We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Nhyiraba Bartels a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Nhyiraba, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

Firstly, every project I’ve worked is meaningful to me. The fact that someone trusts me enough to give me a project or idea to execute fully is a beautiful thing. A thing I cherish with each session. However, if I had to pick one I’d have to pick my first graduation shoot. Her name is Kyla. She was a friend from class. Though she didn’t have much vision for what she wanted her big day to look like and I definitely didn’t have the right lighting to execute a grad shoot. But the trust she had instilled in me, made me feel like I could do it. And that trust builds confidence to something else, do something bigger. And even though, now I have much better graduation portraits in my portfolio, but my first will always be the most meaningful. These are pictures that will be kept forever and shared with loved ones. To be able to be apart of that is everything to me.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I’m a freelance photographer. I’ve been taking pictures since 2018. It started as a hobby and I later decided to monetize off it. I focus on lifestyle and portrait photography. I want to be able to share my art and grow clientele.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

I have always appreciated the way that social media platforms’ algorithms work. I think it’s best to have 2-3 platforms to advertise your work off of. Right now Instagram and TikTok are two of the biggest platforms we have. Instagram looks at the engagement of a post, and then decides to push it onto other people’s feed and explore page. Engagement isn’t just likes, but the comments, shares and saves your posts get. Things like hashtags also help funnel your content to the appropriate channels so that people that happen to be looking for your particular service can find you. TikTok is kind of a similar. Hashtags are more important, but something else I noticed helped pushed my TikToks were adding locations. Trending audios connected to your content can also push your work.

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

I took it upon myself to start saving money. Truthfully, I hadn’t known what I was saving money up for when I started. I just felt the need to save some money. I saved up and bought my first and currently only camera. Truthfully, I should’ve done more research and thought about what I wanted to do long term with my photography. I purchased a refurbished Canon Rebel XSi. She came with the standard 18-55 mm lens. I named her Zoomdaya. Later on, when I had decided I needed to find a new way to edit my work, I purchased my iPad. I do almost all my work on my iPad. I had to pull that money from my savings. I’m still working to pay that money back to my savings.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: flixbynhyira
• Other: TikTok: flixbynhyira

Image Credits

Nhyiraba B.K. Bartels