Grow Your Photography Business Podcast

Claire started her career in administration straight out of school.  She went on to have a successful career in this but slowed down when she had her two sons.  Wanting to create a business working from home, she bought a kids clothing line but soon realised she enjoyed taking the photos far more than she enjoyed the product based business.  She swapped the business for a camera and rallied in her friends and family to do free shoots to build her confidence, exepreince and portfolio and within just three months of owning a camera she created a photography business.  It has been a whirlwind ride for Claire, owning her first camera at 44 and has only been in business a year, but she has loved every second of it.  Her photography career has been built on a solid foundation of mentors, hard work and dedication.  Claire now mentors other photographers, has created online workshops and is planning on creating more workshops this year and a retreat for photographers who are passionate about capturing families, to create memories to last a lifetime.

Yotam is the co-founder and CEO of ImagenAI and based in Israel. Before ImagenAI, Yotam worked in the field of semiconductors. When he first heard about AI a couple of years ago, it fascinated him so much that he went back to university to study it. He has grown passionate about finding ways to help photographers through AI solutions and is always thinking about how ImagenAI can do more to give them back more time and help them achieve stunning results.

Kirstie McConnell is an internationally respected photographer, and co-founder of the The Pet Photographers Club with Caitlin McColl. The Pet Photographers Club is the go-to platform for both established and aspiring pet photographers to grow their business. They have a weekly podcast, organise the International Pet Photographer of the Year Awards, host workshops, courses, and the Virtual Pet Photographers Conference, put out free resources and bring the community together through their mastermind group and other events.

Micaela is a creative entrepreneur from South Africa, now living and working in South East London. Working as a wedding photographer and creative entrepreneur, she's passionate about building and helping others build successful, profitable and efficient businesses. Get It Together is her online educational hub, in which she offers courses to support other ambitious wedding industry creatives in their endeavours, so they can learn how to run their business like a CEO. 

Jeff first dipped his toe into entrepreneurship at the age of 15 while still at school, selling handmade fishing flies to fishing tackle shops to boost his pocket money. After leaving school at 16 he set up his first business, a mail order fishing tackle enterprise. At 27 he joined the Royal Navy and began a career as a Military Photographer, after nearly 10 years service he decided to leave the armed forces to set up his own photography company. Eighteen months later Jeff had built a successful six-figure turnover wedding photography partnership and a commercial photography company. Later going on to open a separate school photography business with sixty nursery schools on their books and a Boudoir Makeover companyturning over 1,000 boudoir shoots per year.Jeff has shot over 750 weddings himself, but in 2015 turned his attention to developing an online photography business mentoring program, making it his mission to motivate and inspire photographers worldwide. He now mentors photographers in over 20 countries worldwide, helping them develop their brands to become the “Go-To Photographer” in their niche and achieve the success they deserve.

Kirsten is a 20-something Coca-Cola enthusiast, renowned problem-solver, night owl, corporate admin wizard, phone-addict-alarm-snoozing-sun-lover.“Boring admin stuff” is her thing. She has been doing it for over 8 years and likes it so much that she brought KP Virtual Assistance to life! Kirsten confesses that she couldn’t take a decent photo to save her life, but she sure knows her way around back-end systems! Kirsten is passionate about virtually supporting photographers so they can focus on their craft, have more time, achieve more goals and be far happier – and that’s exactly what she does! 

Born in England and started as a professional photographer at just 16 years of age working for the local newspaper and photographing his first wedding. Bernie continued his work for a Cruise line photographing passengers while travelling around the world and managing a photography team onboard. Bernie has over 10 years of international photography business coaching experience and has coached and mentored hundreds of photographers around the world, racking up over 5,000 one hour Zoom coaching sessions with photographers.  Not only this, but he is a published author of “Success Secrets of a Professional Photographer” and “Quantum Leap My Life.”

Eric is all about doing things differently. Not interested in norms and passing trends, he prides himself on paving his own way, creating dramatic, emotive stories passionately crafted for his beloved wedding couples. In Eric’s mind, great art is timeless and that is something he strives for. He believes that to truly create stunning work you need to be just as much a technician as you are an artist so that you have the photographic vocabulary to skilfully and artfully document a wedding day in whatever circumstances get thrown at you. Eric also puts great importance on the uniqueness of each story he captures; not simply applying his same style and approach to each wedding, but rather genuinely investing himself in the couple and their story in what results as it’s own unique creation. It’s no wonder Eric has been highly awarded for his wedding albums as he not only puts great importance on a single image, but by taking inspiration from his background in cinematography he applies a wholistic narrative-based approach throughout his process. Each image represents an important building block used to craft his stories. Eric’s passion and unique ethos has served him well having worked with couples in some of the world's most incredible locations including Kenya, Sri Lanka, Jordan, Cyprus, Montenegro, India, the Philippines and Egypt.

Johl has successfully operated both wedding and portrait photography studios for over 18yrs and has now turned his hand to helping other photographers grow their passion into a fulfilling & thriving business. Now a full-time mindset and business coach, Johl helps ambitious photographers build highly profitable businesses by creating a sales & marketing engine as well as completely rewiring their subconscious programming & limiting beliefs. It is a process that is designed in a particular order to slowly move his clients through changing habits, routines & thought patterns so new opportunities & ideas surface and their businesses start to thrive. It’s a holistic approach that reduces stress, achieves balance, enhances fulfilment & brings about wild business success.

Kai Coombes is an award-winning photographer based in Nottingham, UK. He specialises in a unique studio based approach to underwater photography, that has lead to him being shortlisted as British Fashion Photographer of the Year 2021.In this podcast we find out about Kai’s studio - TankSpace, and it’s rather unusual beginnings through a combination of luck, business knowledge and mermaids! Although unfortunately opening fully just as the pandemic took hold, TankSpace is now a vibrant hub of creativity. Regularly host to some of the largest brands in the industry, not to mention the hundreds of photographers and models who have visited for workshops.