Jill C Smith

What if you could get booked in places you actually want to travel to? That’s exactly what photographer Jaime Bugbee King has done. Based in the Pacific Northwest, Jaime built a family photography business that doesn’t just rely on her local market. She strategically markets to destinations like Palm Springs, ranks there on Google, and books premium sessions while turning work trips into mini getaways. And the wildest part? She did it while raising young kids, managing a household full of...

There’s a version of running a photography business where you stay neutral. You don’t say too much.You keep things “safe.”You focus on the work, not the worldview. And for a long time, that worked. But it’s getting harder to maintain. In this episode, I sat down with Maddie Peschong to talk about something a lot of photographers are thinking about—but not always saying out loud: What happens when your values start showing up in your business… whether you planned for it or not? When...

If I were starting my photography business from scratch today, in 2026, knowing what I know now… I would do a lot of things differently. Not because what I did was wrong. It worked.But it took longer than it needed to. When I started in 2012, the landscape was completely different. Social media actually gave you visibility. Lifestyle family photography felt new. You could post something and people would see it. Now? It’s louder. More crowded. More saturated. So if I were brand new today, no...