Why a photographer is teaching you about Instagram (and why I'll never niche down)

People sometimes ask, politely, why the photographer is also teaching business and content. Short answer: it's the same job.

As a teenager I wanted to be a National Geographic photographer and was told there's no money in the arts. So I did the sensible things. Customer service, tourism, hospitality, then years in health, education, and the care and protection of children. I studied psychology and worked in mental health. Then I became a parent. A parent of autism. All of it taught me the same lesson on repeat: how people behave when they're comfortable, how they behave when they're not, and the gap between what they say and what they mean.

In 2016 a friend asked me to photograph her wedding, halfway through my psychology studies, and I realised I'd been heading here the whole time. The camera just gave me somewhere to put everything I'd learned about people.

Building the business taught me the rest. Marketing, websites, admin, finances, mostly the hard way, and I spent thousands learning it. Then I started sharing it. I co-founded Ara Creative Studios, where we taught businesses, individuals and schools to make content on their phones and understand what works on social media. I also co-founded Elevate Mind and Business, a charitable trust I started with three other Otago women to build a big community of like-minded women in business. For the last six years I've run content courses, workshops and 1:1s, and I've run social media pages for six other businesses and individuals.

I'm not a guru and I'm not an influencer. I just know some things about some stuff, and I can't see the point of gatekeeping it.

And no, I won't niche down, however many people tell me to. I love photographing absolutely everything, because everything is people, and people are the thing I'm good at. Photography is what I do. Understanding people is how I do it.

For you, that means if you book me for photos, you also get someone who'll tell you where to use them and why, because photos nobody uses are wasted. If you'd rather learn the content side yourself, that's what the workshops and 1:1s are for.

Wondering if I can help? Let's make a time to chat and see how I can help you out.