Daily Inspiration: Meet Joseph Davis

Today we’d like to introduce you to Joseph Davis.

Hi Joseph, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Well, I’ve always loved taking pictures. When I was little and my parents would hand me a disposable camera while we were on vacation, I would run off with it and shoot through it in a few minutes because I wanted to take pictures of everything. Eventually it got to be too expensive getting dozens of rolls of film developed a month and I stopped being able to take pictures. This was all long before the camera on a cell phone was even an idea.

When I got to college and I was about to graduate, I kind of panicked. I didn’t have a job or internship lined up, so I started looking for a way to extend my stay in college by a semester just to figure things out. I took an intro to photography class, and I was hooked. I started taking every photography class I could, watch any video that would help me understand the basics of photography, and it quickly became the one thing on my mind 24/7.

Now I am always planning a shoot, either for my own work or for a client and I couldn’t be happier.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I think anyone that says it’s been easy starting a business is lying. There are so many things you must do and figure out on your own that no one tells you about. There is so much conflicting advice about this or that, and then there’s the courses that you must pay an arm and a leg for only to discover that it isn’t beneficial at all for your kind of business.

For me that’s been the hardest part, the business end of things. Getting an LLC, how to write contracts, how to set up payments, and taxes, how much to pay yourself, how much goes toward the business, setting up workflows for client work, etc. There’s so much to it that I didn’t even know about until I started digging into it. It’s still a work in progress too. I’m still refining my workflow to make it as professional as possible, but I think I’ve got a solid workflow system now.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
My name is Joseph Davis. I’m a professional photographer based in the Blue Ridge Mountains. I am known for portrait photography. I’m a story teller by nature and photography is the medium I use. Even though we don’t all speak the same language there is a universal language of the camera. I love portrait photography because I feel that faces show the spirit of a person and that a person’s eyes can tell their stories. My goal with photography is to tell that story.

What makes you happy?
What makes me happy is, working with a client who isn’t comfortable in their skin, and showing them that they are handsome or beautiful too. I had a client who told me they “never feel pretty,” and they received their gallery from me said, “I didn’t know I could look like this.” They also told me that they had body dysmorphia and that I was the only photographer they’d worked with that made them feel comfortable and like they were beautiful.
I don’t think I’ll ever get a better testimonial than that.

Contact Info:

• Website: josephdavisstudios.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/josephdavisstudios/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Officialjosephdavisstudios/
• Twitter: https://x.com/joedavisstudios
• Other: https://www.threads.net/@josephdavisstudios

Image Credits
Credits to Lainie Adams for my personal photo