We were lucky to catch up with Maggie Kraser recently and have shared our conversation below.

Maggie, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Being a business owner can be really hard sometimes. It’s rewarding, but most business owners we’ve spoken sometimes think about what it would have been like to have had a regular job instead. Have you ever wondered that yourself? Maybe you can talk to us about a time when you felt this way?

I’m so incredibly happy and fulfilled as a business owner, but I’d be lying if I said that I can’t even count how many times I’ve fantasized about working a regular job. My busiest time of the year is typically between the months of August and November. During these months my personal life and well-being takes a back seat to all of the photoshoots and weddings that I’m doing. My days during this time of the year consist of waking up, responding to emails, sending proofs to my client from the day before, edit whoever is on my editing queue for that day, going on my photoshoot of the day, and then coming home to make dinner and go to bed to do it all again the next day.
My most recent memory of wishing to work a traditional job takes me back to last fall. Two of my close friends at the time were having a wedding and I was asked to photograph the whole day. They were initially on the fence about hiring me for their wedding day because they also wanted to me to just attend their wedding as a guest and enjoy the night. I was very on-board with this idea. I offered to set them up with some other really talented photographer for their wedding. The idea of having a little break during busy season and celebrating some of my friends with other close friends sounded amazing.

However, they did end up asking me closer to the wedding if I would photograph it. We were only maybe a month before the wedding date when we signed the contact, so had I said something like, “I’d much rather attend your wedding as a guest” there’s a good chance that they wouldn’t be able to book someone talented and reliable so last minute. So I photograph the day and everything was stunning and perfect, but 0nce cocktail hour rolled around I couldn’t help but catch a serious case of FOMO while watching some of my best friends party, drink, and laugh with each other while I had to continue my work duties. Throughout the night I couldn’t help but think to things like, “If they really considered me their friend, I would be attending their wedding, not working it.” “They know I’m so busy this time of the year why would they not give me a break to celebrate with them?” Regardless, I was salty most of the reception and was cursing myself for not having a traditional job.

Whenever I find myself getting worked up about running my business and wishing that I had a regular job I think back to 16-year-old Maggie who had to put her camera down to work retail at Carters & Osh Kosh B’Gosh. All I did when I worked there was fantasize about what it would be like if my photo career took off. I could set my own hours, wear whatever I’d like to work, and do something I had been so passionate about for years. I learned quickly after starting my photo career that no job or career is perfect. They all have their own problems that come with them. However, the reward of capturing someone during 0ne of the most important times of their lives greatly outweighs all of the cons and caveats that come with running my photo business.

Maggie, 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’m a 24 year old portrait and wedding photographer who has been practicing for over 8 years now. I had loved cameras for as long as I could remember. I got my first camera at around 11/12, It was a little blue recorder camera that I used to make “music videos” that I would upload on YouTube. I eventually fell out of love with YouTube and quickly fell into love with Instagram and Tumblr.

During 2013/2014 “edits” were really trendy on my little corner of the internet. These were heavily photoshopped self portraits/photos edited in a surrealism style. I fell in love with creating my own images and I eventually built an Instagram account to over 14k followers doing my edits. Naturally, people at high school thought I was goofy for putting myself out there as I was (honestly some of the photos that I was posting were pretty goofy) and as any teen girl would, I started to get insecure about what I was doing. I also met a boy and almost immediately deleted that Instagram account to come across as cool and datable.

Luckily my photo hiatus didn’t last long. I was attending a family wedding in the Dominican Republic. My cousin (who was a bridesmaid) handed me her DSLR camera and asked me to snap some photos during the ceremony since she couldn’t. As soon as I held the camera and snapped a photo, I was hooked. That Christmas I had asked for my own DSLR camera and my parents delivered. My focus quickly shifted from surrealism edits to the teen lifestyle photography that was trending all over Tumblr. I routinely rounded up my friends and made them all model for me while I practiced being a photographer.

Once I got to college, my camera skills were pretty good and I was doing paid shoots here and there. All of my marketing was done through word of mouth, but by my sophomore year of college I had gotten so incredibly busy with senior photoshoots. I had also photographed my first two weddings that year. I realized that I had enough momentum to be doing photos full-time after graduation. So that became my new goal. I decided to get the ball rolling by making a Facebook page for my work as well as develop my own website. I filed for my LLC less than a month after graduating from PSU in 2020 and have been working full-time as a photographer for close to 3 years now.

These past three years have been bigger than I ever could have imagined. I discovered TikTok and built an account to over 2.4 million likes and 30k followers. I’ve been flown across the country by clients to capture their elopements. I got to work with Adobe making a Lightroom tutorial for their TikTok account. I also got to shoot my first campaign with Batiste and Her Campus Media last summer.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

Creating for the sake of being creative is what I believe helped build my reputation in my industry. It’s no secret that the vast majority of my income comes from weddings and senior/graduation photos. However, I’ve noticed that most of my big opportunities come from me doing photoshoots just for fun and to scratch the little creative itch in my brain. One example of this is in October of 2020 there was a trend on TikTok called the “Ghost Photoshoot Challenge” where people would dress up as a sheet ghost and take silly photos. I was one of the first people to do this trend with the twist of being a photographer. My video ended up getting over 6 million views and a million likes. To this day I still have people finding my work from that video.

I try at least once a month to do a photoshoot for myself. I get to pick the concept, model, hair, makeup, and sometimes even the outfit. It’s my opportunity to play with lighting and new posing without having to worry about what people think. These photoshoots often yield some of my favorite photos. In addition to that, these photos often perform well on my social medias which brings people back to my profile/website where they discover that I do traditional portraits as well.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

Making people feel beautiful is without a doubt the most rewarding part of what I do. I’ve had so many people start their shoots by saying that they’re only aiming for one good photo from the entire session because they hate how they look in pictures. By the end of our time together there are hundreds of photos and it’s almost impossible to narrow them down because my clients had never seem themselves photographed like that before. The best feeling in the world is handing my camera off to my client mid-shoot and watching their face light up when they see how good they are looking.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://www.photosbymaggiekraser.com
• Instagram: @maggiekraser
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/photosbymaggiekraser
• Other: TikTok is @maggiekraser :-)

Image Credits
All photos were taken by me except for the one of me holding the polaroid camera up to my eye. That was taken by my partner, Mark Naples.