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

Alright, Russ thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. To kick things off, we’d love to hear about things you or your brand do that diverge from the industry standard.

One thing that I seem to do differently based on what I see most photographers do is that I tend to have many genres of photography I enjoy. I’ve noticed that most, but not all, tend to gravitate towards one specific genre or type of photography, be it portraits, weddings, sports, or landscapes. When I dove into photography a couple of years back, I got hooked on almost everything, and I share that with my social media accounts too. Some of the genres I cover have been portraits, landscapes, racing, street photography, wildlife, and macro photography. I’ve found that doing this helps in other genres! For example, taking ideas from my macro or wildlife photography in terms of framing or lighting, and bringing it over to portraits. I think maybe some people are afraid of being lumped in with the “Jack of all trades, master of none” thought, but I look at it from the angle that learning all I can about any subject can help me with others.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Sure! I guess you could say I got back into photography – I had a camera over a decade ago when I got the chance to go to Havana, Cuba, for a trip to play in the Havana International Jazz Festival. I wasn’t going to pass up the chance to get some great memories captured, so I took my camera and shot a few thousand pictures. Of course back then, I didn’t know a whole lot about it, but I still managed to get some great shots that I still enjoy today, even though I don’t have the original files anymore.

When Covid-19 hit, the ensemble I played in regularly couldn’t rehearse, so I was looking for a creative outlet. I bought a new camera, and I was absolutely hooked on photography. I started with mostly landscape shots, but it soon moved to portraits, pet photography, and then I rented the macro lens, which just ignited a whole other fire for me.

For my customers, I provide almost any type of photography needed, and I also offer prints as well. I have prints of my personal art of course, but the bulk of my business comes from customer shoots rather than art prints. I hope that will change at some point, though!

I want my potential customers to know that I want to tell their story – I love connecting with people. My main job is in IT, so I am customer focused every day, which makes it even easier to do so with my photography. I love having post-shoot reviews with my customers, where I can show them lightly edited versions of shots, and they can pick their favorites for more edits! I’ve always preferred doing this in person rather than online if possible, because I get to see their reactions to the photos first-hand.

I’ve had some great opportunities to connect with people over my photography too. I was at Fossil Rim Wildlife Center in Glen Rose, Texas a few years back and during the drive through the park, I spotted a couple of kids feeding the giraffes from pretty far off. Luckily I had rented a large zoom lens – I captured a few of my favorite shots that day, and when we got to the halfway point at the shop, I showed them some of the shots from my camera. I thought that might be all there was to it, but the mom left a note on my car with her info! I got to edit these photos and send them to her for her to enjoy with her kids and have a memory they were never expecting. Sharing those shots actually connected me even more with Fossil Rim, and I got to shoot their real estate shots that are currently on their website now, in fact. That story still goes to show that having the philosophy of ‘surprise and delight’ with your customers will always pay off – for both of you.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

Honestly, building the audience was a combination of posting regularly, tagging groups, people, or organizations that I was either working with or wanting to work with, and using tags to identify what I was posting or working on. The biggest things that I focused on were posting consistently, with quality content, and using captions and hashtags.. People that just see a picture might like it, but not comment on it. Telling the story of the picture and connecting with people is what gets them to comment, follow, and interact with your page.

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

The biggest things that helped with building my reputation were my level of interaction with customers and the service I provided, along with supporting my clients. By that I mean that when I interact with customers, I give them the service I’d want to have. I check in with them, and when we do a session, instead of just emailing them a gallery,

I want to (if they’ll let me of course!) come back to them in person and review which shots they liked, show them which ones I liked, and give them some sample edits to comment on and even some options for changes. For example, when shooting a business, not only did I give them an in-person review, I showed them my initial edits and they told me what they liked about them and what they might want different. I don’t necessarily change my style, but I can fit their wants and needs into it.

I followed the business on social media myself, and when I started posted, I tagged them. When they posted the word I did for them, I liked it and commented on it – driving their own engagement levels. That shows them that not only do I want to provide them with a service they paid for, but I want to help their business too.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.russrobinsonphotography.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/russrobinsonphotography
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/russrobinsonphotography
• Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/rrobinson1216

Image Credits
Russ Robinson Photography