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Conversations with the Inspiring Simone Severo

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Today we’d like to introduce you to Simone Severo.

Simone, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I knew I was going to be a photographer when I was 3 years old.

When I was 6, I remember telling my family: “I have an announcement to make: when I grow up, I am going to live in my America. I am going to speak English and look at the mountains every day. It is going to snow on my birthday, I am going to fall in love there, be a photographer and live in a cabin.”

Everything is true, with the exception of the cabin… I don’t have the cabin… yet.

Photography has always been the thread that kept my life together. Growing up, I read magazines and only took a couple of basic classes when I was in my early 20’s. I am pretty much self-taught.

I was immediately attracted to photography since I was 3 years old. My oldest memory is to see my grandpa and this huge chest on the bottom of the bed, full of black and white photographs. I loved learning the stories behind it and asking who those people were.

I was 32 when I came to America.

In 2011, I became American, one of the most special days of my life. I celebrate my new birthday, the day I became American, every year. It is a big deal to me to know I realized my dreams in my new land.

I have been a photographer for over 20 years but Simone Vision Photography was born in 2016. I taught myself how to use flash and worked on a personal journey that took me to the publication of my first book, A Portrait a Day – One Photographer’s Journey (published in 2016). The book was the proof of dedication and commitment of creating a portrait a day, of a different person, every single day of the year in 2015.

The challenges and opportunities of that project made me grow as a person and photographer while I created what I call the database of my expertise: on top of over 20 years of being a photographer I created pretty unique photographs of every person, taking in consideration their location, amount of time given to me, and who they were.

Portraits are more than a photograph to me. They are a statement of life of who you are, what you feel, how you want to be seen, what kind of experiences shaped the person you are.

There are many reasons why I am a photographer but one specific moment is really deep in my upbringing: I remember being about 5 years old and having a photographer knock on our house. I remember my mom talking to him and dressing my sister and I for photographs. We had those two pictures on the wall as 30×45 size, two vertical images (my sister and I) hanging above the couch. I remember that every time we open the door when getting at home I felt like I was important because I was on the wall. That feeling never went away. To surround your family with beautiful memories of the love and beauty of those photographs and the sense of pride and confidence that come from that…it is something that stayed with me.

Today I create more than portraits. Nobody comes to me because of a piece of paper. I don’t just take pictures, I create an experience of self-value, confidence and legacy that your family will inherit, one day, and value that more than anything in the world.

In my studio, we create a beautiful sacred space for people to reveal the light that hides within. I create dream photos so people can be seen the way they want it. I hire a makeup artist, a hairstylist, an assistant, and serve champagne and snacks, with music and laughter, and my undivided attention so my client experiences what it is like to feel like a princess for a day.

In one sentence, when I am asked what I do I always answer: “I make you feel and look like you belong on a cover of a magazine”.

Photography helps us to know who we are and who we want to be. I am a photographer but my real job is to create magic.

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc. – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Smooth road? No. No smooth road. Being a business owner can be pretty lonely sometimes. But it does not have to be. We have to learn to be more open.

I think the biggest issue we have today is that people think like “Oh, I love cooking, I am going to open a restaurant.” but they do not realize that running a business has nothing to do with just doing what you are good at and love doing.

If you love cooking and you own a restaurant you are lucky if you cook 20% of the time. The rest of the time you are doing accounting, hiring people, looking for help, teaching somebody to help you, getting your paperwork done, emailing people, visiting new business, filing taxes, joining networking groups, remembering all the people you met, following up with them, ordering food, checking orders received, solving problems of the everyday that needs to be done so you can cook…

There are a lot of struggles. I think the hardest one is where to ask for help and the realization that you don’t know what you don’t know because you have never ran a business before and you don’t want to sound stupid!

Cashflow is also hard to balance skill as a business can be slow or fast and most people do not understand you can’t just say “oh, I got money in the bank now, I am going to buy xxx because money is there…” It does not work like that. From the beginning, you have to understand that from all the money you receive, you need to separate the money to pay taxes, to operate the business and to pay yourself – eventually.

Advice for young women: look for somebody you admire in business, in any area – it does not need to be in something you want to do – and send them an email asking a question. Ask for advice. If you don’t ask, nobody can read your mind. If they do not answer, do not take that personally: a business owner’s life is really busy and if you think we are watching tv and ignoring you that is not true: we are wearing our 200 hats and doing 10 thousand things so we keep the business and momentum going.

So let’s switch gears a bit and go into Simone Vision Photography story. Tell us more about the business.
I am a portrait photographer. Lighting is my voice. I grew up in dictatorship and I had no voice so photography was not only my life passion from childhood, it was a way of recording history, remembering my past, expressing my vision of the world.

I taught myself lighting by deconstructing photographs of Vogue magazine. I love VOGUE. I used to get a magnifier and look at the magazine, paying attention to where are the shadows coming from, how many lights were used, what was the height of the light, etc. I always loved fashion and art so VOGUE and classical painters were my sources of inspiration in my work.

I am strongly influenced by Rembrandt, Caravaggio, Vermeer and Degas.
I study light like some people memorize movie lines. I love the creation process.

When I have a client, I want to provide them way more than a photo shoot, I want to give them back their sense of who they are, make them feel that they are good enough right now, feel seen, heard, and appreciated.

I think photography is a very interesting art because being in front of a camera is a very vulnerable experience.

When you go to a photo session, you have to trust somebody else’s vision to create a portrait of you. when you lower your guard and establish a connection and relationship with your photographer you become “photogenic”, which unlike many people think, is NOT a gift that you are born with or without, but the result of trust in between the photographer and the client. When you feel comfortable and trust the expertise of lighting, wardrobe styling, attention to detail, posing, a relaxed environment you feel good in your own skin and you feel beautiful. That is what I do in my photoshoots.

What makes my work different and I am so proud of? First, I am a people person. I love people. I want to create images that my clients feel strong, proud, beautiful, important, confident, and good enough. I tell people all the time that people do not come all in 120 pounds. People come in all sizes and shapes and colors and we are all important to the ones who love us. We deserve to be photographed.

I love SERVICE and I think many people are missing on service and experience so I make service and experience the highlight of my business. In my portrait sessions, we schedule a consultation to show the studio, our gorgeous Italian products and guide our clients through their product choices. We also have a wardrobe styling appointment. In this appointment I help my clients to pick the outfits they will be photographed with: they can bring them to the studio so we plan which outfit goes with which accessory, OR I go to their home and help them to select the best dresses and colors for them, OR I go shopping with them, OR I refer them to places to rent or shop – online or in town. OR… my favorite, I make a dress for them! I do not sew but I am very creative so I make dresses out of silk, tulle, paper, knots, and clips, that do not show in the photograph. I also have a variety of dresses in all kinds of sizes that my clients can pick to wear on their session.

After the styling appointment, we schedule our photo session, where my team will be ready to pamper my client in any way possible.

The day of your photo shoot, you will probably spend about 4 hours or more with me, including the hair and makeup, snacks and champagne, and photoshoot. And most women leave the studio feeling like a princess!

The most amazing feeling is to see the women coming into the studio saying “ok, let’s do this” and leave saying “my husband/partner/boyfriend better take me out for dinner tonight!”

I see their transformation into much more confident women. I love showing them that we all deserve to have a beautiful portrait of ourselves. We are worth it.

Within 2 or 3 weeks (after the session), I will select the best images, send them to my professional retoucher, order them from my lab in Italy and then we schedule their reveal and purchasing session, the day they will see their gorgeous portraits, finished and printed. That is when they decide what they want to buy. My job is to create portraits so beautiful they will want them all!

For good reason, society often focuses more on the problems rather than the opportunities that exist, because the problems need to be solved. However, we’d probably also benefit from looking for and recognizing the opportunities that women are better positioned to capitalize on. Have you discovered such opportunities?
I feel like women are still misinformed. Despite the idea of a strong America, I think there are a lot of challenges so we create more opportunities for women to see themselves and give themselves much more credit for their lives.
As an example, I think women are generically speaking much more wired to SERVE better. And I don’t say that from the point of view of doing a job/task that is below us. I say it as we are more creative, communicative, and more friendly and smily then men. who would want to go eat pizza in a place where they look at you and say “what do you want?” I don’t know about you but I want to go to a place where they remember my name, ask how I am doing, ask how is my father, if I want the same pizza as last time, and smile at me with genuine happiness in serving me.

I think this will to help and make things nicer are much more natural to women and there is a great opportunity to improve the service industry.

Contact Info:

Image Credit:
Randy Poe (photo in sunflower field), Gaelle Ahl (in studio)

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