How do you feel in front of the camera? 

I know this can be an uncomfortable part of entrepreneurship… photos, videos. 

We have the perfect guest on this episode of The Essential Shift podcast (photographer, Katie Kaars) who is here to share common challenges people face when being photographed and offers practical advice on how to overcome these barriers. 

Whether you’re a business owner needing to update your headshots or simply looking to take better selfies, Katie’s insights will empower you to show up confidently on camera.

Get ready to discover the secrets behind a great photo and how you can capture your true self, whether with a smartphone or a professional camera. 

If you LOVED the episode, make sure you share this on your Instagram stories and tag me @essential.shift and @katiekaarsphotography. 

✨ Join The Circle Membership today and start your journey toward a soul-aligned business✨

KEY EPISODE TAKEAWAYS 

• Practical tips for overcoming camera shyness and capturing your true personality in photos

• How to build confidence in front of the camera, starting with simple, everyday practices

• How Katie has managed her intuition in her own business 

SHOW RESOURCES 

• CHECK out Katie website -  HERE 

• FOLLOW Katie on Instagram - HERE

• LEARN how to Create the perfect iPhone Portrait - HERE

• LEARN how to be confident on camera - HERE

• GET your copy of Light It - HERE 

• Join our female entrepreneur community in The Circle Membership - HERE

• FOLLOW me on INSTAGRAM - HERE

• Find out more about how to WORK WITH ME - HERE

If you like this episode, don't forget to share it to your Instagram stories and tag me @essential.shift.  

ABOUT THE GUEST

Katie Kaars is an established Sydney-based photographer with over 20 years of industry experience. Her work focuses on the connection between people and place. Katie’s key clients include SJB Australia, Western Sydney University, Prospa and Monocle.

Since graduating from Sydney College of the Arts – with first-class honours and a

Photomedia major – Katie has worked with renowned photography artists and creative studios locally and overseas.

Bless it be. 

With love, Laetitia! 

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT 

Laetitia Andrac  2:21  

hello, Katie. Thank you so much for making the time to come on the essential shift podcast. Oh,

Katie Kaars  2:30  

my pleasure. It's so lovely to chat with you today.

Laetitia Andrac  2:34  

Katie and I met a few weeks ago in person, and she is absolutely marvelous in terms of her energy, but also in terms of her experience. So before I get into the detail of the questions I'm going to ask you today, I always love to ask my guest the first question, which is, who are you as a human being? So what is your cultural background, your faith, anything you'd like to share with our listener about you as a human.

Katie Kaars  3:02  

I am born and bred on Sydney. Australian. I was, I grew up on the north shore of Sydney, beautiful, Leafy, quiet upbringing. I am the eldest of three children. My I have a sister and then a brother. And my origin story? Well, my grandparents were prisoners of war during the Second World War. My father was born not long after the Second World War, after they met, they it's a long story, so I guess I I have no religion because I was brought up in a an atheist household, and the reason being is because my grandparents were persecuted against because of their religion. So when they moved from the Netherlands to Sydney, everyone just never talked about religion ever again. And my I sort of ended up behind the camera. I don't know if this is part of the story, but I feel like it is my origin story, mainly because my sister was a performer. She's the middle child. She was a dancer, she could sing, she could do acrobatics. She was very athletic, and so she was the person who was always in front of the camera. So I felt like I needed to take that position behind the camera. I was also quite a creative child, but not good at drawing or painting, but very good with mechanical things. So when I saw my grandfather's box brownie, I was quite enamored by these beautiful little black and white prints that he would have in a gorgeous album. And that's how I gravitated towards photography, really?

Laetitia Andrac  4:43  

Oh my gosh, that is such a beautiful origin story, and it all makes sense, right? When did you knew you wanted to become a photographer?

Katie Kaars  4:51  

When I started my second high school, I went to one high school and I was severely bullied, so my parents put me into a different girl school. I went to Ravenswood in Gordon, and I needed to choose an extracurricular subject. And my mom said, Why don't you try photography? You've always been into grandpa's little box brownie cameras, and you've liked that kind of stuff. So I did. And my mum had a Pentax k1 1000, which is a great camera to work learn on, because it's, it's film camera, because that's all that was around when I started photography. And my first roll of film had nothing on it, but I, as I processed it myself. I haven't till this day, you know, 35 years later, I have no idea what I did, but I had a bug. I was like, this is, for me, I like being that person behind the camera and getting to know the person in front of the camera and creating something beautiful that shows them.

Laetitia Andrac  5:50  

I love that. I love how you are stepping into this enabler, you know, this Alchemist behind the scenes that is actually creating beautiful photos. Basically, yeah,

Katie Kaars  6:03  

I mean, I love people, and this is my way into people, I guess. You know, I was probably having a sense of loss. When you're growing up from what's happened in my family's life, you're always trying to search for that person you know, and I think photography was my way to that person, or that connection, constantly creating new families around me.

Laetitia Andrac  6:29  

I love that. So 35 years doing this work, I'm sure you had many moments in this career where you had to trust your gut, as I say, or trusting your intuition. What were those bold moves that you made that didn't make any sense for anyone else, but it made sense for you, following your intuition. Do you have any great story to share with our listeners? Yeah, so

Katie Kaars  6:52  

after I finished university, I knew that I did an arts degree, because that's there was no like photography degree, when I studied photography, but I wanted to go to university because I knew I needed to hone my craft, and I was really passionate about creating images, but I didn't know how to go about it. I also knew it was very male dominated industry. So I went to university. And after university, I was like, Okay, right now, what am I going to do? How am I going to become the photographer I want to be? And there was one photographer, male photographer, who used to shoot the front cover of the good weekend magazine, which comes in the Sydney Morning Herald on the weekend and on the Saturday. And I found his phone number in the yellow pages, and I called him daily, like daily, until he eventually said, Yep, you can come into my studio. I'm not going to pay you, though, you can come in. And I came in one day, and I helped him around the studio. He had another assistant with him, and I helped him around the studio. And then that day turned into a week, and that week turned into a month, and then that just turned into a job. And that's how I got into being a commercial photographer. Basically, I wasn't paid for the first little while, but then eventually I had other photographers that I assisted. And yeah, it was a ballsy move. I'm one of those people that if I want something, I try and go out and get it, because opportunities aren't always going to come knocking. I think you need to put yourself out there in order to get what you want. That's and I'm a big believer on believing in my gut. My dad was like that. He was like, trust your gut. You know, up here, there's too much noise, trust your gut. Always. Trust your gut. Does it feel right to you and your gut? And I was like, was like, Yeah, you know, this is what feels right to me. Another ballsy move was leaving my very stable, great assisting job with a great fashion photographer called Richard Bailey. I was his first assistant for three years and moving to New York to work for free with other photographers. I couldn't get a visa. There was no visa for Australians back then. It was impossible. So I just went. I sold everything, like all my darkroom equipment. I kept one camera, two cameras, and I had a portfolio and and that was it. I just went there with the clothes on my back and all. I sold my car. I was living with a boyfriend at the time, and we broke up, and I sold everything. And I was like, I'm going to New York. I'm going to go there, and I'm going to see if I can have other opportunities, being like, assisting other photographers, just to see what the world of commercial photography is like on the other side of the world, knowing full well, it's Australia on a 20 times budget, you know? And so I lived and worked there and spent all of my savings, but had the best time for three months, and I worked with some of the most amazing fashion photographers, and experience, some amazing experiences in that time. And then after that, I with no money in my back pocket, I moved to London. My grandfather was English, so I had an ancestry visa. I moved to London and lived on my friend's living room floor until I got a part time job and basically just went around and saw every single agent in London until someone said they'd represent me and try and get me some work, and that's how I started my photography career as an actual photographer, yeah. And that was, I love that three, yeah. So that was trusting my gut. It's always just trusting my gut.

Laetitia Andrac  10:33  

And it's so beautiful how when we trust our gut like this for big or small decision, you will never take no finance, so you will always find a way forward, because you know it is meant to happen. You don't know how, but you know why you want it, and things like that. So I feel when people try their intuition, and you can disagree with me, of course, I've just done a lot of research about nutrition and and this is really knowing the why, but you don't know the how, but you just know that you want this and you're going to go after it. And no, is never the right answer,

Katie Kaars  11:09  

yeah, yep, most definitely. That's so

Laetitia Andrac  11:13  

beautiful. And so then you started your business, and is your business as your business evolved, or have you always been doing portrait photography? Or have you evolved in your business journey? Because I know you as a portrait photographer, but are you doing other like, have you done other kind of work? Or in 2003 were like, okay, good. This is my craft. I'm a portrait photographer, and now you're excellent at this. But how did that evolve? I'm very curious, so

Katie Kaars  11:43  

I always I assisted some really big fashion photographers, and I always knew that I wasn't going to be a fashion photographer, but you sort of, when you're first starting out, you have to do everything. You can't be fussy, especially if you're living in London. And I had part time jobs as well. I used to work in a bar, and I worked in a clothing shop in comic garden, and I just took whatever job came my way. And this was in 2003 there were a lot of work. There are a lot of magazines back then. And so I just went out and I met every single picture editor and fashion editor. And, you know, some opportunities came my way. And my first job was for Esquire magazine, which is a men's fashion magazine, where I shot a portrait of a barber jacket. That was my first ever paid commission. And it was really simple. I had a hair and makeup person and one model and the creative director, and we stood under, like a sort of near the train tunnels where I lived in East London, and we took some nice portraits of this guy wearing this jacket. It was a fashion job, but it was portrait, you know, it was always sort of my vibe. And then, you know, I did go down the fashion route, because that's how it just sort of happens, you know, and fashion and portraiture is really similar, but I've never done high end fashion. It's always been it was high street. I used to work for ASOS when it first started. I would train from London to Manchester to their warehouse, and I would shoot all of their latest looks like that's what they would do. They'd farm, farm photographers up from, from London. You wouldn't get paid great money, but it was a great way to meet other stylists and hair and makeup people. It was good connector and but I always said I would always, I've always said I'm a portrait photographer. I love people. I love meeting people. I don't care who they are, from Florence and the Machine to roseburn. It doesn't matter, or to someone like you, doesn't matter who they are. I want to show them in the frame. That is what I've always wanted to do so it could have and the thing is, is with models, they're sort of told to have no personality, just to be directed and told what to do. So I really struggled with doing that fashion photography, but I did it in order to pay the bills.

Laetitia Andrac  14:08  

Thank you so much, and I will not ask you to share some of the stories that you shared with me, but they are such great story. So feel free to connect with Katie if you want to know any stories about the famous people she photographed. She has amazing stories to share. And actually, I'm gonna go and dive deeper into something you mentioned, which is showing the personality, which has been for me in my journey working with different portrait photographer, being a binge a big challenge, because I have a big personality, but I'm not very photogenic, which means I have traits in my face, which can, you know, very asymmetrical. I know everyone is asymmetrical, but I can, and I'm very expressive. So definitely, it's been a journey for me to find the right photographer who can capture my identity, my personality, but at the same time photos that I like and that my audience resonate with. So would you mind sharing any tips or anything that you know maybe someone listening to this is like, Oh, great. Leticia is having a conversation with Katie, and this is great photo. But how does she get those great photo? And I am telling you, it's about working with the right person that would be my take on how to get this personality through. But is there anything you can, you know, nuggets of wisdom based on 35 years of experience for anyone listening to this, because we know, as business owner, we need photo we need to show up on camera. We need visual people's buy from people, which is what you described when you were going through those shoot and meeting, you know, people doing the hair and makeup and fashion and so on, it's like they were working with you because they loved you as a person. So how can we do that with a photo? Yeah,

Katie Kaars  15:53  

I mean, if you need to commission a professional photographer, you need to firstly get to know them, and it's pretty easy to get to know professional photographers these days because of social media, although a lot of them do just hide behind their images, and I used to do the same thing, but having an open dialog, or sitting down with someone that you might be commissioning to shoot you for your your business, having a zoom phone call before you have that shoot day, even if it's your wedding day, you should have, like, some time together and know whether or not you are going to be able to work with that person. Because there have been occasions where I always have a zoom call before I meet the person that I'm taking a photo of, because there are occasions where people just don't like me, or they don't feel comfortable around me. You know, I've turned up to photoshoots of women who are very high up in amazing jobs in us in Australia, and they say to me, I love you, but I find it really confronting being in front of your lens because you're so beautiful. And I'm like, Oh, thank you. But today's not about me, it's about you, and it's about how you feel. How do you feel today? And I'm big on, I mean, I have a lot of empathy, because being in front of the camera is really, really hard, and if you can't find the right photographer, you have this amazing device called a smartphone, which has beautiful technology in it, and especially if you have an iPhone. I have so many people that ask me about Samsung, and really, I don't work with Samsung because their image quality just isn't as good as an iPhone. You can create your own beautiful portraits of yourself at home without anyone watching, and you can delete them if you don't like them. So there are so many ways around creating great images of yourself and and showing up authentically and showing yourself as you. And I mean, I had a shoot last week with a lady, and she said, I hate photos myself. And you know this, this is what my face does. And so we started shooting, and I'm like, right? You keep on doing this, where you're showing this idea and it's a bigger side of your face. That's why you don't like it. So we're going to go like this. And so I'm like, a a coach. I coach people through they see what's happening on my laptop. So it's, it's a collaboration. So because it's not just about me, it's about them. It's their image. So that's one thing that you've got to really push back on. If you are working with a photographer, you just got to say, I want to see what you're shooting. I want to see if I like it. And don't be shy to say, No, I don't like this or I see the problem. Be confident. And I always say that whenever I meet a new client, I always say, Please, I'm not going to get offended. You're I'm a service for you. You know, I'm here for you. You tell me what you want. So it's all about confidence. Really,

Laetitia Andrac  18:56  

I love that. And do you believe that confidence grow up in front of the camera, the more you're in front of the camera, or definitely, that's my personal experience. But do you find with your clients, like when they their first photo shoot, they're potentially more nervous than their second and third and so on and so forth. I know I'm less nervous now than my first one and second one. I still get nervous, don't get me wrong, but I yeah, I get less and less nervous. Do you find this happening with your clients as well?

Katie Kaars  19:26  

That even happens within my sessions, like I usually do a two hour session with a business owner like yourself, I come to their place of work or their home, wherever they're comfortable, and the first sort of half an hour or so, it's awkward. It's really awkward because it's hard having that big lens facing facing you. You feel seen. It's it's definitely practice. A lot of it is practice, learning your angles, learning which side of your face you like better, of your seeing you know, understanding how your body looks best in a photo. What clothes do you think are best for you? What hair and makeup, you know, what music I'm going to play, all of that is going to make a massive difference in the result.

Laetitia Andrac  20:13  

I love that. So how can we build that self confidence without having to, you know, start from booking the first photoshoot and so on. And I know you shared quickly around taking our photo, our sounds at home and things like that. But I know a lot of listeners and a lot of my clients, a lot of people in my community are basically very stressed, stressed about booking a photo shoot with someone because like, oh my goodness, I'm just going to feel so awkward. It's going to be so uncomfortable. So if we have any tips for them to start building that confidence, or start discovering their angle, or start to accelerate, then the journey when they hire a professional photographer,

Katie Kaars  20:55  

my number one tip is when you are next going out for a nice lunch or a nice date, or you are getting dressed in a certain way where, you know you look great, you know, it might even be for a meeting or a job interview. Get ready a little bit earlier. Take some photos of yourself on your smartphone and practice play. Work out what angles are good for you. Okay, this outfit I look great in. It makes me pop. You know, this color is my color. I can see it. You know that? That's my biggest tip. I I do that all the time. That's how I create my content. Most of the time, if I'm going out, I get ready half an hour earlier, and I go out and I create content. My husband thinks I'm nuts. He's like, why are you getting ready so early content creation, cuz I know I'm going to present myself in the way that I want to be seen. So it's like the latest trend. You know you want to turn up. You want to turn up and you want to look demure. You know you want to look demure. You, you know you you want to. You don't want to look too cutesy. You just want to look yourself. So think of it like that. That is a great way to practice. I do that all the time. That is my number one trick.

Laetitia Andrac  22:06  

I love it, and it's such a trend, indeed, at the moment, the Dimir trend. I love how you slide this in. And this is so beautiful to give our listeners this practical tip, because I know, personally, I never get ready early. So when I create content, I have to dedicate a time to get ready for the content creation when actually being huge on, you know, optimizing my time, I could have thought about this like, what about I create content the time when I'm ready to get out and it's I'm looking good, my hair done, I don't worry makeup, but at least my hair done, which is a question for you, by the way, because I tend to align a lot with people who are on natural beauty kind of trend, and lot of them don't put makeup on yet. When we go and have a photographer taking our photo, makeup is very often a must, due to the lens and so on. What is your take on this? I

Katie Kaars  23:09  

mean, I like to look at skin texture. Personally I don't retouch or I don't put a lot of makeup on either. I personally like people to look themselves, not like a I plastic doll, which is a it's a big trend, like even you see people just doing their makeup on online these days, and they look like dolls. And to me, I don't want to see that that doesn't please me, but those the people that do do that, that's what pleases them. So I do think a little bit of makeup goes a long way for a photo, but look like yourself. Don't you know it's like when you go and get your hair and makeup done at Mecca, for example, like I remember when I first started to get into makeup, I went and did a few of those before I went out. And I would go out and I would take it all off immediately because I didn't look like myself, you know. So it's all about elevating your natural features instead of eliminating your natural features. And you know, for me, it's all about authenticity and realness. That's what I want to see in in portraits, especially I feel like I can connect with, say, if I'm going to you for business advice, I don't know if I could connect with someone that looked like AI, you know, that's been so retouched and got so much makeup on. I want to see them. You know that you can tell so much about a person by looking at them. You know,

Laetitia Andrac  24:39  

I love that. I love that. And I have an extra question for you, which is, in your 35 years in business, I'm sure you had a moment where things didn't go as planned. You know, what I call, in my book, fucked up moments, which I reframe as being light bulb moments, which are moments where things don't go as planned, but actually you use it to redirect your action towards some things that is actually better for you. Do you have any of those very humbling lesson, fucked up moments to share with our listener before we move to the fire question? Because lots of people love to learn from business owner. We've been in business for quite some time, and when we've been in business for quite some time, we all have those stories. So which one would you like to share? Oh, God,

Katie Kaars  25:28  

then it's mainly got to do with I had agents in my lifetime, and an agent used to get you work. I don't have one any longer, but the last time I had an agent, I they didn't communicate with the client, who was a long term client very well, as to what the client could get from me after the photo shoot. And so they're turned into a big fight between the agent me and my client, and I had brought this client to the agency, so I was, course, very upset with the agent. I couldn't believe that this is what had happened. Turns out, the agent is no longer around, and I, you know, the agent Let go of me because of this argument. I feel like I was really angry with the agent, and I'd lost the agent and the client, and I just had a baby, and I was like, What am I doing? Like this, this is what am I doing. Like, what am I doing? But really, I it was the making of me, because it's it made me reassess where I was going and what I was doing, and I was letting other people negate what I was doing and where I was going, instead of me being in control of that. So I think it's all about, you know, everything happens for a reason, and there's divine timing in life, and that can be really hard to take sometimes, because sometimes things take a long time. And, yeah, yeah, it was a big learning curve about business, I guess, yeah,

Laetitia Andrac  27:04  

and becoming your own agent. In the end, you didn't need any agents in between. And that's such a beautiful story to share. Because how many of us hide behind a business partner, or hide behind a board or hide behind, you know, talent management things like that, where we're like, Oh, I'm not making the decision for myself, but initially you stepped into the role of being the CEO of your business to make decision. And that's such a powerful story for sharing so too. Oh my gosh, yeah. Do you want to share any things that I haven't asked you a question about on this episode, because before we move to the fire question, anything that you're like, Oh, my goodness, I'd really love to go and mention this.

Katie Kaars  27:48  

Ah, look. I mean, I think there's one thing about business, like, there's no fast way, like you just have to just stay the course. I mean, I have been a freelancer for 20, over 20 years now, and I, I think, I really think that just, you've got to just keep plugging away, and you have to be willing to change or move with the times, because there was a period of time where a lot of my clients were magazine clients, and there aren't any magazines. Any magazines around really anymore. When I was in London, I used to shoot for all the big record labels, and as fabulous as that was, there's just no, no budget for that kind of stuff anymore. And so now I think that I have just, I've morphed into this. I call myself a confidence Coach and an iPhone portrait expert, but I'm also a photographer at heart, and I think that being able to just be flexible and be willing to like it's not always going to turn out the way you expect it to. I think that's really important thing to think about when you are running your own business. So of course, have a plan, but things change.

Laetitia Andrac  29:05  

I love that. I love that invitation to being flexible. And what I always say is like, set a strategy, set a vision, set a plan, but then allow the water to flow through the plan. So I always use the analogy of the river bank as a strategy, and then you let the river flow within this river bank, but you really open to taking detour and looking at other things, and that's so beautiful. And I invite like towards the end, I will ask everyone you to share with everyone how to can follow you and so on. But really, your content on Instagram is really helpful around building that self confidence and taking our own photo with iPhone and so on. So we're going to share that very soon, but before we move there, I have a few fire question for you. Are you ready?