We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Mina Sisley. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Mina below.

Mina, appreciate you joining us today. Can you talk to us about a risk you’ve taken – walk us through the story?

A creative career is usually looked at as a “risk”, which is why, I denied wanting it for so long. I had been told a number of times, by many career creatives, how unrealistic and unsustainable it was to make art your job and I believed them. It always stayed at the back of my mind, as I explored other possibilities and interests, but none of them ever really struck me the same way photography always had. I ended up studying bio-psychology in college, while working as a freelance photographer and I really did take to that. Psychology was fascinating to me and for a while I felt like I could maybe be content with having a practical job using my psychology education and let photography be a hobby and my escape. I always had a nagging feeling that I not only didn’t want to have a life or a job I felt the need to escape from, but I also didn’t want art to be something that just fell to the wayside as I got more involved with my “adult career.” I had already been seeing that happen as I was taking full time college courses, working a full time job and also trying to maintain my freelance small business as an artist. I knew that something had to go and the practical side of me knew it should be the art. Especially, because I had been told my whole life by so many older, wiser people, as well as career creatives, that it wasn’t a realistic job, if I wanted to be able to pay bills and survive on my own. Nonetheless, the nagging voice in my head wouldn’t let go of this passion thing. I tried to tell myself it was maturity and that as I got older I would be glad I took the “practical” route they teach us to follow. Go to school, study something relevant, graduate, get a good job making as much money as you can, live your life and have whatever hobby you want (if you somehow find the time and energy outside of your work days). It just never sat right with me, and yet I kept going down that path, as many of us do, thinking that I’d mature my way into appreciating it and feeling more fulfilled by it. But that day never came. Instead the fear of missing out on the thing I really loved started to outweigh the fear of it not working out.

After a series of canon events, a few mental breakdowns on the phone with my mom and a number of heart to hearts with my best friend about how out of place I felt, I dropped out of college with a 4.0 and less than a year left. I started pouring myself 100% into that small business of mine. I didn’t know what I was doing or how it would turn out but after years of going down the “right” path and feeling completely out of place, for the first time ever I felt like I was exactly where I was supposed to be, doing exactly what I was meant to do. It might sound a little dramatic but it really did feel that way.

I am someone who fully believes in following your heart. When something is for you, the universe, god, etc. works for you, not against. Once I fully decided this was it for me, doors started swinging wide open. Whereas, before it felt like I was walking down a hallway with not one single door in it, let alone an open one. I had no idea where the opportunities were coming from, they were just literally falling into my lap. Meeting people at coffee shops that ended up hiring me for film production jobs, every random person that even just sorta knew me form high school or college started calling about graduation and family photos, connections I had made years ago all of a sudden called me up asking if I was still doing freelance photos on the side to which I got to respond, “actually yes, I am doing it full time now.” My community showed up for me in ways that I don’t even think they realized was impacting me so heavily.

Even just writing this now and reminiscing on that period of time, when I had nothing but hope and excitement driving the car with fear planted firmly in the passenger seat, I get goosebumps. The scariest part about starting a new creative career, especially when you go full send the way I did, is the inconsistency of work. You never know where your next job will come from and you never know what kind of paycheck it will bring. But if I have learned anything through this journey it is that, when you have a why, you can bear almost any how. When you are truly happy and fulfilled at your core, life gives you energy, it doesn’t take it away. I went from 40 hours a week in college classes, 20 hours a week at a part time athletics media job, and whatever left over energy I had I put into my freelance business, after homework and class and work, feeling drained, scared and uninspired. I began to happily work 80+ hours a week,at a dozen different odd creative gigs and feeling more inspired and energized than I had in years. I recall one particular day driving home from a 13 hour day on a film production set, thinking about how long that day was and still feeling like I had enough energy to go home and cook myself a whole meal, go for a run, and do anything other than sleep. I felt weird because I was finally embracing the thing that was FOR me. Sitting at a red light on that drive home, I literally thought “I want to do this for the rest of my life”, which promptly ignited tears, I had never felt so fulfilled that it overflowed into happy tears before. It was at this moment that fear started slowly exiting the car and confidence started to replace it.

I dropped out of college in 2021 and I have not looked back once since then. The life I have now is one that I never knew was attainable for me when I made the decision to listen to the voice in my head telling me there was more for me elsewhere. Chances are if it’s weighing on you, there’s a reason for that and my advice is to at least listen.

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

My name is Mina and I have had a camera in my hand pretty much my entire life. My mom was a photographer and I took interest in helping with her studio very early on. I used to lay on the floor in our living room flipping through her massive portfolio books of silver gelatin prints thinking they were the coolest things in the world. She was mostly shooting fashion and portraiture for news stories on film in the 80’s and 90’s. I didn’t know it yet but my whole life was going to hinge on those moments loading film in my mom’s studio and flipping through prints and negatives she had shot years before I was born. I think most people, but especially artists, have a moment when they discover their “thing.” It gives you pause, it makes all the hairs stand up on the back of your neck and you think “this is it, I want to do this for the rest of my life.” If we let them, these moments will guide us into a life we may not even think to dream of. I think I had my first moment while flipping through that portfolio but I was too young to know that’s what was happening. Later, in high school I joined the yearbook staff with my still consistent yet direction-less interest in photography and it threw me into sports. I was fully not expecting that to be a thing I would fall in love with, but alas I had just taken the first step towards finding my “thing.” I remember my first football game under the Friday night lights. Little freshmen me, on the sidelines, shoulder to shoulder with guys two or three times my size, the brutal smell steaming off of the athletes as they came off the field between plays. The student section decked out and covered in colorful baby powder from the kick off, chanting game day classics at the top of their lungs, not only seeing the impact but actually hearing their helmets clash together, their heavy breathing and chatter between teammates as the game pushed on. I had no idea what I was doing but intuition kicked in and by the 2nd quarter, I was fully in tune with the game tracking up and down the sideline alongside the plays. Two hours of trial and error, as I tried every different setting I could to make the actual photo product look like the potential image I could see so vividly in my head. The sense of pride and excitement I felt when I successfully froze such a quick moment in time, I never missed a single game after that. Being on the sidelines of a sporting event became my favorite pastime and continued throughout the duration of high school and college where I quickly found my way onto the field yet again. I went to undergrad at Life University in Marietta, GA. It was a small science specialty school with a pretty big athletics department. I was studying psychology because I never thought of photography as a realistic career choice. Every photographer I had ever looked up to at that point had either taken up a new career outside of photography or bluntly told me it was an unrealistic choice and that they felt they needed to have a 2nd job to make ends meet. Even my mom actually used photography to put herself through grad school and was already practicing in an entirely different career field by the time I was born. Being at Life was one of those canon event kind of stepping stones and I mostly ended up there by chance. By this point I had built myself a pretty significant portfolio, for being a freshly minted 17 year old high school graduate. In the first week of college, I literally walked myself onto the soccer field and started taking photos till the athletic department noticed and instead of kicking me off the field, they offered me a job. This was another one of those “I didn’t know it yet, but my life was about to change ” moments. I spent 3 years on that athletics media team covering every sport you can think of. I worked my way up to head photographer, started training more media team members, freelancing at other colleges and even for traveling clubs and pro teams. I became the head photographer for the largest college rugby organization in the world at just 19 years old. Every season I fell deeper and deeper in love with this craft. I was in class 40 hours a week, working 40 hours a week in the athletic department and spending any spare hours or energy I had after school, homework, and work on building my own business and name in the world. I kept my head down and in the grind for quite some time. The harder I worked, the louder the inner conflict got. I grew to love psychology but never as much as I loved having a camera in my hands. Eventually after years of juggling all of the things, I was working late in the office after a triple header game day and got into a heart to heart with my then boss, now dear friend, Billy. Your usual existential topics such as who am I, what is happiness, what am I doing with my life and for the first time someone challenged me when I said “I love photography, its just unrealistic.” Up till this point, any time someone asked what my plans were for my photography career, I would explain the lack of feasibility and they would nod as though they agreed or understood my hesitation. But for the first time, instead of a simple nod of understanding, I was met with questions that led me to even more questions. He asked me “why do you care if it didn’t work for them? This is YOUR timeline, not theirs.” I will always be thankful for him and how he believed in me even before I really believed in myself. He was the one that really showed me that your job doesn’t just have to be a thing that makes ends meet, it can be a thing you love. A thing you are excited to get up and do every day. Lots of sports references were made as we burned the midnight oil and “you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take ” stuck with me. It lived rent free in my brain because while the nagging feeling was always there I never really believed the thing was possible. Eventually, after an unfortunate series of events that rocked my world and completely derailed the path I was on in every way possible, the one thing I was left with was my love for photography and the longing desire to rebuild my life into something that was mine. So with nothing to lose and that conversation living in my head, I decided to go full send. I dropped out of college with a year left, moved home, invested in new camera gear and truly just set out with a lot of hope and uncertainty for what would come next. The only real difference between this part and the years before was that I fully, and I mean wholeheartedly believed I could and was doing it. It absolutely floors me when I think about this pivotal period now. It feels like a true testament to the fact that it’s true what they say, when you find what is for you, doors will swing wide open, opportunities will fall into your lap. I was still working 80+ hour weeks, channeling those extra 40 I used to spend on class into chasing down leads, treating every day and every meeting as an opportunity to network and seek out opportunities. I was even working for free the majority of the time. I was selling my paintings on Etsy and booking as many shoots as I could, for little to nothing to pay bills. Of course it wasn’t easy but nothing that’s worth it ever is, right? For traditional career paths, the grind is in the schooling, it’s in the homework and the tests and in the hours on hours of studying. For artists, the grind is in the practice, day in and day out not giving up on your vision, it’s taking as many free or low paying projects as you can to build a portfolio and experience. Once I finally decided to stop buying into the belief that being a career creative was unrealistic, it started actually being very realistic. I fully committed myself to making it happen. I was just barely 20 at the time and I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, nor did I have any idea what was possible for me. When I say I was doing literally anything and everything to make it work, I mean that. I was freelancing sporting events as often as I could, doing graduation and family photos, picking up any and every production assisting or set job I could, working crazy hours like 4am call times and 11pm wrap times, working for Lifetouch portrait studio doing yearbook photos, loving even the parts I deeply hated, babysitting for family friends, selling my art and everything in between. Those days were really hard. I was barely sleeping, working 12-20 hour days at what felt like a million odd creative jobs, and wondering where I was going to land, but always reminding myself it was all going to be worth it someday. I was exhausted but I wasn’t crying on my way home from long set days, the way I had been on the way home from class for years in college. I wasn’t dreading waking up in the mornings for call times before the sunrise, the way I would dread an 8am class. I was working myself to the bone and I was doing it with a smile on my face and a pep in my step. My grandmother likes to remind me, “when the student is ready, the teacher will appear” and looking back now I see what she meant by that. At every stage of my journey there was an opportunity or a person that helped me grow in the ways I needed to get to the next part. None of it felt connected when I was in the middle of it, but turning around now looking at the web my life spun behind me, I see that every last thing was connected, in a butterfly effect kind of way. They say a butterfly bats its wings and somewhere else in the world a tsunami happens. That was especially the case when I made friends with a girl named Colleen, while waitressing at a pizza place the summer after high school. The 17 year old me had no idea that meeting this girl would change the entire course of my career and life years later, but it did. One of the many jobs that just kinda fell into my lap, during that period of time just starting to make it as a creative, was Colleen’s mom asking me to photograph her wedding. This felt like a really daunting task, as I had only ever sorta shot one wedding before, that I’m not sure you can really count. She explained that she loved my sports photos and had been following along as my portfolio grew through college. She had a vision for her wedding photos being spontaneous and fun and felt like a sports action photographer would be the perfect fit for making that happen. So, I agreed and started doing a lot of research, so I could do the best job possible for them. A wedding was a big thing, we only had one chance for a lot of these shots, which felt a lot like sporting events. When I started seeing the parallels in the two, it became less daunting and more exciting. I remember leaving their wedding and feeling in awe. Having had another one of those “I wanna do this forever” moments while photographing everyone being so happy and in love on the dance floor that night. Shortly after, the portfolio I built at that wedding helped me get the attention of a few family friends, who happened to be wedding photographers I had been babysitting for during my odd job period of time. Ellice and Michelle quickly became important figures in my life. Ellice saw something in me and my work that I didn’t see yet and took a chance on helping me get the ball rolling. Both of them are powerhouse female creatives with vision and drive like I had never seen in creatives before. Running incredibly successful businesses and making inspiring and innovative art that was creating new industry standards. I feel very lucky to have been taken under their wings. This is where my work started to evolve. Still jugging any and every freelance job I could find, I started assisting Michelle full time in her studio, loading film and carrying gear for her at weddings, running errands and learning proper editing, by watching and practicing in her office, learning and styling detail shots, and assisting with any other random office tasks. This was the mentorship every young eager photographer dreams of and I fell into it by way of chance. Michelle helped me refine my eye for portrait photography by teaching me how to make selects and edit properly for her galleries. Watching and helping and absorbing every last drop of information and inspiration I could. This went on for years. I worked my way up from the assistant to the second shooter and then eventually to a lead associate shooter for her brand. Until I built enough confidence and portfolio to really set out on my own, with my own name on the header. The gear shift from sports, to odd jobs, to settling down in weddings, definitely doesn’t sound like a natural progression, but it feels as though it was for me because I truly was just following the red string of inspiration. I let intuition guide me. That was the most important part of my mindset shift after college. Allowing myself to be open minded and at the will of artistic inspiration. Letting go of whatever expectations I had for myself and my career based on what I was told should or shouldn’t, can or can’t, is or isn’t possible. I fell into weddings by accident the same way I fell into sports and in recent years coming full circle back to my roots of being mesmerized by my mom’s fashion studio as a kid. I have found myself working in the fashion space as well, by chance of course, following the theme of all the best parts of my life so far.
I am really proud of myself for following that spark of inspiration that had been with me since I was a child and never allowing myself to give up on the dream no matter how long and hard the days were or how unrealistic it seemed in the beginning while juggling so many factors.
Now, I am a fashion and weddings photographer specializing in medium and large format film with an editorial documentary approach. I have 8 incredible artists on my associate team based all over the world. I am one of only a handful of wedding photographers that shoots large format film, I am based in Manhattan and the majority of my fashion campaigns and weddings are destination events. I have had the pleasure of creative directing multiple international fashion campaigns, photographing multiple international fashion weeks, producing and doing cinematography for a couple short films alongside many incredible artists. I still work with and talk to Michelle weekly, I am still friends with Colleen and have photos from her mothers wedding on my website to this day. Billy, my athletics boss, is still a dear friend who I remind of my gratitude for him as often as I can. My mother’s large portfolio book of silver gelatin prints still sits behind a big chair in her living room and I still pull it out to look at it every time I go home. While I am standing knee deep in the Mediterranean Sea shooting a fashion campaign that 16 year old me would have swooned over, in the back of my mind still lives the 20 year old college drop out lugging Lifetouch portrait studio equipment bigger than herself through school parking lots before the sun came up for yearbook picture days, feeling pretty miserable, having only gotten 4 hours of sleep and reminding herself this was all going to pay off someday.

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

I always say, the best way to make money in photography is to work for free. You don’t need the best, most expensive camera gear to start out. In fact, learning and building your skills on a less professional camera handicaps you in a way that improves your ability to create great art. A family member had gifted me a canon rebel t3 and I made that thing work for me in every way it was capable. I was doing senior photos, family sessions, couples pictures, local business photos for as little as $50-$100 starting out. Photography is a unique field in that we don’t need much besides a camera, literally any camera. And a way to get the photos off the camera and process the images. I was using the photos app on a hand me down macbook for years through high school and college. The more stuff I photographed for free or very little, the better I got and the more comfortable and justified I felt landing higher quality jobs and charging more. Little by little, I saved enough to buy my first professional grade camera which I still use today.

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

Being consistent, honest, and fair. I am someone who holds business ethics quite high on my priority list. My clients and colleagues know that. From the beginning I have put my whole heart and personality into my brand and business. My clients feel like they know me and my peers feel they can trust me and come to me for help or advice on anything creative or business related and that has benefited me in a lot of ways. Not only am I able to connect with and build trusting relationships with prospective clients but I have also built meaningful relationships with my colleagues who have sent me a number of prospective clients that have turned into contracted jobs. The best way to grow your client base is to build a community. Be true to yourself, be honest and always always shoot straight. It’s natural to ebb and flow through inspiration and to grow into and out of styles, but having a solid and sound business platform and community that grows with you will ensure that there’s always enough to go around for everyone. Your peers are not your competition, they are your support system.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.minasisleyphotography.com
• Instagram: minasisleyphotos
• Facebook: Mina Sisley Photography