We were lucky to catch up with Christine Gosch recently and have shared our conversation below.

Christine, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you tell us the backstory behind how you came up with the idea?

The signature service of Lightbulb League is the subscription brand photo shoot offering. We work with subscription clients (all small businesses), on a recurring basis to provide fresh, on-brand photos for their marketing purposes so they have new content to share year-round. This is a need that all small businesses could utilize in some way, shape, or form.

One of the main problems we hear from our clients is that we’re expected to wear too many hats as a small business owner, and we can relate. These days, you’re expected to be the bookkeeper, marketing team, shipping department, social media manager, office manager, and more; and those are just the responsibilities outside of your actual skill, service, or production that you offer! We like to take one of those responsibilities off of our clients’ plate by photographing whatever they need, and delivering beautiful galleries for them to choose from when it comes time to share on social media, their websites, newsletters, etc.. We photograph food + drinks, headshots, interiors, branded portraits, lifestyle shots, process shots, products, and more.

While we recognize that recurring professional photo shoots can be vital in the success of the marketing or a small business, a separate, but equally important goal, was to have a recurring and predictable income. As a creative professional, that doesn’t always come easy! Instead of chasing down potential clients in order to book once-occurring brand sessions, we have a smaller amount of subscription clients that we work with on multiple occasions so we know where our next paycheck is coming from. In part, the introduction of this unique type of photography offering for small businesses was financially motivated.

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’m Christine, owner + photographer at Lightbulb League. I photographed weddings for over 10 years, starting to photograph fellow wedding vendor’s brand photos near the end of my time as a wedding photographer. The pandemic really aided in the process of pivoting to brand photography full time.

At Lightbulb League, my teammate Tamara and I work together to capture brand photos for creative small businesses either in a single-shoot capacity, or as our signature offering, our recurring subscription brand shoots. We also offer behind-the-scenes iPhone video coverage for small businesses that need video to use on social media.

When a client of ours goes onto Instagram to post a photo or video to their feed or story, they can just peruse through their online gallery of many high quality, on-brand photos we’ve captured for them. We eliminate the worry of ‘where will my next custom photo/ video come from’ for our clients.

As the years have passed, we’ve not come across another Houston area photographer who shoots only brand work for creative small businesses, especially mostly on film (our favorite medium through which to shoot) and especially set up to service brands via a subscription. We’ve seen plenty of wedding + portrait photographers capture brand photos for their friends and/or fellow wedding vendors, etc. (which is all good and fine- we’ve all been there)! But when it comes to utilizing our art form in an efficient and professional manner, we serve our clients with the confidence that they won’t find what we have to offer, elsewhere in Houston.

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

It’s always word of mouth, hands down. We have amazing clients who are so generous by tagging us on social media when they share their brand photos, leaving reviews for us, and telling their creative network about what we do. It’s very rare that we sign a new client that was not sent to us by an existing client.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

To put it simply: the freedoms are the most rewarding aspect or being a creative professional.

Having a career as a creative is taxing, grueling at times, and stressful. That being said, it’s all worth it. The freedom to work with who you want, when you want, and how you want cannot be beat.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.lightbulbleague.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/lightbulbleague
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/lightbulbleague
• Twitter: www.twitter.com/lightbulbleague

Image Credits
All photos © Lightbulb League