Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Samantha Maye. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Alright, Samantha thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. How do you think about vacations as a business owner? Do you take them and if so, how? If you don’t, why not?
Yes! I absolutely love to travel, and traveling is actually where my love for photography really started. When I lived in Utah during college, I had a lot of opportunities to go camping and go on adventures in stunning locations I’d never visited before. I became obsessed with visiting beautiful landscapes and felt called to photograph them. I took every chance I had to travel to the many national parks in Utah, where I also discovered astrophotography. These trips to places like Arches NP and Canyonlands NP in Moab, Zion National Park, and Escalante really helped me learn to understand lighting and how to use my camera.
When I moved to Colorado, I continued to explore and find new amazing landscapes. I met my now-fiancé and we started to adventure together, and I began to document us and our travels. Taking photos of the two of us helped me learn how to photograph people and posing in front of landscapes. As we found more and more incredible spots, I started thinking about how fun it would be to photograph other people’s adventures. When I graduated from undergrad, we took a huge vacation to travel the West Coast, from Colorado through to Utah, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, California, and Nevada. The entire time, I felt like I was scouting for locations that I could take future photography clients, and I realized how much I wanted to document other people’s love. We saw huge mountains and gorgeous rainforests in Olympic National Park, the rocky coastline of Oregon, the huge Redwoods in California, sunrise at Glacier Point in Yosemite National Park, and so many other beautiful places.
When I got back from our West Coast trip, I decided to make the jump and start a photography business. I figured it would be a fun pastime and a good way to make a little money while pursuing my graduate degree. However, it quickly took off and I’m now excited to call myself an adventure elopement photographer. I get to use my photography business as a way to travel and document other couples’ love in the beautiful places that inspired me to start this career. I’ve captured an elopement in a slot canyon in Escalante, taken engagement photos at Arches National Park, and I recently got to document an elopement on Cannon Beach in Oregon. I’m thrilled to travel back to Moab to shoot a jeeping elopement near Canyonlands and to the Redwoods of California to capture an all-day elopement. This year, I’m exploring more of both Colorado and the West, and I couldn’t be more excited to document love stories along the way.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
Hey there! I’m Samantha Maye and I’m an adventurous elopement photographer based out of Colorado. I offer both elopement and wedding photography all over the U.S., as well as adventure sessions for couples and families. I provide bold and colorful images to document important moments, no matter what that looks like. My business started from my love for travel and wanting to document my own relationship. Because I’m a very adventurous person that loves to go new places and try new things, my photography business is very adventure-based. However, I believe that adventure means different things to different people. So, if the journey of planning a large wedding and having all of your friends and family there is your adventure, I’d be just as thrilled to capture that as if you were climbing to the top of a mountain to elope just the two of you. This is a huge reason I love being an elopement and wedding photographer—no two celebrations are the exact same.
I love the intersection of capturing stunning locations and people’s emotions—I want to do my subjects as much justice as the beautiful mountains, arches, and sunsets they’re in front of, and provide them with completely unique photos that are unlike anyone else’s. I like to seek beautiful lighting wherever I am, and I have a knack for finding the best locations and angles to not just document the moments, but also the gorgeous settings they occur in. I have the know-how and equipment to make locations like remote alpine lakes just as accessible to my clients as a small park in town. But I also highly value leaving no trace and never doing anything to harm the nature I’m so lucky to share with my couples.
On top of photography, I also love helping my clients plan their perfect day—there is so much more to my job than just snapping photos. I can be as involved as my couples need to help curate their ideal elopement and make it happen. Overall, I think the most important thing that sets me apart is that I really truly care about my clients and their stories. I want to make sure that whatever makes their love story unique is translated into their day and their photos. When clients hire me, they get so much more than just a photographer. They get a planning, creative, adventurous friend to bounce ideas off of and make shit happen. I’m going to be just as excited to be there, fix problems before they happen, and make the images better than they expected. My goal is not just to take beautiful photos of your day, but to help make sure your entire wedding or elopement is a success from start to finish.
What else should we know about how you took your side hustle and scaled it up into what it is today?
When I first became interested in photography, I started an Instagram account to post my landscape and travel photos. I decided on the name Maye.Be Take A Photo, because my name is Samantha Maye, but I didn’t want my business to just be my name—I wanted something fun and unique that also conveyed what my page was about. When I started to offer photography services, I kept the name Maye.Be Take A Photo and began posting my clients as well as landscapes and travel photos. Over time, the business really took off, and I started to make real money and book out clients.
Eventually, I realized I was more passionate about photography than my graduate program and that I could turn my side hustle into a full-time career. My decision was solidified when a mentor told me that they thought I could definitely be a full-time photographer and make a career out of it and that I would someday be a better photographer than they were. Shortly later, I realized I was expected to make more that year with photography than with my “real” job, and by the end of the year, I doubled that.
Not only am I making more money from photography, but I’m also more passionate about it, and I’m booking ideal clients that love adventuring to beautiful places just as much as I do. I’m so excited that I get to help plan and document every moment of the whole day that couples say “I Do.”
For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?
For me, the most rewarding aspect of being an artist is creating images that make me and my clients say “wow.” To me that means capturing all of my clients’ really important moments and true emotions while also documenting their surroundings, making sure they love how they look in their photos, and keeping my photos realistic but capturing the best version of reality. Photography is more than just snapping a picture—it’s knowing when the big moments are going to happen, being ready at all times, and being aware of everything. I’m making sure that I position clients in the best lighting, use the right camera settings, and pose them in flattering ways. I take time to make sure the positioning is perfect so both my clients and the landscape look their best together. After taking the photos, I also use Lightroom and Photoshop to enhance the RAW image. I love to edit boldly and colorfully, and I focus on creating an image that does justice to both the subject and backdrop. I use my skills in Photoshop to make sure every picture is the best version of reality—editing out other people and distractions in the background so the focus is just on my clients and their beautiful surroundings. I try to keep a balance in my photography by documenting every moment of my clients’ elopements while also capturing creative, unique, artful photos.
Contact Info:
- Website: mayebetakeaphoto.com
- Instagram: instagram.com/maye.be.take.a.photo
- Facebook: facebook.com/maye.be.take.a.photo