyone else in the room. When I first opened my photography business in 2010, I had no idea the journey that I was embarking on; to be honest, there is no way I could have dreamed big enough to know where I would be today. I have made so many mistakes over the year, but one thing has always gotten me through it: the passion for the work.
When I got my first $50 payment for a family session, I thought nothing could be better than that. I was on top of the world, and was so incredibly proud of myself. It didn’t take very long for me to start taking on paying clients, and soon my calendar was filled with families asking me to take their photos. The truth is though, that $50 payment wasn’t actually worth $50; instead, when I broke it down after my cost of doing business, I was making $2.12 an hour.
Instead of feeling defeated or down on myself for making a fraction of minimum wage, I took a hard look at the life I wanted to create for myself and my family. I realized I didn’t want to close my business because I’d make more money working for someone else; instead, I decided if I was going to be a business owner, I needed to get paid as such. I did a thorough evaluation of the actual costs of running a business and factored in the time I spend within in the business (not only the face-t0-face time with clients, but the rest of the time spent marketing, editing, etc.). I figured out exactly how much I wanted to make each year, and decided how much time I wanted to spend working to earn that amount and broke it down into new session fees to make a sustainable living.
I went from making $50 a session to six-figures a year, and have steadily increased my revenue each year while working less. I have managed this despite moving cross-country five times since 2010, through the pandemic and despite the ever-growing popularity and competition within the photography industry.
Ashley, 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?
My name is Ashley Durham, and I am a wedding and family photographer based in Wisconsin. My speciality is capturing joy-filled moments for my clients, whether it’s on their wedding day, celebrating someone’s senior year of high school or just spending an afternoon with a family, playing games and having fun together.
HOW I GOT INTO THE INDUSTRY:
Growing up, my dream job was to work for National Geographic, traveling around the world taking photos and telling stories of people and families. I was always “that kid” with the camera, from very early on in life; in fact, one of my earliest memories is using my Grandpa’s old Polaroid and taking photos of Barbie and Ken on their wedding day. My mom always told me that if I could find a way to make a living doing what I loved to do, I’d never actually ‘work’ a day in my life – and she was absolutely right.
When my youngest baby was born, I realized that I needed a creative outlet to be part of. My husband had bought me my first DSLR (a Nikon D40) right before he had deployed to Afghanistan, and I spent the better part of a year teaching myself how to use it in manual mode. I would take photos and essentially pick them apart – why is it blurry? Why is the exposure off? Why is there grain? And I’d play around with all of the dials, knobs and buttons, figuring out how make the camera take the photo that I saw in my mind, before the image was even captured.
A friend of mine opened up a photography business and being a naturally competitive person, I thought to myself: if she can do this, so can I. When I told my husband I was thinking about opening up a photography business, his response was, “about damned time.” Within a week, I had a fully legal photography business, a blog, and a Facebook fan page to make it legit. I booked $50 sessions right off the bat, and was on top of the world. My calendar filled up 6 months in advance within days of me opening my business, and I always joke that my business hit the ground running and I’ve been running a marathon ever since.
I realized early on that I didn’t want to niche into a specific genre of photography, because I love telling stories. Sure, I could spend every single weekend shooting weddings or every single day shooting families, but to be able to do both? That’s where the beauty is. I’m the type of person that befriends every single client, and I want to be the one to they trust to tell their stories. That’s why I photograph all kinds of sessions in addition to weddings; I want to be your engagement and wedding photographer, but I also want to be the one to document your journey to parenthood, your baby’s milestones, celebrating birthdays and holidays together. It’s an enormous honor and not something I take lightly!
Being able to be there for my clients as their friend? That’s my biggest accomplishment. I love that I’m among the first to know when my bride’s get pregnant, I’m honored to be the one to document new family photos after your baby has arrived. I love that I’ve watched my couples grow from awkwardly amazing teenagers graduating high school, to having families of their own.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
The most rewarding aspect of being an artist is the idea of knowing I have made an impact on someone’s life. Sure, not every session is a life-altering event, but, each session has the opportunity to be an important moment, frozen in time, for my client and their friends and family.
What do I mean by that? I’ll give you two recent examples.
First, over the summer, I photographed a beautiful wedding for this wonderful couple. I made sure to document all the big moments and the little moments in between for them. Three weeks after the wedding, the groom’s father suddenly passed away from a heart attack. The photos I took of him were the last ones taken of this vibrant, beloved patriarch and it was these photos that were used for announcements, for social media posts, and from the service. My groom absolutely cherishes that moment with his dad, frozen forever by a photo I took. Such a gift.
Another example? I’ve been photographing this particular client for nearly ten years – everything from maternity and family sessions to taking their Christmas card photos, even a boudoir session to boost her self-esteem after having her second baby. Last year, her husband lost his battle to depression and this year she asked me to fly out to where she lives to document her new family photos. Her youngest child voiced that he was so sad his dad would never be in family photos again, and because I have taken their photos for so long, I was able to create a family photo for him with his dad, artistically enhanced through photoshop tools. It meant absolutely everything to him, and the undeniable honor I felt being asked to do that for them? Unbelievably rewarding.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
The biggest lesson I had to unlearn was that I had to be perfect in order to be in business, and that I had to “earn my way” to be able to charge enough to make a sustainable living.
Being a “starving artist” is a cliche, because so many of us are afraid that we aren’t worth it. Guess what? We are!! Artists are incredibly valuable to the world, because we are the ones who tell the stories, share history, and even *create* history. All of us see the world in a different way, and our perception of things is going to be wildly different from one person to the next. It never ceases to amaze me that if you put ten photographers in a room with people, we would all see them differently, pose them differently, and use our cameras differently. That’s the beauty of art – and an artist, I have long since established my worth in this industry.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.ashdurham.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/ashleydurhamphotography
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/xoashdurham
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashleydurham/
- Twitter: www.twitter.com/xoashdurham
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAm1qNpaByzZafFarvgViXw
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/ashley-durham-photography-appleton
Image Credits
Ashley Durham Photography