Intro: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the Posers podcast, the place where we skip the fluff. Say the quiet parts out loud and dig into what really matters. This is where photography, psychology, and business collide. I'm Jody, your host, and I'm bringing you my raw takes, hard wins, and a whole lot of unfiltered honesty about what it takes to build a photography business that actually connects and makes money.
So ladies, grab your headphones and get your tits up and your ears open because we are going to build something really incredible together.
Jodi: Hello, hello, hello, my beautiful posers and welcome back to another episode of The Posers podcast. , Do I have a treat for you? Because every few months or so I'm like, you know what? They're probably getting really fucking sick of hearing my voice, so. I have collected a little doll, a little gift to [00:01:00] present to you guys today and I am actually interviewing the one and only Alex Blake of Alex Blake photo.
And, , she is gonna come and you're gonna get to hear her beautiful voice instead of my scratchy squeal, one that you always hear cussing at you. So Alex, hi. Welcome to the Posers Podcast.
Alex Blake Otto: Thank you so much for hyping me up like that.
Jodi: You're welcome. Before we hit record just a second ago, I was telling Alex that I was sort of like studying her for the last few weeks, and honestly, it's probably been like months because you piqued my interest over on the interwebs a while back, and then I finally got the courage to , jump into your dms and be like, Hey, do you wanna come on my podcast?
But I was telling her that she should beware because you guys all know how much I love a serial killer and the fact that I've been. Stalking her, but then she just told me that she loves a serial killer just as much as I do.
Alex Blake Otto: 100%. I'm true crime, fan of everything. So we're in this together. I love it. That's because we're white women. Like
[00:02:00] 100%. Honestly, like all things Dateline White women love, you we,
like we,
in it, we literally love to lay on our couch and like, I don't know, daydream about our house getting broken into by a murder.
is so weird, but I also feel like it bonds us all, you know? it bonds us You know, we don't have anything else in our culture, so why don't we just like bond over murder?
I love it. Okay, we're, we're going on a path.
Jodi: You guys we're going on a path.
Alex Blake Otto: guys. This got weird. It got weird. But Alex, the reason why my interest got peaked by you is because of your social media game.
Oh my gosh. You're so sweet.
Jodi: First of all, I fell in love. I'm fully obsessed. I went down a rabbit hole of your content and I was just like, this girl understands social media.
Like she really understands showing up in a really like. Attention grabbing kind of way. [00:03:00] We haven't even talked about who you are. We haven't even talked about like, you know, like how you got started. We haven't talked about like your, all of your offerings and all of your things, but I wanna know that piece of Alex Blake, like No, I know.
It's like literally what, like triggered me. This is such a
Alex Blake Otto: I like, I feel doted on right now. Thank you, Jody.
Jodi: Well, you're welcome. I feel like game sees game a little bit. Talent sees talent a little bit. Okay. Let's, before we actually even like pop off into that, I should be a better podcast interviewer and host.
How did you get started in the photography space?
Alex Blake Otto: Yeah. Oh my gosh. Okay. So I feel like, like everyone these days, self-taught. I got my first camera in 2015 for Christmas. Love it. A little rebel, T five i, something like that. I never had any intentions or goals of going full-time until 2020. And in 2020, my full-time job took a backseat.
I was a pastor at a church. Absolutely loved it, loved being like with people [00:04:00] with, I was a, loved my students. But then in 2020 when it took a backseat, I was like, I
love photography. I'm like, I didn't like realize.
Jodi: I wanna pause and be like okay. So God took a backseat in 2020.
Alex Blake Otto: No. No. That'd be wild. No, no, no, no. But like, it is so funny because like, it was this weird thing where like, when else does the church stop? You know what I mean? And like it didn't actually stop. Like I definitely had a lot going on at the time and I was making tons of phone calls and tons of visits, you know, and all that kinda stuff.
But like, we weren't meeting every Sunday and every Wednesday at the time 'cause I was a student pastor. So like all of those things stopped, like the grind of ministry at that time stopped for me. And so I was like, you know what, let me just like. Do from some fun stuff in photography. Like I knew how to work my camera at that point.
I knew for the most part how to edit, but like really diving into like what my style is. And um, like I said, because I was a student pastor, I had lots of high school seniors around me and there was lots of them who were [00:05:00] graduating in 2020 and nothing else was normal for them. But I was like, you know what?
I have the gift of being able to give you photos and for that to be normal for you in this season. And so I started doing that a lot more and more intentionally and I'm like, I love this. And so when everything in life kind of returned back to normal, I was like. This is weird because now I have to fit in this business that I almost accidentally built up in 2020 and like started marketing a little bit more than typical because I just happened to have the time for it and I'm very entrepreneurial.
So it was like fun for me to do that. and then eventually my husband and I decided to move to Charleston, South Carolina from Georgia where we were before, and we ended up, we're starting a church here. There's a whole story there, but with that. It was like, okay, this makes sense. I'm gonna go full-time.
And like a crazy person decided to move to a whole new state where I knew nobody and go full-time at the same time. So that's
Jodi: Oh my God.
Alex Blake Otto: I know. Wild.
Jodi: like, how does [00:06:00] that happen where like you're moving states, so technically whenever you're starting your business over in Georgia,
Alex Blake Otto: Mm-hmm.
Jodi: a client base, you had that whole entire like church, congregation that you already had tapped into. So whenever you moved over to Charleston, what did you do marketing wise in order to like build that back up again?
Alex Blake Otto: A lot of stalking people, truly, It always comes back to murder. It always comes back to murder. I love it.
So funny. No, in the least creepy way possible. I really just like went on social media and found high schools in the area because again, I'm senior photographer mainly, and so I'm like, okay, this is my clientele. And thankfully I'd built up my Instagram a little bit and so I had some credit to it.
Versus if you're starting out from scratch, you know, DMing a random high school senior is probably not the best start. Starting place. You know, you gotta be careful with it. But, get you on a list.
Right, [00:07:00] exactly. But I thankfully had a little bit of a portfolio there to be able to like, kinda like I said, give myself some credit there. and just told them I was moving to the area and I would love to give them a discounted session or for, for some of them, I think for two sessions I did free, And I came twice before moving just to do sessions. I got into like a really rich school. So like my first senior was from one of the like very high-end, um, Catholic schools here. And like I said, it's very wealthy school. And so somehow I like got my name in there and then it spiraled from there. You know, you get one senior who posts about you, and then if they're popular enough, another senior will reach out, you know,
Jodi: well hopefully it just goes from there. Well, I do just wanna quickly say too, that.
You were obviously also really good at what you were doing, but because get one senior doesn't automatically mean a business is going to explode from there, it's like get that one senior and take her through your experience. Blow her [00:08:00] away. Make her love her photos, make her parents love her photos, and then the word of mouth comes after that.
I just wanted to make sure that I'm like, no, no, no. Hold on. Let's pat your back. Right there, because like
Alex Blake Otto: you. that didn't, that didn't just exist. That didn't just happen out of nowhere. Right.
And then the other thing too is while you're at that session and you are giving her that experience that you know is blowing her away, you're also taking as much content as you can so that you can share it. But what's cool about senior photography specifically is they love to be shared on social media.
And so if it's shared in a non cringey way, then they'll also share it. And so it's cool because, you know, they're not just sharing my photos. On their own social media. They're sharing the story that I posted of them that night at the session. They're sharing the reel that I posted of them the day after.
And for those first couple sessions, I mean, I was taking videos of everything at the session so that I could just leak and like milk all the content that I could [00:09:00] out of this session, especially for those like free and discounted ones.
Jodi: This is literally a gold mine. So I wanna like dig a little bit deeper here because I come upon this a lot. Like anytime I'm teaching, anytime I'm doing a podcast, anytime people are, other photographers are in my dms and they're asking questions like, how do I do this and how do I do that? Like. Give me the setup, give me the, because I say to people all the time, I'm like, Hey, yeah, throw your phone on a tripod.
Throw your phone onto your camera. Like get one of those little like connector devices. Hold your phone at like, in the worst case scenario, right? Like, but walk me through what that extra looks like in regards to if you, if you say, if Alex Blake says the words like, I'm getting, I'm recording everything.
Like what does that mean to you?
Alex Blake Otto: Yeah, I think it means something a little bit different now than it did when I first moved. That was late 2022. And so technology's changed, right? I have three main. Ways of getting content.
First one is my meta glasses. You guys haven't used meta glasses either on your face. You just click record and it [00:10:00] takes a one minute video or it'll screenshot whatever you're looking at or taking a picture, I guess, of uh, whatever you're looking at. So I use that for videos specifically for posing videos.
But I've noticed that posing videos do the best if you have that paired with other point of views. And so the other ways to do that are by holding your phone. I love a good hold phoning. I know you were just saying like last minute, but honestly. Some of my top videos that I've gotten, like millions of views are from holding my phone.
And it's cool because you can see like my lens from it if I'm holding it right next to it and you can see the subject. So you can see that like it's coming from the point of view as the photographer. Like it's right away. You can see that in the video. and then the other one is exactly what you said.
The little like hot shoe mount.
Jodi: Yeah.
Alex Blake Otto: a tripod exactly, but it's like mounts to your hot shoe and you hold your phone. Now I think I've gotten to a price point with my clients that I don't feel as comfortable asking the parents to hold the phone and take videos. So I do think it [00:11:00] also depends on like where you're at right now with price and what you want to give your family or your session or whatever that you're like.
Photographing versus if you're a little bit on the cheaper end, you can give it and it's like fun for them and they're like, yeah, I'll take your behind the scenes. Totally fine. But again, you wanna be cautious of that, depending on the price
Jodi: I actually love that you just said that. I love that you even have that kind of beat on like, 'cause I don't know how much you've stalked me, but I am. Okay. Okay, good. I'm stock. But I love that sort of understanding of human behavior.
I love that understanding of psychology. So like for you to even have that beat of like, no, like if I'm at this price point, I'm not running a machine that's glitchy. I'm not running a machine that's duct taped together, right? Like if you're running at that price point, you are not going to. Remove from the experience that the parents are also having on that photo [00:12:00] shoot because that's a, I have a senior in high school right now and like if I was like handed a camera by his senior photographer and be like, oh, can you get BTS for me?
I'd be like. I'm not your, I'm not your employee. Like, lemme cry over my kid right now for a second. So I love this. Okay. What would you say to the people? 'cause , this is the objection that I get a lot whenever I talk about this. I mostly get people saying like, oh yeah, yeah, I just got so busy. I.
Alex Blake Otto: Mm-hmm.
Jodi: Or like forgot to set up a tripod, forgot to like, like, I don't know, even have a tripod that would with say if you're out on a beach or something and the tripod falls over, or like to have something that's good enough that'll withstand all of that. Or I hear people saying like, that's too much. It's overwhelm to be able to think about like photo and video at the same time.
Whenever you talk about this and teach this, do you get people saying the same thing and like, how do you respond to that?
Alex Blake Otto: Absolutely. So that is super common. So if that is something that somebody listening to this you're dealing with [00:13:00] 100%, you are not alone in that. It's not the way that we all naturally think. One thing I would challenge you to do is do one thing, like you don't have to record the whole session, like I might, you might not feel comfortable with that.
That might not be your focus in the session. Your focus needs to be on the client and creating conversation with the client. That's okay. But at the end of the session, very last pose, say, Hey, do you care if I break out my phone just to do a behind the scenes video? Like ask them permission. And that's after you've gotten them really comfortable, right?
So you've like chatted with them, they know how you pose. But at that very end. When they feel comfortable, pull out your phone and ask them. Chances are they're gonna be like, oh my gosh. Of course. You know? And at that point you've won relationally with them. So you have the like permission to do that. and then do your favorite pose at that time, or something like that.
And maybe it's not the end of the session. Maybe they feel really comfortable with you in the middle, and you can tell at that point it's totally fine to ask as well. For the most part I've noticed. If I am not super [00:14:00] comfortable yet with a client, I'll wait until my second location with them. A lot of my tourist seniors are a little bit less comfortable because they're here just for the week and they don't know me, they don't know the location they're in, you know, that sort of thing.
And so we'll do one location where they like are in downtown Charleston, and then we'll go to the beach for the second location. If you notice on my social media, the majority of my behind the scenes is on the beach. Part of that is because I love it. and then the second part of that is simply because it's my second location.
Jodi: Now we all know like an insider scoop is that you've like pulled out your camera more like once you hit that second session
Alex Blake Otto: Yeah.
Jodi: because they're more comfortable. I was actually, this is kind of like a little like side pivot, but like kind of same like conversation still. I was having this conversation with one photographer yesterday, I think, and she was saying to me that like she has a hard time getting, , boudoir clients to kind of agree to being filmed
on the behind the scenes, and I kind of said the same thing [00:15:00] in regards to how you were saying like, you know, wait until you get them warmed up a little bit. Wait until this sort of stuff happens. I do the same thing with boudoir, or actually anytime that I'm shooting in my studio, I don't usually have cameras running.
What I'll do is like. Once they're warmed up and I'm shooting, I'll geek out for a second. I'll be like, oh my God, like Instagram has to see this. Hold on. And I'll grab my phone and do like one quick little beat, like, and I don't have my camera going. I just have my video going. I'll direct her through that whole thing.
But say it is boudoir, what I'll say then is, Hey, that's not posted yet. That's just on my phone. I'm not posting anything until you actually tell me that you're okay with it.
Alex Blake Otto: You
Jodi: And yeah, so then after the shoot, then I'll put it together in this like bomb, Shelly sort of like video vibe. And after the shoot.
She feels like a million bucks after the shoot. She's on Cloud nine. Like if you ever ask for the permission before the shoot, you'll get a lot more [00:16:00] nos. But if you take the videos promise you're not posting them, and then ask for permission after the shoot, after they feel like they're literally walking on Cloud nine, then you'll get a lot more yeses.
Alex Blake Otto: I love it. Yeah. And then the other thing too is being creative with behind the scenes. Not every behind the scenes has to be opposing video. You know, like there's so many different things that you can do. So for boudoir it's like. Why not also get details like detail shots that maybe doesn't show the client's face.
She might feel super comfortable being like, oh Yeah. of course you can do that. You know, I just am not sure that I want my face shown on that kind of stuff.
Jodi: Yeah. There's
Alex Blake Otto: like different ways to be creative with it too.
Jodi: for sure. Especially with boudoir, it's always like, I always tell 'em, I'm like, there's no face, there's no titties.
Like, sorry, Alex, welcome to the POS podcast.
Alex Blake Otto: I love it. I'm here.
Jodi: I'm not sure that I prefaced you a little bit in regards to, like, we cuss and we talk about boobs and we talk about serial killers and all the things. Right. It's a, it's a very well-rounded photography [00:17:00] podcast.
Alex Blake Otto: Hello, posers. I'm here with you.
Jodi: I love it. Okay, so when you, I, I seriously, like, I just want pieces of your brain because I think that you are just like Absolutely. genius on social media, so like, I. If you guys don't follow Alex, first of all, go follow her. And then you'll see that she does these like really cool photo challenges, which I've actually thought about before.
I'm like, 'cause in teaching I think that you always say things like, you could take a photo in front of a dumpster and it could still be pretty, so long as your light is pretty right? Like you have these sort of things that you say, but. You take it an extra step and you actually do the photo challenges and you like bring them onto your social media.
Tell me where that got birthed.
Alex Blake Otto: Yeah. Oh my gosh. Okay. I love that you're bringing this up. 'cause I'm obsessed with my challenges too, so I'm so, I'm so happy and I, I do not at all say that. Any type of prideful way. It's literally just that like, I love doing them and I love like capturing them and then [00:18:00] getting to share them. So they're super fun.
I started it just last year, so I really haven't even done a ton of them. Right, just like being able to do a creative shoot.
I host an educational content camp for photographers called Photo Camp, and I love like doing styled shoots for it. But I'm never the one that gets the best pictures in the moment because I'm running around, right? And I'm like trying to make sure that all of the styled shoots that are happening at the same time are executed correctly.
And I wanna give room for all of my photographers there to get the best photos. And with that, sometimes I step back for it, right? I get fine photos, like it's nothing like that. But like I hope that my photographers that are in attendance there, that my campers get the best photos before I do. So with that though, there's a lot of creative ideas that I'll have and I'm like.
I would love to do that, but I kinda wanna save it for myself, you know? So that was like born out of that, where it's like, okay, what, what kind of like thing that impacts my business can I create where it's like this creative outlet for me? And that's a creative shoot, right? A just for [00:19:00] fun shoot, but to take it to the next level.
I've been watching a lot of YouTube this year, which is so random because I feel like YouTube was like really big and like. I don't know, 2016 or 20 to 2019 maybe. Like that's when like the era of YouTube was, and I just never was into it then. But for some reason it has come back in my life with a vengeance.
And I, like my husband and I watch YouTube every night, like we love YouTubers. And one of the things that's so big about YouTube content is challenges. And it's these dumb challenges that they're coming up with themselves and they're giving themselves these really high stakes for it. And as much as I want to like be able to do YouTube content, I have barely any audience on YouTube.
Like for me to start from scratch on that just doesn't really make sense. But I do have a great community on Instagram of amazing photographers, amazing friends, amazing seniors. And I'm like, okay, what if I took this style of YouTube content and brought [00:20:00] it to Instagram and to TikTok, where you don't often see that style?
And so it. Almost like captures attention in a different way because visually it looks different or the stakes are higher than a typical like talking head reel, you know, or trending audio reel. Like I very rarely make trending audio. on my reels. I do original audio on pretty much everything. So whether that's me talking, like I said, a little bit more talking head or.
If it's a challenge, you know, something like that. Even like the music that I'm putting in, it isn't a trending audio music. It's something I'm creating when I'm editing. But I don't know if that answered your question. Now I'm just yapping.
Jodi: No, I loved it. Uh, honestly, I want you to just yap because I feel like whenever we yap it's like that's whenever your genius kind of like spills out of your head.
You know? It's like whenever you feel the freedom to just like chat and like talk about your process and the way you do things. You guys, for like, just for context, the one like challenge that comes into my head. A quickest, I guess [00:21:00] easiest in order for us to explain, like what Alex is talking about is like she dressed a girl up, like the Wendy's like logo, right?
Like cute, redheaded, like what was it? Like a gingham sort of like blue and white checkered, like overall dress. Like she dressed her up like the Wendy's girl and then took her into Wendy's. Got like a soda, french fries. Uh, you know, burger and challenged herself to take really cool, really like dynamic and interesting photos with crap lighting inside of a Wendy's.
She literally, I like that. I'm talking about you as if you're not in the room. I'm like, guys, she literally did this and this and this. No, but Alex, like, you took this girl into the bathroom.
Alex Blake Otto: Yep.
Jodi: you took her into a Wendy's bathroom with like literal toilets and created really cool photos out of it.
Alex Blake Otto: It's funny 'cause the bathroom photos are my favorite pictures from
Jodi: Yeah. Like [00:22:00] they're good
Alex Blake Otto: put that like first, whenever I share it, I wanna put the bathroom photo first, but you can't tell it's in a Wendy's and so I have to like hide it and put it later in the gallery or whatever, but I'm always like, I love that bathroom picture.,
Jodi: Don't worry. I've scrolled through your stuff enough to know I've gone deep into your carousels, so I get it. But it's just really cool to like hear how your brain works and like, I, I wonder whether or not this has always kind of come naturally to you,
because for other photographers, like in order to give them like, you know, help to like, Hey, here's how you can do this too. There's a confidence level about you that like has to just be like, oh, I'm gonna like do this challenge and I'm gonna put this on the internet. I'm gonna go do that, or whatever.
But like when you first started, did you feel like you had that much confidence or like, was that something that kind of like built up over time and that now you've been doing it so much that now the confidence is there?
Alex Blake Otto: That's a great question. I think a lot of my challenges come from a confidence of [00:23:00] being okay with failing and knowing that that's a really good story too on social media and people will follow your failure, which is deep. But it's true. You know, you think about it and like, again, you, you're giving yourself these what feels like high stakes, right? Like you're making the challenge for yourself. And there are times where I've done challenges where it's like, I think I can get this and I'm gonna put myself in a situation where it's hard, but I'm gonna make it a little bit easier on myself.
An example of that would be I did a blindfolded photo shoot.
Jodi: I saw that. Yeah.
Alex Blake Otto: Yes. And it was so fun. And that's hard. Like it was actually genuinely hard. Like, I'm not lying when I say that, but the flip side to that was I wasn't walking around with my model. I made sure I'm gonna stay in consistent lighting to make it a little bit easier for myself.
You know what I mean? So I know that like one piece of it's gonna be hard, but the other piece is gonna be easier. There's also challenges that I've done where I'm like. [00:24:00] I don't know if I can do this. I did one where it was like a, um, I can only take 10 photos. in the entire session. And so I knew the spots I wanted to go to, but I didn't know if I was gonna get to be able to go to all of those spots because what if like the picture sucked she was blinking or whatever, you know what I mean? and with that one, one of the photos, she actually was blinking. So like, did I accomplish that challenge? Not really sure. But, or there's one where I did where it was like a 10 minute photo shoot. And for that 10 minute photo shoot, thankfully I somehow did it, but I genuinely wasn't sure if I was gonna do it.
I was so out of breath after, I mean, we were sprinting to each location to be able to get the photos, and at the end of the day, if I had failed, everyone still would've watched that content and they would've been like, wait, I wanna try that. Can I do that? it just doesn't matter that much, especially when you're not creating for a client.
You're just creating for like fun. If I fail, who cares? You know what I mean?
Jodi: every single poser who's listening to this right now, there's like, there's no way that Jodi is letting this conversation, like, go any further. Without going back to [00:25:00] that point that you said a second ago, you said. And I'm gonna like paraphrase it.
I might get it wrong, so you might have to correct me if I like didn't like get it correctly, but you said that even if you fail, it doesn't matter because people are gonna watch that failure too.
Alex Blake Otto: Yeah.
Jodi: Go into that space. Because I talk about this a lot that like when I had to switch my business into becoming a portrait photographer, not that I had to, I was a wedding photographer and then I wanted to switch into portraits and all of that.
I was also going through. A really, really hard divorce, a really nasty divorce, and it took a huge toll on me. It crumbled me as a human right, and it's really hard to run a business while you also feel like you're a failure at something. Right. So in speaking to that, I talk all the time about how instead of shutting the door on my personal life and trying to still run a [00:26:00] business, I instead decided to open the door and to let everybody see me build the business through the failure.
Alex Blake Otto: Mm-hmm.
Jodi: Let I spoke about it a lot and the rebuild of my business it wasn't a rebuild, like technically before the divorce happened, rebuild of my life. But the building of my business, because I had to get a lot more serious about being a photographer. I was then a single mom of three boys, right?
So I had to actually make money. And so I let people in to watch that whole build. And I speak about this a lot and I think that sometimes, whenever I say. Say it like, Hey, let them in on the fact that you failed something. Let them see you like try something or build something. The more that people are actually part of all of that, the more loyal they are, the more they actually like still follow.
So I'm talking a lot about myself, but basically what I wanted to bring you back to there because like. in a situation where you feel like you failed at something, like how did that still grow [00:27:00] your audience? How did that still like make all of your like OG biggest fans, your loyalists still like rally behind you?
Alex Blake Otto: Okay, well first of all, love that you're super vulnerable and that you do talk about that because I think like vulnerability is so relatable to people When we're actually vulnerable with our failures or whatever you wanna say, our hardships, whatever it is, like that's when people relate to us. So it's cool because like we can share all that we want about photography and people can ingest our content as much as they want, but they won't know us until we actually share who we are in our life and the things that we've gone through in our story.
So the first thing that I think about when you're sharing that. Within, like things that I have personally shared. I wouldn't say it's necessarily a failure because I think that would be a very hard thing to say, but, my husband and I went through an infertility journey and I chose not to share about it for a while. We've had a crazy journey and a crazy story of the last few months [00:28:00] because I decided to share it in. the second week of November and then three days later found out that I was pregnant. Dude, I know. It was wild. Yeah. So I'm currently pregnant right now,
Jodi: Oh my God.
Congratulations.
Alex Blake Otto: you, but like so insane.
And it wasn't anything obviously that we knew was coming, but all of my community and audience and especially those who had been on like life journey with me before, just in general. 'cause like your community, you can talk about it like you've got an audience, but a lot of that audience knows you. You know what I mean?
Like you know each other in real life too. It's not just Instagram friends. Like there's a lot of that. But then also the more like that you meet people, the more they follow you too. And these are people that you know in person. So anyway, all that to say I shared about my infertility journey, it was a massive thing for me to be vulnerable in that way. I think one of the things that I care a lot about is always [00:29:00] being energetic and encouraging. Online. I never wanna come at something with a place of negativity. Now, other people are different in that, but for me and my brand and who I want to be, that's the place I wanna come from. So I had to figure out how to share about infertility from a place of hope and encouragement, and still being who I am and who I want to be online. So it took me a while to figure out how to do that, and that's the only reason that I didn't share before. 'cause I didn't want it to come from an unhealthy place in myself. But when I felt ready to do that, I was able to share. Super cool. I did like photos about it. And then on the photos had a story basically that I'd written out. One
Jodi: You're like, well, there goes that storyline
Alex Blake Otto: I know. No. Well, so, so crazy because I, not like the only reason that I shared, but like, one of the only reasons that I shared was because I was supposed to have surgery, in a couple days. And I was gonna be out for a few weeks as I recovered. It felt [00:30:00] inauthentic to me. To not share that with people. And then like what? Share on My stories, old pictures of me like a few years ago or something, like when I wasn't going through surgery or something.
So that's why I shared. And then literally like two days before the surgery. I found out I was pregnant,
Jodi: My gosh,
Alex Blake Otto: so cool because I got to
Jodi: I have chills.
Alex Blake Otto: people. I know. It was such a cool, like, such a cool God story. I can't even explain it. And this is like just the overview guys. This is not even the details. So you guys can go and look at my post if you want.
And there's lots of details in there. but you'll find it like on the freaking like grid of my Instagram. It's like one slide is about infertility and the next post is like surgery update. I'm
Jodi: I, I mean I actually, I've seen those posts 'cause I've been in your stuff, but I didn't know like the timing context. Right. And then it was wild.
And then also I'm like, okay, but like pregnancy is so fragile. Like all of those things are so fragile. I was like, there's no way that I'm coming on the podcast and asking her about this [00:31:00] directly. So you brought it up like on your own. And I'm so happy. I'm so happy that like the posts that I saw are like.
Alex Blake Otto: Yes.
Jodi: Still good. Still healthy, still like very much so, like pregnant.
Alex Blake Otto: Yeah, I know. And that was the thing like, I mean, I shared very soon obviously I
Jodi: Well, yeah.
Alex Blake Otto: like, yeah. But it was because I wasn't getting surgery anymore. I was like, I just lied to all these people. So like, how do I explain that?
Jodi: like, I'm four days pregnant, everybody.
Alex Blake Otto: Literally, no, not even. I, we, we announced the day after finding out, we hadn't
Jodi: Oh my God.
Alex Blake Otto: yet,
Jodi: Oh my God.
Alex Blake Otto: I was like, okay, I'm just gonna like, vulnerably do this.
And, and I mean, even in my caption I was like, this is way too early to share. And this is a very vulnerable thing. But I just decided, you know what, if we unfortunately have to walk through loss in this. I'd rather walk through it with community, and that's the kind of community that I want to build online.
I want it to be one where like I can lean on [00:32:00] people and they can lean on me. And seriously, Jodi, like when I talked about infertility and then of course I shared about the pregnancy, people that I don't know were sending me audio messages. Praying over me for like a minute long, and me and my husband by name praying over us, they're like, I still get messages now, being like, Hey, just so you know, you're on my prayer wall and I pray over you every morning.
I don't know these people. Like I really don't. But it's so cool because like that's what an online community can do, but that doesn't happen unless you show your quote unquote failures. Hardships or whatever, and those people are so bought into your life that you're able to pivot your content whenever you want and everything is fine
Jodi: Yep. 'cause they're I literally say this all the time, once you build something to that caliber, nothing can crush your business. Nothing can collapse your business, nothing can cancel you
Alex Blake Otto: Mm-hmm.
Jodi: you've built that sort of audience who will.
Buy whatever it is that you're [00:33:00] offering, basically, because then it becomes a situation where. People, and I say this all the time, I'm like, for the most part, people are not booking me for the photos. I mean, they are because my photos are pretty right, like, but I say all the time too, I'm not the best photographer.
I'm not over here claiming that I can charge four and $5,000 for a photo shoot because my photos are that good. It's because of what I've built online. It's because of. That community is because they want a piece of what it is that I've built and what I'm doing. And a lot of times people wanna come in, even just to the studio, just 'cause they wanna see it just 'cause they wanna like hang out with me,
Alex Blake Otto: Yeah. No, I
Jodi: I
Alex Blake Otto: And I say the same thing. I think something that I encourage my coaching students to do is figure out why people are booking you and like figure out what it is that makes you different as a person. And then if you, if you don't have like. A trackable thing with your client. Ask your friends what is like the one [00:34:00] most memorable thing of your personality?
Showcase that online. Showcase that in your videos or in your posts, like whatever it might be. I have a photographer friend who's come to photo camp a few times now. She's like such a great dancer. And when I say that, like you think like. Ballet? No, no, no, no. She's like the funniest little hip hop dancer and she'll make like fun facial expressions and stuff.
But when I first met her, she didn't show any of that online. And I'm like, what are you doing? Because this is such a fun piece of your personality that in person you showcase all the time. It doesn't matter if you're trying to act professional or not, it just comes out of you. It oozes out of you. And this is something so unique to you, so share that online because you're gonna get more and more bookings that are being attracted by you.
Jodi: I literally just said almost the same exact thing to another photographer just this morning because we were talking about lead magnets and she was saying something, she's a newborn [00:35:00] photographer, and she was like giving me a title of her lead magnet.
And she said something along the lines of like, but because I'm a NICU nurse, I can blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right? And I was like. Why aren't, why go back? Why aren't you using that like your lead magnet? The title of it should actually say like, sleep Tricks for your newborn session.
Parentheses, because I'm also a NICU nurse, right? Because I have this other skill, because there's something else about me that is also interesting and I do the same exact thing in my business too. That like I have a master's degree in psychology and I love psychology and I love human behavior, so like.
If I'm putting out my posing method, I'm not just gonna say like, oh, hey, here's this other posing method. Oh, hey, here's this list of poses. No, I'm gonna teach it as it's be. It's backed in psychology. I understand human behavior. Here's what you need to do in order to get your clients to actually relax and actually feel comfortable and actually be [00:36:00] effortless from the psychology standpoint.
And then It's riveting, it's complete. It's interesting in a whole different way than just saying like, oh, hey, here's my favorite poses, because yeah. Saying, here's my favorite poses, makes me swim in the sea of all photographers, but saying, I'm so freaking good at posing because I understand this point of psychology.
That's like, no, wait, hold on. That's different. No, wait, hold on. I wanna hear what she has to say. So like. I guess what I'm saying in all of this is that like even if you're not a really cool hip hop dancer, even if you're not like doing crazy challenges like Alex is on her social media or like have some, like you don't have a divorce story that you're like going through at the moment.
Actually, hold on sidebar. I think this all the time. I'm like, my content, when I was going through all that was fire. It was absolutely fire. And now I'm like, and then I went through the whole process. I went through the whole process of like dating, and dating was fire. 'cause then I would talk about all the dating stories and like I'd go on a date and then [00:37:00] come back to my stories and be like, you guys, he wore cargo shorts.
Get him the fuck out of my life. Like I would never, right.
Alex Blake Otto: everything.
Jodi: Yeah, because it was fun and I like brought them along on this whole sort of story. And then I like met a guy, I stopped dating 'cause I fell in love with him. And then like we had this wedding in Italy and like all this sort of stuff. And that whole like arc of my business was so fun and I had so much to share and show.
And so now to the point I'm. I'm a little boring. Like
Alex Blake Otto: It's
Jodi: I, I need my husband to break up with me, or I need something to happen that I, I'm just kidding. I'm kidding. I'm like, I, I just can't be happy because that's just not relatable and it's boring.
Alex Blake Otto: That reminds me of Taylor Swift, which is so random, but like you look at Taylor Swift and Taylor Swift's marketing genius and everyone should learn from her. And I am by no means a swifty. Like, let me just,
Jodi: thank God you just said
Alex Blake Otto: the world. Like,
Jodi: neither. Am I? Okay Li
Alex Blake Otto: I mean like [00:38:00] I, like I don't care
Jodi: No, literally I was about to say like, okay, maybe she's not a posr you guys because she doesn't know that we're not swifties. No.
Alex Blake Otto: funny.
Jodi: No, all of my posers are swifties and they all give me shit in my dms anytime I talk about Taylor, because I think she's a, she's a marketing genius.
The way that woman has built a cult is 'cause that's what, that's what that is. That is a cult. Full blown like.
Alex Blake Otto: moment. Yeah.
Jodi: If, if Taylor said literally to any of them like, Hey, I need you to go to the store and buy these six ingredients and throw them into your toilet, they would all do it. So that, so that, that's a cult, right?
Until midnight.
Alex Blake Otto: midnight to do it. Like 100%.
Jodi: Yeah, exactly.
Alex Blake Otto: but like, but we can learn from.
Jodi: Literally the whole entire, like first week of my mastermind is like how to build a cult. So like I am obsessed with it. And a anybody who can get the whole entire nation to wear orange sequins, that's a cult. I'm so sorry.
Alex Blake Otto: true.
Jodi: No, true.
Alex Blake Otto: 'cause, whose color is that? [00:39:00]
Jodi: Taylor is an absolute genius for sure.
But in, in what I was saying, I was like, okay, like I don't have anything going on in my life right now. And so in teaching that to other people is like, listen to the things that people say about you in order to know what your differentiators are. I say this too, that if you're having a hard time figuring out where your content should be or where you're a specialist or what something that you are so good at that other photographers might not be good at, and that you can really stand on that as part of your content.
Part of your conviction points is that listen to what people say to you after the photo shoot. So like, I always get dads saying to me, that wasn't as bad as I thought it was gonna be, right? So then I know, and then I'll talk to 'em. I'll be like, tell me about a time that it was really bad. And they'll tell me a story about another photo shoot that they went on and why it was bad, and why it was horrible, and why this one felt so much better.
And then I'm like, that's my [00:40:00] content.
Alex Blake Otto: Yeah.
Jodi: That's what I talk about. That's so good.
Alex Blake Otto: same thing is like, posing for me is something that sets me apart and it's funny 'cause I didn't know, I went to a content weekend one time and um, it was Marina Williams content weekend. Do you know who Marina Williams is? She's great. Everyone should go follow her. Um, she used to live in Utah. she used to live in Utah. Now she lives in, um, Florida. But I went to her content weekend and I will never forget, she came up to me, she said, Hey, you're really good at telling people what you want. I was like, My gosh, thank you. You know, like, because you know, at the time I'm like, oh my gosh, this famous photographer is like telling me I'm good at something.
But then after that I started to listen exactly what you're saying. I started to listen to what my clients were telling me, and they were saying, I love working with you because you always tell me what to do. And. Everyone, whoever I was working with, whether it was a model who works with tons of photographers or at the time, you know, I was doing a ton of different shoots, so like families or couples or whatever, like everyone would tell me that, so I'm like, huh, interesting.
Then I started looking at what [00:41:00] content performed best Now, what best looked like was different at the time than it looked like now, but the content that performed best for me. Was always posing, like whenever I was posing. So that's why I really went that route for a long time with my content and I gained a lot of traction because of that.
And then of course, once you have the base or the foundation, you can kind of branch out from there a little bit and hints the challenges, you know, and stuff like that. But like the best thing that I built the base on was the thing that people just said I was good at and I didn't even know I was good at it, you know?
Jodi: absolutely love that. And also like. I mean, if you think about it psychologically, like not being able to pose or feeling awkward in front of the camera, like that's automatically going to be like number one pain point. The reason why people wouldn't book a photo shoot is like, oh, well I feel awkward in front of the camera.
I'm not photogenic. I don't know how to pose. So then whenever you're coming on. Seen, and you're saying like, look, here's how we pose, here's how we pose, here's how we pose. And you're doing it over and over and [00:42:00] over again, and you're showing how good you are at it. Then you're building that trust right away.
Alex Blake Otto: Yeah, and so you just have to figure out what you're good at and how that solves a client's problem and showcase that.
Jodi: It's just simple
Alex Blake Otto: It's just that simple.
Jodi: guys, guys. It's just that simple. Like put a camera on a tripod and then just like do the thing that you do.
Alex Blake Otto: I love it. Or get your meta glasses. You don't even have to worry about the tripod, you know?
Jodi: Yeah. What's, what's that saying? Where it's like, it's simple, but it's not easy, or it's easy, but it's not simple, right? Like, the idea of it is so simple, of just like, Hey, take the thing that you're a superpower with and turn that into content.
Alex Blake Otto: Yeah.
Jodi: and it's, and it's that simple, but it's not always easy.
Alex Blake Otto: one of my past campers hates talking on camera, and I know that's a big pain point for a lot of photographers. She's using that pain story. As her story for content and she's saying, I really don't like, she'll get a camera right in front of her.
Say, I really don't like talking on camera. I'm gonna do it anyway. And this, that's [00:43:00] her challenge to herself throughout the, you know, whole year or whatever. It's like her New Year's resolution, but she's sharing that with her audience. I hate talking, I'm gonna do it anyway. And people eat it up. They're like, yeah, you go, I wish I could do that.
You know? So if that is your pain point, if that's the thing that you hate. Share it with people and then do it anyway.
Jodi: Yes. Oh my God. I just said the same thing to somebody about the fact she said to me in a question like, Hey, I don't have a lot of clients right now. I'm just starting out. Like, should I just fake it till I make it? And I was like, no, no, actually show exactly where you are. No, actually, come on and say, I don't have a lot of clients right now, so like, I'm gonna do it anyways.
Hey, I don't have an audience right now, but I'm gonna talk to you anyways. Hey, like I don't have a business right now, but I want a business, so I'm gonna show up and I'm gonna keep on doing this and I'm gonna build it with you. And that's whenever you get like that, like ey, gooey goodness of really building a community around [00:44:00] what you're doing and, and I told her, I was like, look.
You do that, then a year from now, two years from then, you'll have the thing that you're talking about today. You'll have the thing that you're saying that you wanna do, and your girl is like, Hey, this is really hard for me, but I'm gonna show up. I'm gonna do it anyways. I guarantee you if she showed a video from day 365 of that year challenge to what she sounded like on day one, it would be night and day and she would be so much better at it.
So like I love that thought. Like so much. What I was gonna say a second ago is I was gonna say, I'm gonna pivot. I'm not done with you. I was not ending the call by any means because I wanna pivot and I wanna talk about photo camp.
Alex Blake Otto: Yes.
Jodi: talk about what it is because we talked about this before over dms.
You were like, Hey, come to photo camp. And I was like, I don't think that she's much younger than me, you guys. So I'm like, I don't think that your, uh, your group of photo campers want a grandma around. Like
Alex Blake Otto: That
Jodi: need somebody, if you need.
Alex Blake Otto: That is so not true. We do [00:45:00] not have an age cap at photo camp. I would like to clarify for anyone listening,
Jodi: Wait, hold on, wait, hold on. That's like a disclaimer that people say whenever they're like, no, no, no, we're all inclusive. I swear. Everybody's welcome. And then I roll up, I roll up in a mumu on the beach with like sunscreen covering head to toe and a sun hat, and everybody else is out there like photo camping.
I'd be like, that's so funny. Does anybody need their nose cleaned? Like what? Like what do you guys need? Does anybody need a snack? Like, I'm good.
Alex Blake Otto: You are hilarious. Well, just so you know, my mom comes to every photo camp, so
Jodi: I'll hang out with her
Alex Blake Otto: if we didn't have other campers that were quote unquote grandma age, my mom is always there. She'll be anyone's friend.
Jodi: tell your mom I'm on my way.
Alex Blake Otto: 100%. I will.
Jodi: Okay, I love that. But tell me what photo camp Really, who is it for? Who is it not for? Like actually tell me who's it for, who's it not for, and not be all inclusive and tell me who gets the most out of it. How about that?
That's a [00:46:00] better question. And just give me the whole like, rundown of it. 'cause it sounds phenomenal. Thank you.
Alex Blake Otto: Thank you Yeah, I, it is like my favorite part of my job in general, and you guys know this, but we make our own jobs, so, so,
I love everything that I do, but this is like top thing for me. Um, like I said, it's my educational content camp for photographers. We do it at an actual summer camp, which is like the coolest thing in the world to me because I love summer camp.
Loved it as a kid. I always went to church camp. It was so fun for me and it was just a place where I was able to like unplug. Rest, feel nurtured by a community. And then for the rest of the, you know, school year or whatever, I'd go back and live my life. But it was fueled by this time at summer camp. So as an adult, that's something I wanna experience too.
And then I just happened to be a photographer. I'm like, why don't I create a camp for photographers? That sounds so fun. So.
Jodi: so freaking obsessed with you. So it's actually like you guys all come for summer camp,
Alex Blake Otto: Mm-hmm.
Jodi: it's content driven.
It's content geared, like they're learning how to create content or you're just providing [00:47:00] like styled shoots and things like that for them to get the content.
Alex Blake Otto: It's both. So it is interesting you say like, don't be all inclusive and like, one of my goals is to be all inclusive, so you know,
Jodi: I'm gonna get canceled. I'm gonna get canceled for that comment. Let me clarify what I, nobody,
Alex Blake Otto: that please.
Jodi: nobody clipped that. What I meant was there's things that are driven by me that certain women are going to benefit from more, right? Like, I'm not the place to get education if you're a man.
Right one. I'm not, I'm not the place to get education if you're a wedding photographer. I'm not like in that sort of sense. And like there's, there's an all inclusiveness that can happen, but at the same time, who is it that gets the most out of photo camp?
Alex Blake Otto: love that
Jodi: Yeah.
Alex Blake Otto: Typically. Typically, But the one who's intermediate is a step ahead. 'cause they know how to do the settings, you know? And then they're learning from the professionals in the room. Professionals get the [00:48:00] most when it's like they need rest. They need to unplug. They need something that's just for them. So that's when they kinda get the most.
But intermediate's cool because you just get. Both, you
Jodi: Yeah.
Alex Blake Otto: which is awesome. We do accept guys, which is a big thing too, like not a lot of content weekends do that these days. It's like mostly for, geared for women. there's not a lot of just guys content weekends, but that's something that's important to me.
Um, I met one of my best guy friends at a content weekend. And he was like, I wasn't sure if I was even gonna be able to come to this because I'm a guy. And so I always like to say that. And then another thing too, you're gonna hate me, Jody, 'cause it goes to another inclusive thing. But
Jodi: God,
Alex Blake Otto: accept six, we accept 16 years up and up.
Um, and so that's been cool. I've gotten to have like a few high schoolers that have come and that's just like the most special thing because obviously as a senior photographer, I love high schoolers. and so that's been really, really cool. And being able to do that. We do, um, different styled shoots throughout the weekend.
They [00:49:00] are a variety of niches, so it's very inclusive. I really can't even talk. Okay. but we do a
Jodi: So.
Alex Blake Otto: of niches and I do that on purpose because I really do want it to feel like open door policy, like everyone's gonna get something from this. Um, and then we do educational speakers this year. It is, do you follow chasing sunsets, LLC on Instagram?
Jodi: See, now there's two people who you ask me if I follow them and I'm gonna be like, no, I don't follow them because I don't follow. Like, I kind of like, I kind of run like blinders on that way I know that like everything I'm teaching, everything I'm saying is like fully like coming from my brain and I don't, I don't go out.
And a lot of times too, it's like social comparison theory, right? It's like. Even whenever you don't have the blinders on and you're seeing what other people are doing, it's almost like a distraction from what you are doing. And so I, I keep my little ostrich head in the sand a little bit more, but I am, I know for a fact that [00:50:00] Marina and this chasing sunset, they're phenomenal women and I love them and
Alex Blake Otto: funny.
Jodi: just don't, I just, I'm an ostrich, so
Alex Blake Otto: Okay. Well, chasing Sunset is Alex and Britt Hall. They're a couple, they're coming to speak at this next photo camp and they are incredible. They're super wise and just like great wells of wisdom, in the photography world, so super cool. Of course, I'm speaking. And then we also have three of our style shoots that are guided this time, so that was a request from some of our campers, so we're gonna try it, which is really exciting.
So I have some awesome photographers coming. Sue Shutterbug. Wanka Creative. I'm like trying to think of their Instagram names. And then Emmy, I'm gonna butcher her last name. Emmy Ke Knight Photography, something like that. But you guys can go look at the photo camp page if you're interested.
Jodi: Yeah, we'll, we'll stick it in, we'll stick it in the show notes so that like, if you, if you're looking into this and you wanna learn.
Especially social media content from an actual, like, I hate using the word guru 'cause it just sounds like a gross word coming outta my mouth. Like it sounds like I'm saying like poop or goop or [00:51:00] like guru, like that. Hate using that. But if you're wanting to learn the way that Alex is like cranking it on social media, then that would be obviously the place to be.
So like jump in the show notes if you're like interested in all of that. You already answered my next question. 'cause my next question was going to be like, are you the person who's teaching the whole entire thing or did you have like more people coming and you already answered that, which is absolutely like phenomenal.
Honestly. Like I just wanna come and I just wanna like hang out on like a zip line and like watch like.
Alex Blake Otto: So fun. Unfortunately the camp doesn't have zip lines, but they should. They totally Should. We have the beach though, so like that's
Jodi: zip lining, like down into a lake. Like
Alex Blake Otto: Oh man, that would be awesome.
Jodi: who am I joking? I say things like that, Alex, I don't get off my couch. I literally like, you
Alex Blake Otto: zip line.
Jodi: don't Zipline. I don't zipline and I'm not cool enough to Zipline. And if I did Zipline, I'm so like I'd probably fall off and hurt myself. So, I mean, I'm.
Alex Blake Otto: of heights, So
Jodi: So like we're in the same boat. [00:52:00] Well it comes from like being in my younger years, like very much so like a risk taker. Very much so, very athletic, very like wanting to do things. And then I have three boys and so like literally I'm the mom who will cliff jump with my boys and then,
Alex Blake Otto: would never.
Jodi: no, I know I did it and then I broke my ankle.
Do it. Not my ankle. I my heel, I broke my heel doing it. 'cause I clip.
Alex Blake Otto: thing.
Jodi: Exactly like I do this sort of stuff all the time. Like my, one of my sons will like challenge me to a race and then I can't walk for six months because I pulled my hamstring. Like I am that person. So whenever I say that, I would zipline, like in my head I actually would.
But now in my like 44-year-old body, there's not a fucking chance in the world I'm doing that. So
Alex Blake Otto: You're like, Yeah, nevermind actually.
Jodi: Yeah, nevermind at all. Alex, I feel like I could talk to you for. The whole entire day because there's, I, whenever I was thinking of questions that I was gonna ask you, I was just like, I wanna know everything.
I wanna know, uh, you know what, you're coming back again. 'cause we didn't [00:53:00] even talk about business. We didn't even talk about like, pricing structures. We didn't talk about like building an, like an actual, like clientele of seniors. We didn't talk about any of it. But what I did wanna talk about is your genius brain with social media.
And I feel like we got through a lot of that. So.
Alex Blake Otto: You're so fun. Well, thank you so much for having me on Posers. It was so nice to meet you. I'm so glad that we get to hang out. Seriously, it was such a great like hour conversation. This was So.
good.
Jodi: She's gonna get off this call and she's gonna be like, I feel personally attacked by the posers.
Alex Blake Otto: I do not. I feel somehow like really pumped up by the posters.
Jodi: feel like you're fully, you're, you're a poser. Like you're such a poser because Will you send me a microphone that says posers? Yes. No, I won't because that's mine, but
Alex Blake Otto: I have it on my podcast, like
Jodi: yeah. Oh my God. Could you imagine? Maybe a hoodie. I'll send you a hoodie, baby there. There's not a merch line yet, but there's a lot of [00:54:00] sayings that we could use to come up with a merch line, so I know, right?
But because you do not like Taylor Swift and because you said something like really deep and amazing earlier about like sharing your failures, like you're, you're a full blown poser to your core. So thank you for coming.
Alex Blake Otto: Thank you for having me.
Jodi: Bye for now, friends.
Alex Blake Otto: Bye.
Outro: Okay, so that is a wrap on this episode of the Posers Podcast. If you loved it, please subscribe, rate, and review because honestly, algorithms are needier than all of our ex-boyfriends combined. And ladies, I need all the help I can get. If you've got thoughts, questions, love letters, even hate mail, please send them my way.
I actually read every single one of them. So until next time, stapled, stay messy and don't let the bullshit win. Tits up. Ears open and go build something. Incredible. Bye for now, friends.
