We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jennifer Coombes a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Jennifer, appreciate you joining us today. How do you feel about asking friends and family to support your business? What’s appropriate, what’s not? Where do you draw the line?
One of the hardest things to do in the photography industry today is to keep up with the changes to social media marketing. The best thing that friends and family can do to support a friend in business is to share their social media posts to their own friends – with Facebook it’s just sharing the post itself; with Instagram, the order of most helpful to least is: Save the post, Comment on the post, Like the post. With things constantly changing and evolving in the social media world. it’s so helpful to have friends and family support you, even if they are not buying your product, just by sharing and helping get the word out about your business. I hope that everyone would remember this when seeing posts they enjoy and make sure to keep sharing them!!
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I’ve had a camera in hand as long as I can remember. Once I had children, I wanted to document their childhoods by taking lots of photos and even scrapbooking them along with other mementos. Finally, I asked for a DSLR for Christmas one year and began to learn how to shoot in manual mode and create more interesting photographs. Over time, I realized that my favorite photos were of landscapes or night photography (especially the Milky Way!) and I finally tried to specialize in these types of photos. Now, my business is primarily prints that I sell of my work.
For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?
Because I work in the IT Biz for my “day job”, the creative outlet of shooting and creating photographs to share with the world has become integral to my own work-life balance and my way of escaping the corporate hustle. I think that without the creative outlet at this stage, I wouldn’t even be effective in my daily work any longer. This is where I truly get to explore my passions and creativity and that literally keeps me sane on most days!!!
Is there something you do differently from the industry standard?
I often tell folks that I went into computers because I saw the money was there and that my day job pays for my excursions and outings and workshops and classes. I hope that someday we can value creative works in the same way and that artists can make a real living at their art without having to be a marketing major on the side in addition to all other business aspects of being an entrepreneur. For me, it’s a constant battle of imposter syndrome because I am always trying to prove myself in an industry that’s so hard to break into full time.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.etsy.com/shop/EspyPhoto
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/espyphoto/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EspressoYourselfPhotography
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sunstar217/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/sunstar217