We recently connected with Dejia & Markus Davis and have shared our conversation below.
Dejia & Markus, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. One of the most important things we can do as business owners is ensure that our customers feel appreciated. What’s something you’ve done or seen a business owner do to help a customer feel valued?
The best thing that we’ve done to show a customer that we appreciate them is, honestly, listening.. and our client appreciation boxes. When we say we listen, we do that by sending out questionnaires to better learn about our couples and families, their stories, their comforts and discomforts, how we can show up for them during their time with us by finding solutions to the concerns they mentioned. Our whole goal with our business is stepping out of our comfort zone and adapting to make our couples and families feel seen, heard, and respected. We get a lot of couples or families who say that they’re introverted, point out their flaws, their first photoshoot, etc. and for us, that’s when we step in and try to solve that concern by giving them the best experience with a photographer.
Our client boxes are more specifically tailored for our engaged couples who choose us to capture their weddings. We personally put items in the boxes that will help make our couples’ day like vow books, flash drives to save their images, yummy small treats, handwritten notes, etc. Everyone who books us gets excited for their client box because it’s a nice surprise and a small token of our forever appreciation to be chosen to capture and celebrate such a huge milestone! We had two couples whose weddings we captured, and a few weeks after the wedding, an immediate family member passed away that was at the wedding and IN the wedding. They reached out letting us know about the news, and asked if we could give them any images with that family member for the funeral, before their album was finished. Without a second thought we told them yes and sent them the images, as well as our condolences to the families. Before our business, we’re also human. Requests as such, are never seen as unreasonable to us!
Dejia & Markus, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
We’re a wife and husband team, both on and off the camera. We started our business together after having our second child and started to cherish more family time. We first wanted to only focus on families, and later started to get into weddings as we enjoyed planning our own courthouse elopement and mountain view vow renewal.
We enjoy making couples and families feel celebrated and slowing down time for just a few hours in this fast paced life we all live. Listening and watching how the love of two people created tiny humans, like ourselves, is one of our favorite parts of our job. We go with the flow of young children. Meaning, if a child decides they want to run around instead of sit still for a pose, we’re incorporating a game with the rest of the family to get candid, fun pictures because this time is for the kids as well! We’re more candid than posed, so nothing is forced with us. That goes for both couples and families. Bringing out genuine smiles and loud laughs is pure magic for us. We tend to treat our couples and families as if it were us in front of the camera with our own children.
What we’re most proud of, is how authentic and genuine we are with making connections while working with families and couples. We love what we do and all the people we meet in amazing places! One of our goals was to be able to travel more and take pictures outside of Maryland, and for the last year and a half we have been doing that. We’re extremely grateful!
What else should we know about how you took your side hustle and scaled it up into what it is today?
Photography was my (Dejia) side hustle for two years, while I worked as a 911 Dispatcher in Maryland. I would book photoshoots during my off days and off weekends. Once I talked Markus into becoming a photography team, because I wanted to start booking weddings, I was only able to take weddings on my off days and would have to turn down weddings on weekends when I worked. Photography was picking up for us, and really making me happy while my full time job was starting not to. We always wanted to show our kids that you don’t need to stay somewhere that isn’t making you happy, so I quit my job and turned photography into my full time job. However, before making that jump, we strategically saved money, so me quitting my stable job wouldn’t be a financial burden on our family. We also talked about how we wanted to shape our business full time, how to price our sessions to keep us financially stable, yet, reasonable for our ideal clients. We also started getting destination bookings, which was exciting for us because we loved to travel. Markus works remote, so that wasn’t an issue. However now that our kids are in school, we only take destination sessions when they’re out of school or on break. So we’d say booking more destination sessions and weddings was a huge key milestone, as well as more family time / work balance.
For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?
We would say the most rewarding aspect is seeing a vision we have or even someone else’s vision, come to life. Being able to step out of our comfort zone, and help our couples and families step out of their comfort zones, respectfully, is so fulfilling. We’ve done a couple boudoir shoots after the couple has worked hard in the gym to get to their body goal. We’ve learned how to respectfully celebrate couples with different religions and cultures, which to us is amazing because we’re experiencing someone else’s normal. We’re traveling to someone’s favorite place/country/state to celebrate life and exciting milestones. We get to watch you go from girlfriend/boyfriend to fiancee to spouses, and even to parents. Being a part of someone’s life for a short time or even for a lifetime is rewarding because we’re making friends while making a living!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.dmdavisphotography.com
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/dmdavisphotography
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/dmdavisphotography
- Other: tiktok – dmdavisphotography
Image Credits
n/a