162. Document & Show Your Creative Process – with Photographer Elaine Freitas
Why is it important to show your process?
Do you have a creative formula that is repeatable with predictable results or are you just showing the finished work?
If you aren’t showing your process and documenting it, you’re leaving it up to the imagination of your client as to how you work.
This creates an air of mystery about what they’ll get and when. Mystery equals doubt. Doubt equals risk.
Don’t be risky. Document your process.
This week we’re starting something brand new.
This is the first in a series of coaching style episodes that I’m doing where I bring someone on and talk about how to stand out, particularly how to stand out on video.
Ever wondered how photography can transform lives and empower women?
In this standout business coaching episode we sit down with Elaine Freitas, a dedicated photographer who’s shifted her focus from weddings to capturing the essence of motherhood and the timeless beauty of women.
Elaine’s vision of celebrating women up to 100 years old reveals how her work not only helps women feel confident and beautiful but also highlights their inner beauty at every age.
We talked about the potential of leveraging video & social media to share these magical moments with a wider audience, aiming to inspire and connect deeply with viewers.
Resources
P.S. Interested in being a guest on a future coaching episode like this one? We’ll showcase your work and talk about how you can stand out on video to grow your business.
Just pick a time for us to meet on my handy calendar right here
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*How do I grow my personal brand?
*How do I stand out from the crowd?
*How do I break through the noise?
*How do I monetize my content marketing?
*How do I use video marketing to get more clients?
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Transcript
Elaine Freitas:
When I speak about women in photography is to make impact on their lives in a way that women have this judgmental about how they look, you know, and all of the gray hair, but they’re still beautiful, no matter what the age they are and to have their story and to have a portrait of themselves. When they look at the portrait and they love to see that. That is my goal. I wanted to show their story, their inner beauty on their outside, so they feel okay to be, you know, photographed, so they feel okay to be you know photographed.
Brad Powell:
Welcome to the Standout Business Show. I’m Brad Powell, and this is where it’s all about making a bigger difference by doing business differently. And today we are starting something brand new. This is the first in a series of coaching style episodes that I’m going to be doing, where I bring someone on and we talk about how to stand out, particularly how to stand out on video. Today I’ve got Elaine Freitas and she’s here. We actually met four years ago.
Brad Powell:
Our meeting was at a conference that they graciously invited me to speak at. It was a gathering of photographers all around New England. I was down there doing a presentation on live streaming. In fact, I did a very experiential thing where I had everyone come together and everyone did a little live stream right there during my talk little live stream right there during my talk. I’ve done this in a couple different settings, but in this case it was made even easier because I knew that, because everyone was a photographer, that they’d all had experience with cameras and it’s like, okay, well, pull your phone out and let’s do this. So it was really fun. And, Elaine, welcome to the show. You’re a photographer. Tell us what your business is really all about.
Elaine Freitas:
Thank you. Thank you for having me. It was very nice to have this invitation to be part of this. I am a newborn photographer and I have my studio now. I’ve been a photographer for 15 years, have done weddings and other things, but then I kind of narrowed down to be a more related mother and women photography so and I specialize in newborn after also became a doula for four years. I work as a birth doula and with the passion of babies then I got a lot of interest and so my business today in photography is specifically in portrait photography, but also very narrow to babies, newborn also. Women photography that is. My other passion is to impact women, to just feel beautiful, no matter what age they are, what phase they are in their life.
Brad Powell:
Yeah, that’s cool. Well, first of all, I want to congratulate on sort of narrowing in. You’ve got a great niche, which, in the photography world, is a good thing to do. There’s a lot of people who set up studios and they do any kind of portraits, but you’ve got a really cool niche, especially with newborns, and I’m curious, like, how do people find you? You know, it’s an interesting niche in that the audience of people who just had a baby or are just about to have a baby, yeah.
Brad Powell:
They’re not necessarily I don’t know like how do you find them or how do they find you um, usually a lot for me works word of mouth.
Elaine Freitas:
So I’ve been a photographer for a long time, so people know. And once I narrowed down to being a newborn photographer um, because I stopped, you know, photograph for weddings. Um, and I became a newborn photographer because weddings people would get married, they would have a baby. So the first time they’re like, can you photograph my baby? And then I saw how hard it is to photograph a baby.
Elaine Freitas:
So I was like, oh my gosh, I have to study. So I did a lot of training, uh certification classes, and I still do until today, like it never stops, um. But then, you know, narrow down to the things that I really am passionate about is, you know, the babies and women, so the whole motherhood, the whole women empowerment. Um. So people find me out of uh word of mouth and also on Google. So you know, they Google my name and then it comes up.
Brad Powell:
Right, all right, well, paint a little vision of what the future might look like if either you or I had a magic wand and we could wave it and manifest the ideal situation for you. Now you mentioned that you’re really interested in also doing women portraiture in a really empowering way, which I think a great bunch of photographs to take. What would that look like in its ideal realm?
Elaine Freitas:
so for me, if I could have a magic wand, I would have half of my time. So I would have like women to photograph and I photograph a woman up to a 90 years old and I’m in the look for a hundred year old woman to photograph. So I photograph them all since baby to 90, 92 was my last woman that I photographed. It would be in the two narrows like babies and women. So that if I could have a magic wand, that would be like my two audience to photograph. Yeah.
Brad Powell:
Yeah, that’s really cool.
Brad Powell:
You know, it reminds me when I was first starting my journey as an image maker.
Brad Powell:
I was doing still photography and I remember taking a class in high school my very first photography class and we were told to go out and take portraits.
Brad Powell:
And so there was a woman who lived behind us who, in the wintertime, I shoveled her her walkway and she she was in her 90s somewhere, like I don’t sure exactly how old she was, but I only knew her as Miss Whitney, and so I went over to her house and asked her if I could take her picture, and she was kind enough to say, yeah, sure, come on in. And she was kind enough to say, yeah, sure, come on in. And so we sat down and she started like just unfolding a lot of stories, things that I’d never heard about in terms of the people around us, and, of course, she’d been there forever, and it was just a really really nice, intimate moment and I got to know her in a way that I really never imagined seen before. Anyway, it was really cool. I think there’s just tons of people like her who have all this stuff to share that, and they’re practically invisible.
Elaine Freitas:
Yes, and my goal when I speak about women in photography is to make impact on their lives. In a way that women have this judgmental about how they look, you know, and all of the gray hair, but they’re still beautiful, no matter what they, the age they are, and to have their story and to have a portrait of themselves when they look at the portrait and they love to see that. That is my goal and that’s why I started, because I mean young women. They have confidence, they love how they are, but then once you turn like 40, 50, 60, and then you go on, then you start losing confidence and then you don’t think you deserve to have a portrait. So that is my goal and that is the way I want to impact people.
Elaine Freitas:
I don’t want it to be just a portrait photographer that just gives a photo, like of course, I do headshots, but headshots just have one purpose just to show your face. I wanted to show their story, their inner beauty on their outside, so they feel okay to be photographed. This woman that I photographed, who is 92, she was telling me about how she got married, how many kids, how many grandkids, great grandkids, and I’m like, oh my gosh, this is awesome and how she was going to give a photo to the great grandkids, and this is the goal, right.
Brad Powell:
Yeah, that’s really great. Well, okay, so let’s move into the marketing realm and I know that since we met, you have been doing some stuff with video as part of showing up in the world and tell me a little bit about what you’ve been doing, what you’ve tried and how well it’s actually helping you in your work.
Elaine Freitas:
So I feel like video has been a very good part of my business, where they really see me as a normal person, nothing like a brand posed person that you can’t reach. So I’ve found that the more and more that I do video, they can’t relate to it. When I started doing doing video I my first live video was after I met you at the conference and I the next morning I just got up early and then I went. It was in Cape Cod so it was freezing cold, but I just turned it on live and just did it and posted it. It’s there on my YouTube channel and then I’ve encouraged other people to do it, because it’s hard to be in front of the camera, especially as a photographer.
Elaine Freitas:
We are so criticized about how we look, and so when I start doing video I would record it, listen, luck. And so when I start doing video I would record it, listen, and because I also have an accent and sometimes I don’t speak correctly, then if I hear I’m like cut it, I don’t know I have to redo it. There was a time I redo the video 20 times and didn’t post it. So I came out to remember what you said in the conference and I said I’m just going to hit live and just post it. I not even see it. Then I’ve told other women to do the same and they’re like, but you’re so courageous and I’m like who cares? You know, people are just going to see it’s life, they don’t expect to be perfect. People are just going to see it’s live, they don’t expect to be perfect. So that way I’ve had a lot of feedback of people that feels like I’m reachable, so they feel comfortable to be in front of my camera too. So that had helped a lot for my business.
Brad Powell:
Yeah, absolutely Well, I think. First of all, I think the idea that you have an accent actually makes you way more interesting. I mean, I only wish that, as someone from North America who speaks North American English, it’s sort of like someone from Italy, someone from France, someone from like yourself from Brazil, someone from France, from someone from like yourself from Brazil. The way you speak English is, you know, it’s, it’s not just different, it’s kind of romantic, it’s exotic, and people you know and I mean you laugh, but it’s really true, I mean it’s the kind of thing.
Brad Powell:
Even someone from the United Kingdom or from Ireland, you know, you hear them speak and the British, honestly, just sound more intelligent, no matter. You know what part of the country they’re from. They just the way they speak English is like, oh my gosh, they sound like they’re a genius. And us North Americans we sound just kind of flat and kind of boring in the way that our words go and there’s nothing very interesting about it. So I wish that there was a part of the world where I could go speak their language and sound as interesting as the way a lot of foreigners do when they come here.
Elaine Freitas:
It’s good to hear because, like I said, for me it’s the travel. Because then I hear and I’m like oh, you didn’t finish, I started sentence and sometimes I don’t finish, so sometimes I’m just doing live, it is what it is, they would know it, and so what?
Brad Powell:
Yeah, well, I think there’s a guy by the name of Louis Grenier who is from France and he has a podcast called Everybody Hates Marketers and he has a very strong French accent and he has really and strong French accent and he has really and he talks about this he’s really leaned into the fact that he has this accent and that people recognize him for that, and so, like, when he opens his podcast, he’s always saying bonjour, bonjour, you know, and he has these things that are very characteristic of him as this unique individual, and these are things that you could be thinking about doing. Surely, there are Portuguese phrases that are, you know, just catch all. So when you sign off, you could always say ciao, you know, and things like that that are very Brazilian, and people would get it, they would understand that, because that kind of word translates well.
Elaine Freitas:
Yes.
Brad Powell:
And what you mean mean. So these are just things that you can think about in your presentation that help make you quite distinctive and more interesting, even though all you’re doing is being yourself yes, oh, that is. I never thought of it yeah, I mean, it’s just these things that we think are our weaknesses can often become our strengths and our really interesting point of distinction.
Elaine Freitas:
Yeah, in my mind it’s like a barrier. It’s not a good thing or interesting.
Brad Powell:
Yeah, we beat ourselves up too much. That’s the problem.
Elaine Freitas:
So true, so true. I’m trying, I’m trying more and more to just let it go, because we beat ourselves so, so much.
Brad Powell:
Yeah, there’s a couple of other things that I think come to mind that, given both of the kinds of projects you’re working on, would lend itself really well for short video. First, one is just when you’re doing newborn photography. There’s a whole process of setting up and posing, especially when you have a real like brand new newborn infant, and that process could be documented simply by setting up, you know, a phone on a tripod over your head, looking down and just showing, like showing, even in time lapse, the process of doing this and then the end would be the photograph. Yes, and that’s just an easy, repeatable thing that you could be doing, and that’s the kind of thing that would go viral in the sense of it’s kind of the. I don’t want to. It’s weird to make this comparison, but people do all these food preparation videos that are time lapse and it’s like you’re watching a magic act, you know, watching this thing being created, and then all of a sudden, it looks amazing and delicious, you know, all of a sudden it looks amazing and delicious, you know.
Brad Powell:
And the same thing with the way that you take any baby and then turn them into kind of a work of art you know and that’s a magic act and this is something you know how to do and you’ve done it a lot, and if you were to visualize, like create a vision of that process, all over the country, people will be going oh my gosh, this is the most amazing thing, like. One of the strategies that I have is document and show the things that you’re already doing, rather than going out and trying to create something, create a new thing.
Brad Powell:
And come up with an idea, for, oh, I have to come up with what I’m going to talk about or what I’m going to say. In your case, your work is all visual and you’re doing it with clients on a fairly regular basis. So if you were to take a piece of that and make it into a short video, then terrific. Like this is beautiful, you know it’s. It’s highly visual and it could quite be fascinating. And, of course, for any new expectant mother, if they see this, they’re going to go oh, I want that for my baby.
Elaine Freitas:
Yeah, because they never see the way I see it. And in fact today I had a photo ordering. So after the newborn session the parents come and I do a presentation and we choose the photos. And she was like I’ve never seen her in that way and I said, of course, because you always see your baby like front face and the angles I photographed the baby. She didn’t see that that way and she loved it, the way that different angles can you know, you can see different feelings, having different feelings for the baby and different faces that the baby would do it.
Brad Powell:
so yeah, and the second idea I’m going to share is for the women portraiture the idea that you could, and you could go even a narrower, like I love the idea of photographing someone from the time they’re born to the time that they’re you knowsomething. That’s cool, but that’s going to take a while.
Elaine Freitas:
Yes, and I probably won’t be here.
Brad Powell:
Or your daughters or somebody else, or somebody who you train and say well, you have to take over from now on because I’m not going to be around, Right?
Brad Powell:
So if you can’t do that, then the next best thing would be you could focus on women of a certain age, like really doing this whole idea of celebrating beauty in a time of life where women no longer think they’re beautiful and show visually how they are actually potentially even more beautiful now.
Brad Powell:
That would be a cool premise for a series. And when you’re doing that, when you’re doing the photography like the actual, either in your studio or wherever you do it. Similarly, you could set up a second camera or a phone and just turn it on and record interaction and the process, where what would happen is that you would get them saying stuff about themselves and saying stuff about whatever. And then the other thing that you could do would be when the prints are done and you bring them the print, bring them to the studio and do it again and get them to talk about their reaction to seeing themselves in this new frame yeah, that is you put those two things together and you’re going to end up with a really powerful story every time, and with the right editing, that video, those kinds of videos, that kind of story, that would be a really cool series.
Brad Powell:
That again, when women who are like, let’s say, above 50, and they see these in a series, they’re all going to say I want that.
Elaine Freitas:
Or family members are going to say I want that for my mother yeah, as a gift, um, I had a daughter who gift the mom a portrait session with me, and the mom was just thrilled to have that and, um, in a way that she’s never seen herself that way yeah, I’ll have to dig around for it and I’ll send this to you.
Brad Powell:
there was a, a photographer, and I think he was from France, but this was an ad campaign. I’m not even sure what the ad was about, but it was taking these women and completely like doing a complete makeover, only not like the normal makeover. They were turning them into, you know, I don’t know like the 18th century or 17th century, you know hairstyle and and the gown and the whole thing, like they looked like a queen or something from France or whatever and like that just really outrageous, completely done over. And but the way they did it was each woman was, you know, brought into a place where they had to close their eyes and then this work was done on them. He would turn up his camera and they would sit in front of a mirror and he would say, okay, open your eyes.
Brad Powell:
And they’d open their eyes and the image was them opening their eyes and then the just expansion of their face as they saw how they looked yes they were all just sort of blown away and it’s just, it’s really cool, like, and that’s really all it is like looking at themselves as they’ve never seen themselves before yeah, because I started photograph women.
Elaine Freitas:
you know first was the 80 and then she was so excited and then you know 70 and 90. So now these women that I photographed, they’re like you should do a book with the stories and with the photo and I’m like, yes, why not?
Brad Powell:
Right.
Elaine Freitas:
I’m going to envision that maybe to publish a book about women and their story and their photos and how they fell, you know, doing the process, and how they felt after having a beautiful photo of themselves.
Brad Powell:
Right, right.
Brad Powell:
Well, this is the kind of thing that if you were willing you know this could be you’d have to pick your channel.
Brad Powell:
But any of the social channels, I wouldn’t do it on all of them, I would just pick one and be publishing these kinds of sessions, both the newborn and that kind of thing Because, again, like that’s just a magic act. I mean, visually, it would be so interesting to see this transformation happen. But for the women it’s the same thing. It’s like they would be sitting there looking a little bit shy, awkward or not very comfortable on camera and you’re putting them at ease and you’re pulling them out and they’re gradually telling more stuff about who they are and what they’re up to, and then you have this final image and their reaction to that final image. I mean, that’s a great narrative arc that every time someone saw it, they would love it. And this is the kind of thing that you could build really easily like a YouTube channel that this is all that was on it, and people would watch it and even maybe share it with someone who they would, you know, say, well, you should look at this, because we want you to do it.
Elaine Freitas:
Yeah, and because it’s possible, right, yeah, Like today I did a story about newborn that this mom and the baby was two months old and a lot of women don’t do newborn photos because after birth it’s just stressful and they feel discouraged. And I’m like I just photographed a two month old baby and I was able to wrap the baby, make the baby to sleep and she, you know, she was there at two months old, so people don’t have an idea, but yeah, I could just be coding out there so they know that it’s possible.
Brad Powell:
Yeah, for sure, because a lot of people don’t know, and they also. I think the big missing piece is just they don’t know how gorgeous the image is going to be.
Elaine Freitas:
They have no idea. When they receive the print they are like wow, even when the eyes send digitally on the phone, it’s totally different than when you have the print yeah, right, right the feeling is different right, completely I’ll try to do a timeline. I’ve I’ve recorded but like behind the scenes, but never done a timeline, the whole thing for the newborn, I think.
Brad Powell:
Just setting your phone up on time lapse which phones? You just say, okay, I want this mode and you just let it run and that’s it. That’s all you need to do, and then you’re going to capture this thing, you can just trim it to whatever length you want and with the bonus being at the end, on comes the actual finished image, or a set. And the people just go. Oh my gosh, this is amazing.
Elaine Freitas:
Yeah, that is true. Well, thank you so much for all the tips. It’s been a pleasure to talk to you.
Brad Powell:
Yeah, I can’t wait to see what you do here. I want to see it. We’ll bring you back on and we’ll share anything you’ve done, like in this direction. That would be a really cool way to follow up.
Elaine Freitas:
Yeah, that would be awesome. I would love to.
Brad Powell:
All right. Well, thanks so much for coming on today joining me for this first iteration of this kind of episode. It was a pleasure. It was a pleasure. If you’re here at the end and you’re thinking, oh, that would be good, I’d like to come and have this kind of session with Brad, then reach out to me. Find me over on LinkedIn that’s the place that I hang out online the most Send me a DM and we’ll make this happen. And until the next time, so long, everyone.
Elaine Freitas:
Thank you.
