We recently connected with Manny De Los Santos and have shared our conversation below.

Manny, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What’s something crazy on unexpected that’s happened to you or your business

One thing about my profession is I come across lots of unexpected and crazy situations that make my career never boring in the slightest. One particular story was when I was hired to shoot a beach wedding out in Destin, Florida. It was pouring rain that entire weekend, I was honestly a bit nervous on how to handle the situation regarding my camera gear getting rained on but once the ceremony started it suddenly stopped raining and the dark gloomy clouds started to part ways. The beautiful rays of sunset crept through the clouds and I knew I only had a few minutes to capture the shot that I had in mind. I asked a guest at the wedding if he could hold my flash while I swiftly ran to the other side to get the angle I was seeking. I ended up taking a beautiful picture of the bride and groom romantically embracing each other and kissing on the beach during a sunset and it became one of my favorite pictures I’ve ever taken.

Manny, 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?

My story is actually one I’ve never expected. I was a college student triple-majoring at Wichita State University and one day walked into a Bestbuy store with my father. For some reason I naturally gravitated towards the camera section and once I held a camera in my hands I had an epiphany and realized photography is what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. A week later I bought a camera and went to our annual Riverfestival and took pictures of whatever caught my eye and posted those pictures of my social media. Next thing you know I got offered several jobs even though I had no idea what I was doing with the camera. I ended up working for the Sunflower newspaper at Wichita State for a few years and as a correspondent for the Wichita Eagle newspaper for a short time.

From there I was blown away when I got the honor to travel with the Wichita State basketball team when they had an undefeated season and traveled all over with them for the NCAA tournaments. Then I got published for the New York Times and Washington Post and naturally got into shooting music videos in Las Vegas.

I currently shoot weddings and Quinceaneras and events all over the country providing both my photography and videography skills. What sets me apart is I’ve always put my entire passion behind every project I’m apart of and have always prided myself in over-delivering and going above and beyond to provide the best results for my clients. Working as a photojournalist gave me great people skills and the ability of capturing all the beautiful candid moments and knowing where to be at any given time to ensure the best results.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

What helped me stand out from the rest of the market is the ability to get new and creative angles to shoot and taking risks regarding those creative angles. Most people tend to go through the motions of just showing up to a wedding and putting the camera on a tripod and just hit the record button. I tend to build a good rapport with the clients that way I can move all over and get the shots from many different angles and document the best moments that you couldn’t get otherwise by just having the camera on a tripod 20 feet away.

We’d love to hear the story of how you turned a side-hustle into a something much bigger.

Even though I was working for the newspaper as a photojournalist my main goal in life was my triple-major(Psychology, social work and communications) but I quickly had people reach out to my from word of mouth on social media and that had a snowball effect where I was suddenly swamped with inquiries so it was overwhelming at first but scaled up by buying a personal laptop so could edit while traveling and having all the finished products sent ASAP to my clients. A milestone was when an MMA fighter that I was working with for 5 years finally made it into the UFC and when I shot a birthday bash for a Tiktoker with 10 million plus followers.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: Instagram com/mannydelossantosphotography
• Facebook: Facebook com/mannydelossantosphotography
• Other: https://Facebook.com/mannydelossantosphotos

Image Credits

Manny De Los Santos Photography