We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Karen Davis a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Karen, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Folks often look at a successful business and imagine it was an overnight success, but from what we’ve seen this is often far from the truth. We’d love to hear your scaling up story – walk us through how you grew over time – what were some of the big things you had to do to grow and what was that scaling up journey like?

Starting a small business is never easy. I purchased my first Nikon DSLR camera, in hopes to become a sports photographer. Little did I know how much work would go into building up a business, a brand, and getting your name out there.

A few months after purchasing my camera, I sat in the stands at an arena football game snapping shots after shots of the game. I loved every minute of it! Of course when you have friends on the team who share your work, that helps connect you to the right people who bring you in to shoot additional games.

I began to rely on all the new connections I made through arena football to pick up additional games to shoot. However there was a price that came with being new to the business. That price meant that the cost for any travel came out of my own pocket, and freelancing a lot of the games.

I started to rely more on networking as I began to work with more teams. Facebook and Instagram became a big way for me to get my name and my work out there. Eventually all my hard work paid off, and I got my first paid photography job.

The road to starting out definitely wasn’t easy, but was it worth it…Of course! There is nothing like being able to capture the moments from a sporting event, or even someone’s special day, and allow them to have that moment to look back on forever. The best moments though have been the friends that have became family after working together for so long.

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

I am a photographer. I started off as a sports photographer, but I have now started doing personal photography as well.

My love for sports photography began while watching friends at an arena football game, and snapping some pictures with my iPhone. A friend reached out, and said that I had some pretty good pictures. I thought to myself “if these look this good with an iPhone, what can I do with an actual camera?!?!”. From there I purchased my first camera, and shortly after KD Visions 2 Images Photography was born.

I think what sets me apart from most photographers is that I love sports, and capturing the action shots. It gives you a whole new love for photography and for the game! I also love to interact with the teams as I’m photographing the games.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

Networking was a big thing when it came to getting my name out to people after I first started doing photography. I set up pages under my business on both Facebook and Instagram. After working with my first arena team, I shared my work from my page. I sent out invites for people to like/follow, and they had the option to share the work I had posted. All it takes is one person to share it, and then another, and then another.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

I think the quality of work I produce, along with fair pricing is one of the main things that has built my reputation within this market.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: Instagram.com/KDVisions2Images
• Facebook: L https://www.facebook.com/KDVisions2Images/