We were lucky to catch up with Geoffrey Kyd recently and have shared our conversation below.

Geoffrey, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. So, folks often look at a successful business and think it became a success overnight – but that often obscures all the nitty, gritty details of everything that went into the growth phase of your business. We’d love to hear about your scaling story and how you scaled up?

I believe I truly scaled up kydshots through my character and interactions with clients, for example always making sure I give clients my all when shooting so with that they recommend me to others or become returning clients. I think your character is very important when starting out a business in which involves you interacting with people often

I also would say my use of social media helped a lot, early on I put my all into posting consistently on all my platforms, I feel like having some good quality work up shows people what you are capable of and gives your audience something new to look at frequently

Lastly id say working with Dreamdoll gave me a really big boost with my photography journey, So much new clients, opportunities and even relationships came from that in which I’m very grateful for

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?

Im Geoffrey, im 19 years old and started photography in 2022. Ive always been creative and started with graphic design in which I enjoyed a lot especially throughout covid, I got a lot of opportunites through graphic design however the lack of interaction and involvement made me bored so I moved into photography.

I started out by getting a camera and testing it out on my friends, taking photos for my friends birthday and after that I designed a logo and started a page, from that a lot of people started to get birthday pictures done by me. Since I was just starting out I did not want to limit myself to just birthday shoots, so I started reaching out to events and collaborated often with different creators.

I think the main thing that helped me push my craft is by taking risk and just showing up, I demonstrated that early when taking photos by shadowing other photographers and videographers. One of the first celebrities I captured was David, I seen that he was having a meet and greet and I just showed up with my camera, it was a really good experience, it was meant to be an in and out thing but I was able to stay there for a while and capture as much content as I wanted and was also able to connect with people on his team

Similar to this with Dreamdoll I simply just reached out as I seen she was in London and I got a response ! from then on anytime she’s come to London ive always shot for her. I think the best part of photography is meeting so many people ins different fields and like through Dream I was able to to meet Naya, Kendra and Tae (stylist and hairstylist, content creator/YouTuber) I was able to pick up skills through them all by watching them work in a team environment.

One of my proudest moments would be shooting at the O2 arena for Kamo Mphela at David’s concert, this was big for me as ive never been to the O2 arena and being backstage as my first experience was very huge. It also felt full circle as I went from showing up at meet and greets to being booked through talent allowing me to be in that space.

A lot of people are surprised how young I am doing this, I think its really important for young creatives to push and do more, recently in the Uk ive been seeing a lot more young photographers start and reach out to me for advice which is nice to see as we are the future. Although I’m still navigating it all I’m very grateful to see that what I’m doing is inspiring others of al ages

What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?

I think using Tik Tok helped me a lot with getting clients, especially international clients, often when id ask how thy find me its though tik Tok

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

The most rewarding part of photography for me would be connecting with people around the world and just supporting eachother, I think social media allowing you to see work from all over the world helps a lot especially when following lot of people in the same field as you. I think support coming from strangers and mutuals you have never met is always good to see

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kydshots/
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@kydshots

Image Credits

kydshots