A Conversation with Fort Collins Photographer Kelli Kroneberger
As a photographer, painter and business owner, Kelli Kroneberger is heavily involved in the Fort Collins creative scene. She spent seven years as a wedding photographer, but has recently decided to focus on commercial photography, shooting for restaurants and for locally-owned boutiques, like Sunday Supply in Old Town and HEYDAY at Jessup Farm, just to name a few.
Aside from her talent and the genuine passion she has for her work, Kelli is a wealth of knowledge. She was kind enough to sit down with me at Bindle coffee to answer all of my questions. Read along to hear what she had to say about the creative community in Fort Collins, women in business and pursuing photography as a career.
Q: How did you get into photography?
A: It was kind of by accident. I’ve always been an artist, and I went to college to be an art major, but I ended up getting a business degree instead. I worked for a real estate company right out of college — that was the only job I could find really. Through just working with them, they realized I was creative and artistic, and they asked, “Would you love to take photos of our houses and properties for us?” Photography was always something that I loved to do for fun, but I really didn’t know any technical photography at all. As I started photographing for this company, I realized, “I want to photograph people versus houses and interiors.” I’m pretty much 90 percent self-taught, 10% percent is from workshops I’ve done with other photographers. I was 22-years-old when I really started my photography business. Then, I had a studio when I was 23, and built it and grew it from there, doing portraits and weddings. And, now I do commercial work and boutiques.
Q: How did you get involved with boutique photography?
A: Mostly from owning Sunday Supply. When I owned Sunday Supply, I did all of the marketing, photography and everything for that. And, once I sold that, I had a lot of people contacting me saying, “I saw what you did for Sunday Supply, can you do that for us?” So, that’s how I got into that little niche.
Q: When you do shoots with different boutiques, do you come in and do it on your own, or is it something you schedule?
A: I’m on a weekly schedule. I do boutiques, restaurants, more business stuff, too. I’m on a weekly rotation with them where every week they give me their new products, we hire the models, and then I come in. The reason why I go into the boutiques is because I want to make sure they all look different and they all have their own unique look. If I was working at a studio, three boutiques in the same town would all look the same. I go into the stores and I shoot in the environment the store’s at so I can get the feel of it.
Q: Do you prefer portrait photography or lifestyle photography?
A: I definitely prefer lifestyle. I love families and portraits, but I love lifestyle, fashion, more of the commercial world now. I think mostly because I’m a little older and out of weddings. I really enjoy that lifestyle feel. It’s more authentic and it’s more real, and I can direct people in a more real way versus just staging them for something.
Q: I know you do painting on the side. Is that something you initially wanted to do?
A: Yeah, so I’ve been a painter since I was 13, and that’s what I’ve always loved to do. Painting is something I still do for fun, and it is more of a passion project versus a business to me, but I’ve happened to also make a living doing that.
Q: In Fort Collins, there’s a bunch of young creatives. Do you do group projects or do you prefer to work individually?
People who’ve asked me to do workshops are individuals, so I’ve done one-on-one workshops with photographers or people in the creative industry in general. Fort Collins is so creative in general. It’s a really friendly photography community. I’ve been in communities in photography where people are so cutthroat and catty and they don’t want to share any information or share any secrets. But, Fort Collins is different. People are super friendly, they’re willing to collaborate on different things. It’s a really fun community.
Q: What do you want to do in the future with your photography?
A: Where I’m at right now, I’d love to just continue down the path of commercial photography and passion photography. Because I owned Sunday Supply, I have an idea of opening my own online store. I would be doing all of the photography for that. Then there’s the painting and art side, too, which has been really great because I’m able to paint and then I can photograph my work in different environments for interior designers. I’ve always been a person who has done a lot of different things at once, and I’ll probably continue doing that down the road. But I love what I do right now, so I don’t see it being a whole lot different, just evolving from what I’m doing right now.
Q: What are your thoughts on business women, more specifically, women in photography?
A: I think it’s awesome. I think it’s really great to see more women entreprenuers. And, mostly because they’re pursuing a passion and a dream, not so much like, “Let’s beat all the guys!” I think there’s plenty of business to go around, but it’s super exciting to see so many women stepping out of their comfort zone. A lot of women are in creative businesses because we are creative thinkers, and so it’s really exciting to see more women taking a risk and doing that, and then pursuing their actual passion versus just kind of sitting on the backburner and not doing what they really love to do. Even just looking at HEYDAY, it’s women run, women inspired. It’s marketed to women, and I think when you are a woman in business you understand how women think, and therefore you’re able to reach them a lot better.
Q: Photography seems to be blowing up recently, which is really cool.
A: Yeah, I’ve been in the photography industry for eight years, and eight years ago I thought photography was blowing up then. But, it just continues to evolve every single year. More people are coming onto the scene, other people are leaving. I feel like photography is so prevalent now because we live in a social media world, we live in a technology world, and everything is so visual that good photography is so desirable, whether you are a consumer of it with portraits and weddings, or if you’re a business that needs really great photography to market. I feel like photography is always going to be around and it’s just continuing to grow.
Q: On that note, what do you think refined your style of photography?
A: Time is really, really important in photography. I think a lot of people get into it, and they see what everyone else is doing and they feel like they have to be that instead of really taking the time to develop what they love and what they’re drawn to and what they’re aesthetic is. I’m highly influenced by art, obviously. I’m highly influenced by interior design, I’m influenced by music, and culture in general. All of those things have inspired me to create my own look and aesthetic. It’s clean, it’s simple, it’s more of a relaxed feel. It’s not really highly posed, it’s not overly processed. It’s very authentic, I would say. And, that is who I want to be as a person, and so who I want to be as a person is who I want to be as an artist. That’s how I’ve kind of developed that style. It comes with time. The style that I have today isn’t what I had when I started out. When I started out, I wanted to be like everyone else or what everyone thought was cool.
Q: Since everyone’s on social media, everyone tries to look exactly the same to say “in.” What do you think about the Instagram culture of photography?
A: There’s good and bad. I think it’s great that there is a community on Instagram for creatives and photographers in general. But, I think it’s a heart issue. Being a creative or a photographer, I think it has to come from the heart and where you personally want to be, instead of trying to become Instagram famous by taking photos and over-processing them to look like everyone else, or taking an adventure up in the mountains just to make you look better. I think it has to come from a place of, “Is this really who I am?” Because people know, people can tell if you’re faking it or if you’re real. Is your heart pure in what you’re doing? If it is, awesome. If it’s not, maybe you should try and do something different. A lot of people say they’re a photographer and they have thousands of followers, but you can buy (followers) to make yourself look better. Everything that I do comes from a pure heart and an authentic heart where I want to pave my own path instead of doing what everyone else is doing. And it may be a slower path, but eventually people will know where my heart is at and what I’m doing versus just trying to get famous.
Q: In the end you just look better because everyone is going to burn out on it.
A: If it’s not real, you’ll burn out. If it doesn’t come from a real place, you’ll eventually burn out and sometimes it’s sooner than other people.
Q: One last question, and then we can wrap it up. Is it hard making a living on photography?
A: I would say no, but also yes. You have to have the right tools. You can’t just be a photographer and do nothing else and expect to make it. I think that you have to have really great mentors around you to teach you, not only photography and learning your own style and your niche, but learning the business of photography as well. How do you market yourself? How do you price yourself? What happens now is people price themselves so low because they want to get jobs. But, then you have a photographer that’s really great that charges a lot more, and they’re always going to get beat out by a lower price photographer. They’re charging $100 when they should be charging $500. It’s not hard to make a living of it. It’s actually one of the industries where you can make a good living doing something you really love, but it’s really important to do it the right way and have a lot of business sense to be able to be a photographer.
