We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Demian Tejeda-Benitez. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Demian below.

Demian, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?

I actually learned photography, for the most part, on my own. I simply learned by picking up a camera, playing around with it and got familiar with its functions and features and then actively putting it into practice. There’s lots of trial and error but whenever I would confront something that I didn’t know of or didn’t know how to do, I’d always do my research. Luckily, the internet is a vast ocean full of resources to help you learn just about anything.

Based on how I started, I think I did just about everything I could to get to where I am now. I didn’t take any specific photography classes, which may or may not have helped, but a lot of the basic fundamentals of photography were things I previously learned in regular art classes that just about anyone takes in elementary, middle school, and even high school.

I was driven, determined, and motivated to be as good as I am now, I still want to get better. I want to surprise people, show them how I see or imagine things with my own eyes, my creativity, and skills.

There’s a lot of skills that are important and essential in photography, you need to have a creative mind, an eye for detail, color, and form. You need to be great in communication, this alone could be the very thing that can excel your career or completely end it. Learn to be open minded, my style in photography can and will be different from others and it can be portrayed differently depending on the person. My photography might be amazing to some, but to others, it can be over done, unoriginal, or uninspiring. Some will express their thoughts about it, whether it’s good or bad, but being open minded will put you in a position to get better or even learn something.

This goes into the next questions of obstacles that can stand in your way of learning more. As a photographer, you’re constantly learning, even if you don’t think you are. Every photographer will find themselves in a position where they don’t know something. If it hasn’t happened yet, it eventually will and it won’t just happen once. There’s always another technique, another style, another method to achieving things in photography. Keeping an open mind will allow yourself to adapt and grow.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Well, to those that don’t know me, hello! I’m Demian Tejeda, I’m a photographer that specializes in portraits and off-camera lighting. I’m from the Midwest. Des Moines, Iowa to be exact. I started photography back in 2018, I was participating in an art show where I was displaying my drawings, my graphic design work, paintings, and honestly, I just put a bunch of photos that I took into a portfolio just to have as another thing for people to look at. To my surprise, my photos were getting the most attention out of everything else I had. Because of that, I started looking at photography as a potential career. Got myself a camera, became familiar with it, and when I felt confident enough to photograph a person, I reached out to some friends and it skyrocketed from there.

I became so fascinated in photography and what I was learning that I wanted to share it with others. I changed my Instagram to a photography page and provided stories, tips, full breakdowns so that others can do it themselves.
About a year into my photography, I was told learning flash was something that every photographer needed to learn. And because of that, I ended up finding the style of photography that opened my skillset to just about everything in photography.

Now I provide a wide range of portraits using off-camera lighting: High end editorials, fashion, and environmental, High quality headshots for business owners, employees, actors, etc. As well as event photography for weddings, engagements, quinceañeras, night clubs, fashion shows, etc.

I don’t do it officially, but I also teach photography and lighting to those that want to learn. I make it known that if anyone has any questions related to photography, they can ask me and I’ll provide them with everything they need to know. The community in photography can be very toxic and negative that I want to be someone that people can come to for anything, whether it be advice or inspiration.

How did you build your audience on social media?

I built my audience by making myself present in nearly any community I can get myself into. There’s tons of Facebook groups for local photographers, models, and HMUAs. Lots of online forums, Participating in events or community meet ups, and going to networking events is definitely huge.

Consistency is incredibly important in everything you do, share your work as often as you can. I always wanted to post whenever I wanted, and I loved being able to do that. As a micro-influencer, I’m now in a position where if I want to stay relative or have people see me, I need to post almost everyday in order to maintain engagement.
A couple years ago, I built up a decent following and lost nearly half when I decided to take six months off of social media. Coming back to it almost felt like I was starting from scratch, but harder and more exhausting because of how drastically things changed in the time that I was gone.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

I’m sure this is brought up all the time, but Covid has honestly been such a pivotal event in everyone’s lives. Covid happened two years into my photography career. Des Moines already didn’t have a lot happening in terms of photography, so when we went into quarantine, everything simply stopped. Nobody knew what to do, nobody wanted photos, nobody needed any. I was stuck in my own home for nearly six months. Even when things started to open up, the entire vibe in the photography community drastically changed.

Most of the photographers I knew went on to do other things, ventured on different career paths, others became very secluded, things became more competitive in a passive-aggressive manner. It was just completely different that my creativity and drive plummeted. It almost got to a point where I nearly quit photography entirely. And when things really got that low, that’s when I started looking at bigger cities where photography was still thriving. I looked at Florida, Georgia, Texas, not New York (no thanks), and eventually made the decision to uproot my life to Los Angeles.

And I believe that was the best decision I could’ve made at the time, because during my short time here in LA, I’ve experienced so much more in one year here than I did in the three years I did photography in Iowa. Things that would never happen in Des Moines because unfortunately, it’s still a relatively small city, where as places like Los Angeles will have new opportunities happening every single day.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.demiantejeda.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/demiantejeda
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/demiantejedaphoto

Image Credits
Ashley Dindinger, Jordan Long, Preston Pollard, Sharaun Brown, Bere Gutierrez, Libby Kaminski, Nikki Marie South, Madison Santos