We were lucky to catch up with Greg Dempsey recently and have shared our conversation below.

Greg, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. One of the things we most admire about small businesses is their ability to diverge from the corporate/industry standard. Is there something that you or your brand do that differs from the industry standard? We’d love to hear about it as well as any stories you might have that illustrate how or why this difference matters.

It’s so funny to call my self a wedding photographer. I shoot weddings all through the year and I still find my self not being able to really believe it. It’s probably because I know other wedding photographers who pour their time into marketing, posting on social media regularly, their analytics, etc. and I just don’t have the energy for that,

Not that there’s anything at all wrong with that, in fact, it’s the more correct way to go about running your own business.
I try to spend more of my “work time” shooting things I enjoy shooting. I go for walks, or just shoot something while I’m at a red light. I don’t try to hit to many quotas for myself, again, not that that is wrong at all.

I differ in the fact that I shoot photos for the photo, not the paycheck. No matter if its a free shoot or a $3,000 wedding day, I’m shooting with the same intentions and eye. I want the best shot.

Sure I have a. Check list of shots I need to get for the client, but I make sure to have time to get the shots that I want. Why? Because if a client comes to me because they like my work, I want to give them my work, not some YouTubers check list of “Photos every wedding photographer has to get.”

Greg, 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?

I don’t think I would have gotten into photography as heavily as I did if it wasn’t for skateboarding. I grew up pretty closed off and branched out after finding an interest in skating and the friends it brought with it. A HUGE part of skating is photo and video. I carried a point and shoot around with me catching shots of my friends and I skating, hanging out, and doing stupid stuff. I carried that into life in general. Even playing music and traveling around shooting for other musical acts, I always loved getting home and looking at the photos and videos from the past few days.

Fast forward and now I’m shooting photos for a living and still finding time for those everyday photos.

I’ve been wanting to move towards the church spaces more and more for some of my work. Growing up in church and being surrounded my a worship culture of more than just music, I find myself wanting to tell stories centered around that, stories of being marked – changed for life.
Photo pieces, short documentaries, or something in the avenue.

I believe that I bring that to the table, I simply want to shoot photos and tell a story.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

A lesson I had to unlearn was to take everything so seriously. I am a work-a-holic, I can shoot an entire wedding and sit down and not go to bed and edit the photos all night then wake up and finish the video the next day if my wife doesn’t stop me. I use to think I had to do that to keep my work moving or to keep a good relationship with customers and clients.

I’m human, and thankfully my clients all realize that, even if at the moment I didn’t. I need time with my wife, time for the Lord, time with my friends and family, serving, etc.

I work at a coffee shot 4 days a week because I love the science behind the bean and the pursuit of the cup. Trying to balance my family\Christ, the shop life, and a photo\video business while also keeping photography as a hobby has been hard in the past. There’s a way to give 100% to all of those things, just not at the same time.

Learning the lesson to just sit back and enjoy the job while you’re on it has been such a great gift.

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

Like I had mentioned before, I don’t really do a ton of marketing, I also don’t have a niche. for me, I just share work from my life on my personal account (@gregoryallendempsey) and then my favorite shots from time to time on my professional account (@Gregdempseyphoto).

I won’t say that I will never market or that I don’t think it works, clearly it does, but my “Strategy” is more just post what I want when I think about it and make real connections with people.

So far it’s been working well for me and I’m so blessed by the relationships I’ve cultivated through my work.

Contact Info:

• Website: GregDempseyPhoto.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/gregdempseyphoto?igshid=MjEwN2IyYWYwYw==
• Youtube: YouTube.com\GregDempseyPhoto
• Other: You can also check my personal page where I post a lot more of my everyday stuff – @GregoryAllenDempsey