ABOUT MARY Vance
PHOTOGRAPHER, educator, HOSTESS
with the mostest…
I am on a mission to pay forward every kindness I've been shown in my 38 years on earth. If you are in front of my camera, I want you to feel seen and known and accepted. If you are sitting in one of my classrooms, I want to be an open book who makes the road ahead a little easier for you. And if you are in my home, I'm going to feed you! I believe that most of life's problems can be solved by building a longer table instead of a higher fence.
Like a lot of moms, I first picked up my camera to photograph my own kids.
Coming from a science background, I was immediately drawn to all the technical aspects of photography.
Two years after I purchased my first “real” camera, I attended a conference and trained on photography for teenagers - the same kids I was already working with daily and loved dearly. It blew me away! I immediately decided to rebrand and focus on senior photography - a niche that a lot of our fellow photographers are scared of because of their perceptions about high school seniors. I love challenging those perceptions.
Once I found the kind of photography that felt like home to me, I was done saying yes to any and all types of shoots without fully understanding what they involved. And I was finished working myself to the point of burnout with no systems to keep the business (and me) thriving.
Over the course of setting up my photography business, there were times I found myself wishing I had a fairy godmother who’d do all of my marketing and operations for me, so I could just spend all of my time taking pictures.
When she never materialized, I decided to be my own fairy godmother — setting up the tools and systems that would keep the business end of Mary Vance Photography running like a well-oiled machine. It took a few years of testing and refining different systems, but eventually I got it down to a science. My systems worked so well, I even carved out a niche for myself setting up the same ones for other busy photographers.