Member Spotlight August 2010
Monica Maxwell
Maxwell's Photography
What is your background, education, training, work experience if other than photography?
I worked in the student loan industry for 2 years before I decided to go to school at MCC in 2003.
How long have you been a photographer? When and how did you get started? How did you learn photography?
I have been photographing for almost 6 years now but have only been doing it professionally for 3 years.
I learned some photography basics from school and while attending college I also worked for a chain portrait studio which was extremely high volume. NOT FUN!
What is your specialty?
I have shot a few weddings and have also assisted a few photographers on weddings but find that my passion is photographing babies and children. Being a mom of now 4 kids I find that this seems to be where my expertise lies. The majority of my business comes from photographing babies and children.
What has been your most successful marketing effort to date?
Social Networking! Facebook and my blog have played a huge part in my success today. Facebook is where I post my favorite image/images of my clients’ sessions and I also post links to my blogs and have gotten quite a bit of inquiries and sessions from those. I also have a newsletter that goes out to my clients every 3-4 months with recent sessions and any promos we may be running in the future.
I just recently had an OB/GYN office agree to have me display my maternity/newborn/baby photography in their office. They have also agreed to let me put my marketing pieces into the “Mommy Bags” they give to their expecting moms. I can’t say that this has been successful yet but I am very optimistic.
Why did you join the AzPPA? What has been the best thing you have gotten out of being a member? Or what do you look forward to the most out of being a member?
My photography teacher had mentioned the best way to get into the industry is to network and he mentioned that anyone who was interested in the portrait side of photography should look into joining the Arizona Professional Photographers Association. I sat on this for a while because the name sounded scary because I knew I was far from professional. I got a job with a high volume portrait studio where I worked for about 8 months. Like I said before, NOT FUN. This was not where I wanted to go with my degree so I finally got the guts to attend a meeting 3 years ago as a student and have been coming ever since.
The association was a great place to be as a student. I feel it gave me a great advantage to some of the assignments and projects I had from some of my classes. I had this assignment for a class where I had to find someone in my field and interview them. Well this was easy because I was surrounded by SO MANY great photographers. It was the picking which one to interview was the hard part. I completed my assignment but not only did I get an A on the assignment it landed me an internship with Wendy Neman at Wendy Newman Designer Portraits, one of the best things that could have ever happened to me and my photography business.
I am so grateful for this association and for all the friendships that I have made here. I am also so grateful for the mentorships. I seriously don’t know where I would be without this association. |
