We were lucky to catch up with Matt Dulaney recently and have shared our conversation below.
Matt, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission that drives your brand?
My mission, as I feel any good mission should be, is simple. People. People have and will always be the subject I am most passionate about, but simultaneously the most challenging subject to truly capture with essence of. For me it always comes down to the question of “how do you distill a lifetime of experience into a single frame?” That question and the neverending desire to meet and learn about others are what pushes me and my want to explore more in portraiture. It’s the basis for my ongoing project exploring the day to day workers within the service industry and their experiences with mental health.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I am the founder and owner of Chroma Stills (formerly Chromatic Revival), a freelance photography company based in San Antonio providing a range of services from portraiture, event, and product photography, to food and beverage and social media content. My main focus is providing accessible and affordable photo options for small businesses and clientele throughout Texas. Using this approach and an organic, word of mouth model, I have worked to slowly build a consistent clientele between San Antonio and Houston, but I am looking to expand throughout Texas. I do this through open, transparent pricing, providing custom tailored packages that serve to meet the needs of each client individually, and a free consultation before each shoot in an effort to best portray the desired end product of my clients. Throughout the years, what I am most proud of is my commitment to my clients. As I primarily serve small businesses, I understand that budgets can be tight and I work hard to ensure the best product without breaking the bank.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
I think that in any field being a freelancer is a constant lesson in resilience. All responsibilities of marketing and advertising, client acquisition and retention, accounting, and so on all falls on your shoulders meaning that while you get the opportunity to celebrate every victory, you also have to shoulder every defeat. I, like most creatives, am my biggest critic which only serves to magnify the scope of those times when I don’t succeed to my standards. The biggest example of this was around this time last year. I had made my initial push into freelancing full time after years of it being sporadic and filling my time bartending. Sadly, I was so enthusiastic at the prospect that I didn’t plan carefully enough, and that term lasted only a few months before I was back to tending bar to pay bills. I fell into a deep depression as a result of my perceived failure, and it has only been in the last few months that I have begun to examine my mistakes, learn from them, and begin to reasses my business for another go, including a full rebrand of my business and analyzing strategies that could make me more consistently successful in the future.
What else should we know about how you took your side hustle and scaled it up into what it is today?
As I stated above, this is currently still a side hustle for me. I work in the service industry full time to pay my bills and I am in the process of a rebrand and developing new strategies for the future. From it’s inception in 2018, my goal has always been to push for a slow, organic growth. Without a ton of expendable capital, paying for marketing to build my business has never seemed like a tenable option and, while I understand the merits of advertising, I enjoy the genuine nature of organic connections built through fostering relationships with my existing clients. 
Contact Info:
Image Credits
Matt Dulaney/Chroma Stills