Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Toni Walley. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Alright, Toni thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Alright, so you had your idea and then what happened? Can you walk us through the story of how you went from just an idea to executing on the idea
I’ve always had a love for capturing memories. Making a moment last forever. Even as a little kid I had boxes and boxes of film, polaroids, prints, some we never even developed. My sister and I would beg our mom to buy throw aways every time we went to the store. We would buy at least 4 at a time and we would snap away at anything and everything from the moment we pulled out of the parking lot. Some of my favorite memories growing up are in those stills. When we had friends over we would pull out all our clothes, accessories, electrical tape, makeup, whatever we could find to get creative with. The rest of the time we just documented our lives and the people and animals who were in them at the time. I’ve lost most of those photos by now, but if I close my eyes I can still see all my favorites that we used to flip through often with my mom. We were so excited when digital cameras started to get big. My mom got me a purple one for either Christmas or my birthday one year (January birthdays, amiright?!) I carried that thing around for years. It really didn’t produce much better quality photos than film, but it was really fun to have. I never had to worry about the clunky click after you’ve gotten to the end of a roll of film. My mom upgraded that one as a gift once or twice, but eventually they became too expensive to keep up with. Then phones with camera came out and that’s all I needed to keep me happy. It wasn’t until I was 20 when I was gifted my first DSLR, a Nikon D40. It was a used crop sensor and produced horrible images, but I was so excited to have a real professional camera. (I actually still have it, 10 years later, and it still works.) I took some photos at home, of my life, but mostly I attended Watercross races and took photos of the racers and their families back in the pits. A lot of sports photographers with their much fancier equipment would be there, taking amazing digitals and printing and selling them to the drivers and their fans on the spot. That’s when I first thought, wow I could maybe actually turn this into a career. Of course I was a broke 20 year old with only some college education. Spending thousands of dollars on the best equipment with the goals of making a profit was not even close to an option. So I used what I had, and continued with my hobby. I shot all the time. I even had a few of my photos shared on social media by really popular snowmobile parts manufacturers. I never received any credit though, haha. So needless to say, nothing ever took off and the thought of ever making this hobby a career vanished. I practiced editing on my $150 used laptop, with any free editing software I could download, over the next 7 years. I became incredibly passionate and always dreamed of a life where one day I could be a real life professional photographer. During that time I shot a handful of paid sessions for local families that I know personally. By a handful I mean like maybe 3. I think I charged $50.00 and that included a disc of all the edited images. Wild. There were a few years I got incredibly discouraged and didn’t shoot at all. I couldn’t afford to upgrade any of my equipment so I could produce higher quality images that potential clients would actually want to hire me to create for them. It was after I had my first two girls that dusted my camera off and started shooting daily again. That was around 2018. Influencing was fairly new and really starting to take off at that point. I created an Instagram where I could start blogging, and posted my photos of my life and told their story. I followed whatever popular photographers I could. I learned so much between that and YouTube. You can find so much free information on YouTube. Every single day I was watching videos and learning whatever I could. I challenged myself to take and edit at least one photo a day. Which wasn’t easy, working full time and raising babies and trying to educate myself. It was like working 3 full time jobs. It was late 2019 when a popular editing software was on sale. I went back and forth for days over if I should purchase it or not. I knew I needed to invest in certain things if creating a successful business was ever going to be a possibility. My husband and I were living paycheck to paycheck, raising babies, just trying to survive. After an internal battle with myself, I chatted with him and he told me to go for it. So I did. That’s really where it started for me. I knew I couldn’t fail, even though it was only $100, that was money that couldn’t be wasted. I had to succeed. I started spending all my free time (free time? Who am I kidding) taking photos and learning editing the proper way. In 2020 I started offering sessions of all kinds again. I was shooting every single day. Everything and anything so I could practice. I turned my Instagram blog into a photography page. I kept practicing my editing and eventually I saved enough money to upgrade my camera. Two years ago I purchased a beautiful mirrorless and that changed so much for me. My images were unequivocally greater in quality, which in turn made my editing better. I was mostly shooting free sessions and when I did charge, I wasn’t charging much. I was focused on getting practice shooting and editing, and gaining confidence in my art. I was focused on getting practice shooting and editing, and gaining confidence in my art. I told myself if I broke even from my investments, that was enough to make me happy. Setting small goals for myself really helped keep me from getting discouraged. The confidence and assurance I had been looking for came pretty quickly after that. The more people who booked me, the more I invested into business related things, and the more tuned in my art became. My youngest daughter started having serious issues with her health and I needed to take a leave from work in order to make her many appointments at bigger, father away, hospitals who specialized in pediatrics. Because of COVID, my leave was denied and my full time position was cut due to budget loss from the state. A blessing in disguise. It was then I decided to go full time with my photography. I was home with my girls, and living off of unemployment, so there wasn’t too much pressure on me. I shot whenever I could and it didn’t matter if I made a dime. At the end of the year I thought I did really well, until tax season came and I was hit with a $20,000 loss. The things you don’t think about when you are trying to turn a passion into a business. All those little purchases add up. Props, equipment, software, electronics, wardrobe. And there was probably a few thousand more in purchases that I forgot receipts for and didn’t document. My CPA encouraged me, saying that was incredibly typical for a first year in business and the following year would be better. He was right. I would say at least half of the year last year I was completely booked out. I shot most weekends and some week days during the warmer months, and things really started to take off. I had so many amazing opportunities to work with local businesses and clients that I had never met before. That’s pretty amazing, the first few clients that you don’t know who reach out to book you. Unreal. I did a lot of traveling around NYS and was even hired for a few sessions in Maine. It was a really good year. A lot of work, and a lot of pay off. Over everything else, the hardest part for me is just getting the word out. Letting people know you and your business exists. That’s where your community comes in. It’s so important to build a good community and support system because for service providers like myself, word of mouth is how we get most of our business. If you have a service provider that you love, let them know. Let everyone know! Leave them a review on social media and Google, tell all your friends and family, share their posts as often as you can. And above all, tell them they do a good job! Encourage them to keep going so when times get hard and inquiries aren’t coming in, they don’t give up. We need to support our local businesses now more than ever. Initially seeing the growth in my work was hard. It didn’t seem to exist. But now I look back and I’m kind of amazed by myself. I’m truly living my dream. I work 24/7 and I’m still living paycheck to paycheck most months, but I wouldn’t take any of it back. I’m going to keep working hard, keep documenting life of all kinds, keep making my family and myself proud. I’ve been featured on the cover of a homesteading magazine and in bridal blogs by famous wedding dress designers. I now collaborate with a poultry hatchery and my photos are in their catalogs. I’ve captured moments that my clients will never forget, and I have given my family experiences in places we otherwise wouldn’t have visited. This year I’ll be traveling out of state to photograph elopements and other adventure sessions. It’s going to be amazing. If everything were to fall apart tomorrow, I would have no regrets. This experience is nothing I could have ever imagined for myself. Growing up incredibly poor with no access to people, places, or things to give me a leg up. I’ve done all the work myself. And I made it.
Toni, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
Currently I photograph most subjects. I’m still in the beginning stages of my business and I need to grow more. My focus is mainly on couples, branding, boudoir, documentary, micro weddings/elopements and creative portraits. I would love to add more travel in my sessions, see more of the US and the world. Meet more people who I connect with. Create art. I want my images to pull emotion out of the people who see them. I want someone to say “I want that on my wall.” I want you to laugh, cry, wonder. I’ve had a photograph chosen to be displayed in a gallery showing once. That was scary and amazing all at the same time. I hope to get there again. The two most important goals I have for myself is creating a connection and emitting emotion. If I leave a session or send off a gallery and I feel those two things, I’ve accomplished what I’ve set out to do. I’m not a sit and smile photographer. It’s okay if your baby runs away or doesn’t want to smile. I want you to bring your guitar and play me a song. Cool off in the river and let your kiddos splash me. I want to show life exactly as it is. I love to play with lighting and angles and show how one image can look totally different by simple adjustments. I think the way I photograph accurately shows how uniquely I view the world around me. I think people were put off from hiring me initially because of how untraditional I am. But now it’s the same reason my clients chose me again and again.
Can you open up about a time when you had a really close call with the business?
Well, I still don’t have a constant savings. I have nothing to fall back on. If I need to invest in my business, it takes several sessions to save up. That’s not ideal. A business can’t survive or thrive that way. I have more investments to make and 100% of what I earn goes to three categories, caring for my family, investing back into my business, and taxes. One month I’ll have $2,000 in the bank and the next I’m back at $0. I’m still working on getting the consistency of bookings. Some days I’m not sure I’ll be doing this full time a few months from now let alone a year from now. But I just continue to take it day by day. Thankfully so far, the bookings keep coming and always when I need them most.
How did you build your audience on social media?
Social media is a work in progress for me. The “rules” for the algorithm is constantly changing. One post will have 16,000 views and then the next ten will have 5-40. Being a mom of three and having my younger babes home with me makes it difficult to keep up. I just try to stay consistent. I post as often as I can. I try to keep up with the trends. My kids will often ask me to get off my phone or put my phone down. That’s the worst part of this job. I’m on my phone constantly trying to stay relevant and be in contact with current and potential clients. Having a good social media standing is really important today for service providers. It’s a big part of how we advertise and reach our ideal clients. Engagement is key. Build a relationship with your community and your clients. That helps a lot!
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/toniwalleyphotography?igshid=MDM4ZDc5MmU=
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064307554033&mibextid=LQQJ4d
Image Credits
Toni Walley Photography