We were lucky to catch up with Katelyn Ferschke recently and have shared our conversation below.

Katelyn, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Going back to the beginning – how did you come up with the idea in the first place?

I have a background in marketing and had wanted to merge my love of photography with what I do. I’ve always stayed on top of trends from a business standpoint and have always had a love for a beautiful image..

I was scrolling through Instagram one day and realized a lot of well known and well loved brands that I use didn’t have content that fit their aesthetic or their social presence wasn’t there because they didn’t have daily content. My thoughts were : Brands need images and video content to sell their products and create growth and community on their social platforms.

I quickly started to do collaborations with big brands that I had reached out to where I would create simple content of their products or their packaging , monthly,for them to have curated images they could post. This caught on and was immediately put in contact with the marketing team at Farmacy and Kosas and started making content for their new launches of skincare and makeup.

I loved being able to get creative, making a mess with textures of the products themselves and incorporating brand colors and setting up props and tablescapes. Truly enjoyed what I was doing. Somewhere along the line things kinda blew up and I had so much work where I couldn’t fit alot of clients in. I decided I’d focus more on smaller woman run business. Help them curate and create content specific to their brands needs. I knew this is where I wanted to be and what I wanted to pursue.

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?

I’m Kate! I’m the owner of paper birch studio. A content creation studio for brands where I provide monthly curated content for social platforms and for new launch campaigns.

I was an art major in college before switching to a marketing major, where I fell in love with photography.I wanted to have the two join forces and to work from my home studio.

I work closely with brand owners and marketing teams to create eye catching content to draw customers in and to create a sense of community. I love working with all types of brands and products but I truly love exploring textures and making messes with beauty brands.

I’m most proud of the network that I’ve made over the years. So many amazing women and new brand launches that I’m thankful to have been a part of. Seeing images that I’ve created for brands be in magazines, email marketing , social ads, and product packaging in Nordstrom and Sephora is still so exciting for me.

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

I really just focused on content that I loved. For me it was texture shots, macro shots, close up shots of beauty products. I had so much fun making them messy, using water, creating custom props and exploring new techniques. I just tried to be authentic with my content and make connections with smaller brands and try to build community with other creatives in the field. I feel like a lot of my audience on social media are my peers. And we are all fans of eachothers work and products.

What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?

The best course of new clients for me has been networking. I reached out to the brand Farmacy Beauty to see if they needed any product photography on a whim and started working with the marketing and social team there as a contractor creating content and product photography for their new launches. And worked with them multiple times.Someone on the marketing team had given my email to one of her friends at Kosas and so on. It kinda snowballed and I met some of my more regular and biggest clients like Hatch, Wildbird, Kora organics and more this way! Take the risk, put the word out and you never know who you’ll connect with!

Contact Info:

• Instagram: Paperbirch_studio