We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Julia Stotz. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Julia below.

Julia, appreciate you joining us today. Before we get into specifics, let’s talk about success more generally. What do you think it takes to be successful?

Being successful goes beyond a vision and a story to tell. It is about the connections and human interactions you leave behind. In my industry it is vital to be a good collaborator and team player while still being able to push along my perspective through imagery. But at the end of the day, everyone just wants to be heard and to be a part of something, so having fun while on set really leads to good relationships in the future. I usually find myself equally focused on the creative as I am about respectful collaboration with client and crew.

Julia, 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?

I am a food and beverage photographer focusing on commercial and editorial projects. My clients include brands such as Starbucks, Dannon, and Little Caesars, and magazines such as Food & Wine Magazine, and Bon Appetit. I work with a team of collaborators that include food stylists, prop stylists, wardrobe stylists, talent, lighting assistants, producers, etc. A lot of my shoots are shot in a photo studio, while others are on location. I am most proud of when I bring a group of people together on set, and you can feel the creative energy that gets created when people put their ideas and skills together to make great work. There will always be a necessity for food and drink advertising, so we might as well have a little fun with it. I love showing the joy and togetherness that is a part of eating and drinking.

Have you ever had to pivot?

When I was living in Chicago and just starting out in my career, I was much broader in what I photographed. It was a combination of still life, food, product, lifestyle, and fashion photography. It wasn’t until moving to LA, that I realized that tactic wouldn’t allow me to grow in a larger industry city. My passion was within food and beverage and that’s where I found the most creative excitement within photography anyway, so once I started only shooting within that field and sharing only that work, it rapidly grew my business. Once clients and my audience could identify my work with a certain thing, that brand loyalty was able to be established. You want to leave a client with an identifying perspective and look. My lighting and my approach to food and beverage photography allowed my business to grow more when I pivoted to just that, then it would have from staying the same and shooting within a variety of genres.

Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?

When on set, I usually work with a team of 5 to 25 people. Creating a safe and creative working environment is incredibly important to me. To keep morale up, I’ve found that allowing everyone to contribute with their individual strengths and skills allows for each person to have input on set. I think it’s important to break down the hierarchy that is normally created on a set environment. The job at hand can only be done when all the people on set can work together to complete the task. By creating this collaborative space, I’ve found that my team bonds better, feels safer to take risks, and pushes them to be more creative. I try to bring certain crew teams back together when possible on certain jobs, since having familiar faces on a project can help the process, create comfortable working environments, and build closer working relationships.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://juliastotz.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/juliastotz/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/julia-stotz-ba180664/

Image Credits
All food and beverage images photographed by Julia Stotz. Film photos: Dave Simpson