I just received an email from Venus Awards, that someone nominated me for an Award in Business. I am most grateful for such an appreciation.

I don’t think I will be a winner this year (maybe ‘someday’ in years to come). My business is pretty fresh, and I am not ‘from here’ which means I don’t have a family and friends who could spread a word about what I do, it is only clients who give me referrals, or Google who helps people find me. I don’t have a family in here, who would say I do a good job. I only have my partner, who encourages me and lifts me up when I am down.

To introduce myself: I am a photographer for 12 years now. I had my first exhibition when I was 21. I moved to Nigeria and worked as a correspondent for national newspapers, magazines and radio. Photography was always something I wanted to do, but never felt ‘good enough’ to succeed in this saturated world. And I never been interested in being ‘just a photographer’. I didn’t want to take pictures, I wanted to make them, to create an experience and empower people through showing them how amazing they are, how I see them. I have been told I have leadership skills and I can sense talents in people, I know what they should do, or what they dreamt about and just make them realize it and believe in themselves.

I also have a degree in Visual Advertisement and Media and I carried on in this part of creative sector for a while, up to the point when I had an opportunity to work on an engagement strategy for large companies and help bosses connect better with their employees, to empower both sides of the company.

I opened my company 4 years ago already, when I started one of such projects; it involved graphic design, building relationships and trust and creating valuable content for 2000 people each week. I work (it is still a part of my business) with Universities, on their internal engagement strategy, building website, social media channels, regular magazine for professors and academics. I create visual content with my team, and manage the whole production.

Six months after having my son,  I started pushing more of my photography. I created NU MEDIA HOUSE as a digital media house, a place where graphic design, content and images lived. I felt it was a right time to start expanding the other side of the ‘house’. I started searching for a studio space, something I would be able to work with individual clients, and with businesses; a space that can be rented and used in various creative ways. Currently I even work with vloggers, who hire a studio regularly.

Finding a right space took me 5 months, I didn’t went for the viewing ‘I will have the studio today’ – it was a process and it just felt right – the price, the location, the opportunity to work with other businesses, large parking space. The only disadvantage was to renovate old office with yellow walls and blue floor into a studio – so I signed a contract with a white paint brush in my hand (literally, I was painting before I signed). I was cleaning the space with my 8 months son in a cot in the middle of the studio. It took me a week and four coats to achieve white walls; and some serious negotiating skills to convince my energetic child to stay sort of still in one place.

Then I ordered floor materials and asked my partner to help me with it (so he did it). I renovated all studio according to my vision, to small budget and unlimited creativity. I even painted whole backdrops to have more customised options for my clients. I sew tutu dresses, framed images and did all my marketing myself.

I had an opening event in December, a month after signing rental agreement; but then Christmas, being sick, son being sick etc, I started full time studio work two months later. I have been offered to apply for prestigious photo competitions from organizers, models started searching my name and it slowly kicked in.

I am not ‘there’ yet, but I hope I am heading in the right direction. I have my goals set, I am attending business meetings, asking business owners to work with me and I do whatever I can to establish a worthy, lasting business relation. At the same time I need to keep an eye on other projects in the company (i.e. internal engagement strategy and publishing newsletters for large, specific audiences), take care of my son – what became harder since I took the studio, mostly because my partner took for a few months contract in Aberdeen, and is with us only every second weekend. I am not complaining – it is just harder to be a business person having a nanny 3 days a week, and working 34h within 3 days, and then all the evenings possible. It is harder to engage a one year old to play by himself for half an hour to reply to 3 emails. It is harder to maintain the same relationship with the clients seeing them less and relying on other team members.

And it is extremely hard to hear at the end of the day from a client that ‘they won’t buy their portraits that I spent 5 hours on, as they took a screenshot of my beautiful images’. I felt robbed at that point. Or a client asking me to ‘just’ give them USB stick with the images off those that I don’t need…

But. I love my job! I love waking up and organizing my diary so I can fit everything in, so I can reply to emails, look for new contracts, have a photo-shoot, edit images and have a consultation with a client the same day. It is challenging and I love it.

But the best feeling is when I had a consultation and I met a wonderful person (always the case), we had tea, chat about how she would like to be photographed and few days later she is booked for a shoot. And she says she always thought she will be a therapist and she is not, because ‘you know life happened and it is late now’. We talked, I photographed her, she was stunning and felt beautiful. After that we have a ‘reveal session’ where I show all chosen images and she is speechless and has tears in her eyes.

And this is few seconds that I live for. This few minutes when she realizes how beautiful she is, how stunning she looks and that she can achieve her dreams.

She called me a month later ‘Anna – I booked this course, I am starting tomorrow, I just thought you should know that it is because of you.’

I love my job. How could I not?