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

Samantha, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?

I have two siblings who started out with some form of photography. My sister went to school for it, but doesn’t utilize it at all. My younger brother loves landscape photography and has a great technical understanding. I picked up a camera and he slowly taught me what each button meant. I wrote stuff down and studied and practiced a lot. When I had questions I would ask or look on YouTube. I started to rely on YouTube often. I came across a black and white photography page by a woman named Niki Boone and it changed everything. I started to see it as an art form and studying how I can create a similar feel that is my own. I definitely could have taken a mentorship to speed up my process. However I think it was very vital for me to learn things on my own as well. Time was my only major obstacle I have always put family first.

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

I’m a wife and mom to six amazing humans! My oldest Caden(18) just graduated high school and will leave in the fall for college. Than we have. Xander(16) Isabella(13) Eden(10) we adopted her at birth Fletcher(6) and Huxley(1) my family is everything and the reason I got into this industry. I wanted to capture all the moments in our daily lives and document our time through the art of photography. We have gone through some very very difficult things and I have found photography to be a form of therapy through those. I do photography part time. Having 6 kids keeps me so busy. I love family and maternity the most, however I do weddings, seniors etc…My heart truly loves teaching as I am an educator in the industry as well. I offer teaching one on one and through a few photography platforms. I offer my clients a full family wardrobe filled with different textures, patterns, and sizes. I am most proud of capturing emotion and helping others get out of their comfort zones. Creating images that can be used as art in their homes. I’m very proud that everything you see from me was probably learned solely by me. I’ve taken two mentorship’s myself but I have taught myself everything I know. I’m not a copy and paste of anyone’s work. I got where I am by tweaking and teaching myself. Not that learning from someone else is a negative. I just don’t like the idea of learning from someone and turning around and teaching that very thing you learned. I believe you need to master that and make it your own. I’m very proud of where I’ve come from and where I am now. It’s amazing to see my hard work manifest through my work.

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

Ahhh social media. It can be so frustrating. When I started out I found pages I loved and followed them and rely heavily relied on hashtags and getting my work featured on pages. When people saw my work then they would gain interest and wanted to see more. I can proudly say I’ve never bought or paid for any following. It’s so hard on this heavily saturated industry especially when people are being fake and buying their followers and likes. It makes for an unfair market. My page used to have heavy traffic but over time I, like many others, have felt the dying of the algorithm pushing me back. I just keep sharing, try not to let it get to me, and learn what is helping others the most. Be your authentic self and try not to get caught up in any comparisons game that will kill your creativity. Keep researching what works and pushing through. I keep hoping that my authenticity will carry me.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

In 2020 my oldest son was in a horrible accident and lost his right hand. We spent two weeks in the hospital and he had a total of 10 surgeries. A few years later we decided to have a final baby. Unbeknown to me I have something called May Thurners Syndrome this basically means I have a collapsed artery, pushing down on a vein in my main iliac veins. So I started developing bad pains during my pregnancy. We went to the hospital and I was sent home, but my midwife urged me to go get a second opinion I did the following day and we discovered that I was filled with blood clots from my abdomen to my knee on my left side. I was beyond terrified and had to inject myself in my belly with shots twice a day for the rest of my pregnancy and beyond. I also lost the dream I had to north at home. I was crushed. When my baby was born in December, we had a weird fluke thing where 15 tornadoes ripped through our area. This is unheard of in December because we live in the cold tundra of Minnesota. My baby was born and I knew something wasn’t right, and I kept telling the nurse for four hours. Finally, they discovered that my babies lung had collapsed and his other one was in danger of collapsing. His life was on the line. Because of the tornadoes, they could not airlift him so they had to send a ground team to come and pick my baby up and drive him an hour to the cities to the Nicu. I never felt so low in my life I just wanted to die. We spent a week there watching my baby try to get stronger right before Christmas. Because of Covid laws, my children could only come and see me one time. I was in such despair. My husband needed to be home with the other children and to work so I spent most of the time up there by myself and it was miserable. I just wanted to be able to go home before Christmas. Thank God two days before Christmas we were sent home, I have never been more happy in my life to go home. Between my son, losing his hand, my pregnancy, and my baby, being almost dying, I felt as if life had taken the wind out of my sails completely. However, I relied on my craft in my passion for what I do to not only document these events, but carry me through. I realized that not everything documented hast be happy and joyous, but you can document the hard things you go through so that when you look back on the other side, you can see the entire story unfolding. I’m beyond thankful that I used my craft to document these events in our lives. Some things will just be for me and some things I was able to share with the world to help anyone else going through something similar. Either way it was therapy for me and really helped me get back on my feet again.                  

Contact Info:

• Website: https://samanthajdell.smugmug.com/
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/momentsilluminated
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Samantha.J.Photography.Faribault?mibextid=LQQJ4d
• Other: www.instagram.com/Samantha.j.photography

Image Credits
Headshot taken by Jordan Brennan edited by me