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

Seth, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today. One of the most important things we can do as business owners is to ensure that our customers feel appreciated. What’s something you’ve done or seen a business owner do to help a customer feel valued? 

One of the things that I do for all of my wedding clients Is put together a gift box containing a few items better personally from me and my business.

My absolute favorite part of weddings in the best images of ever captured our during the bride and groom section of their wedding day. This is usually within an hour or so of the ceremony so the faces and the emotions that you capture when you are recreating their engagement session on their wedding day. They have no choice but to be happy and not nervous because they start to think about how they were doing the same thing a few months ago and now they’re doing it again for real. So on top of the emotions you capture it’s just the most perfect moment to remember of the day.

This box is designed in a way that it looks as if it’s a gift from me so I don’t just put it together real quick. It’s a nice designer box with tissue paper inside wrapping all the contents and everything.

In my box I put together, It will include an 8 x 10 print that is framed, A USB containing all of the photos of the day, A personal thank-you card, And a magnet with my logo.

Although it’s a small gift usually wedding client don’t have a print yet. With me doing this, it just to show them that I truly care about them. Since it’s my favorite photo, it’s really kind of personalized from me.

I also send them an online gallery that they can use and download from so they have access to print everything but one of their first prints are from the photographer themself.

I think that’s probably one of the top things I’ve done to show a customer that I appreciate them.

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?

So where I started my journey was in high school. I started it simply to get an easy a in an elective class. I figured all you have to do is take a pictureget a grade so I thought this was easier than anything else I can do.

Needless to say, I was pretty lazy in highschool.

But when I started, it was a lot more work than I thought it was going to be but it ended up being a lot of fun as well. Once we actually got to take the pictures we also go to develop those photos in a dark room. So we had to use the machines and expose the negatives onto light-responsive paper and then take that paper and run it to the chemicals to seal the image to it. When we started, this was also starting with black and white film.

This entire process was fascinating to me and truly showed me what truly goes into the craft. It quickly fell out of the take a picture for an easy a into what can I create and how do I change what I’m doing to get a better image. The love for photography quickly grew on me.

So while using black and white film, I learned how to take advantage of light in certain situations and I think that’s really progressed me in using white in color images as well.

Once I made it out of high school I kind of dropped it all together because it was an expensive hobby and I simply don’t have the money for it. About 15 years later I told my wife I wanted to pick up a camera again and jumped on Facebook Marketplace to find the first DSLR I could.

In 2020 my daughter was born I started to take photos of her. When people saw the photos everyone asked if I can start taking their images as well so I started out just like everybody else charging extremely low rates just to see if I could get in and make something of it. And then that just kind of snowballed from there until I got enough confidence to take on a wedding and then that wedding turned out amazing so I just decided from then on I’m going to start shooting weddings. There’s a lot of work and a lot of time spent burning your eyes at a computer screen but to get the response that I do and the comments I get from people when they see my images I just knew it was something that was right for me. I spent a lot of time learning something new even if I think I know everything at this point I’m always going to find something new to learn and it’s going to keep me moving forward. Really the moral is keep your head down and keep moving forward.

If you going to pick up a photography world put your heart and soul into it. Too many people pick up a camera that’s never used one of their life and just instantly jump out there and start going after it with the head that they are very well equipped to take on a project like this when in reality they’re not. Now everyone starts somewhere so I’m not saying unless you know what you’re doing don’t you go out there and decide to do photography.

What I’m really getting at is a lot of people see that there’s money in this field and they don’t care to evolve their abilities which creates a Staleness and lack of creativity in a lot of images from photographers today.

I think that’s what sets me apart I don’t stop learning new things I don’t stop evolving my business I don’t stop finding new ways to showcase a client’s images in a new and exciting way.

In short, I’m never satisfied with my own product and if you are 100% satisfied with what you can deliver then you’re either the best photographer on the face of the planet and no one could be any better or, you have room for improvement and not willing to grow. And that’s how I kind of take on this field i’m never one 100 % satisfied and if i am I’ve gone wrong somewhere.

There are a lot of very talented amazing creatives out there but you can tell from looking at someone’s work how much time and effort they put into their craft I believe that it shows in the final products.

Is there a mission driving your creative journey?

Overall the goal for me is to continue doing what I’m doing for the time being and then eventually evolved into a studio that can also shoot weddings. Usually if your studio a photographer, real-world Event Photography isn’t your Forte and vice versa. Doing both aspects of photography, I eventually want to carry that into studio work where I can build and grow my business and hire people on to help me with those fields. So I’d love to have an active studio 24/7 as well as take on weddings for clients as well.

At the time being I’ve gotten to the point to hire on a second photographer that’s always with me at all of my weddings. So working with the same person consistently I’m going to be able to train them to be another me. So as I grow, they start to gather knowledge as well and I can make sure that my second photographer will always provide the same quality image that I can. As we grow, the goal is to have my second photographer take the lead at their own weddings without any difference in the visual representation of my images.

The person that I have with me now had an interest in photography and so I took him to a wedding and had him shoot for free just so he could see if it was something that he enjoyed. Turns out he absolutely loves every point of the process and is now decided to invest in himself and learn more and more about the business and techniques and how to frame lighting to work to your advantage which is exactly how I was when I started.

So as we go on I aim to hire on a full creative team that can take on any part of the photography world.

Can you talk to us about how your side-hustle turned into something more.

As I explained earlier I just kind of picked photography for a few people that I knew. As I kept doing it, everyone started to realize who I was and more and more people are coming to me asking for their photos. So I never intended to do this as a full-time gig I was simply doing it just to make a little extra money on the side. But since I put as much effort into it as I did it is expanded to the point now this is what I’m doing pretty much full-time and other things have become my side gigs that would have been my primary business before all of this.

Keep your head down and keep moving forward and great things will come from it.

Contact Info:

• Website: bearphotoconway.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Bearphotoconway

Image Credits
Bear Photography