Digital Photo Buzz Interview

Collages.net recently interviewed Mark Stagi, professional photographer and founder of the Digital Photo Buzz.

How did you get into the photography business?
It’s the classic story of the kid who always had the camera with him. Everywhere I went, I was the picture taker in the family, and it was just something that I loved to do when I was young. I never thought of it seriously until high school when I took a basic photography class. At that time, I fell in love with photography as an art form. I had a really good teacher who inspired me, pushed me, and kept me on track. I knew photography was something I wanted to pursue, but I had no idea of how to go about doing it. I also thought I wanted to go into journalism, so I pursued journalism in college. I loved a lot of different parts of it, but certain things seemed to be a little creatively limited. I wanted more creative control and I wanted to put more of myself into the work I was doing. I took about a full year off from the journalism program and ended up getting a degree in fine art. When I was finally finished with school, I was to a point where I had a good foundation in fundamentals, but I had absolutely no foundation in business. I was excited to do photography and live my passion out, but I had no idea where to start.

So how did you end up getting into wedding photography?
I had a few friends that were getting married who trusted me and liked my work, so they asked me to shoot their weddings. I fought it at first since I had a skewed view of what wedding photography could be.  I had always imagined it to be very formal, a little emotionless and doing the same thing week after week.  From the work I saw back then there was no passion or real raw emotions which is what I have always loved about photography.  I didn’t feel that wedding photography would mesh with my style.  What I wanted was to be unique, fresh and have fun with my work. Thankfully my friends convinced me to do their weddings and it opened up my eyes to how you can shoot a wedding and how artistic and fun the images can be.  They provided me a way to mix my creativity with my background in photojournalism. My friends started showing my work to their friends, and my business basically blossomed by word of mouth.

How long have you been in the photography business?
I’ve been in the business for the past twelve years. My wedding business started out fairly slowly, but about two years into it I invested a lot of my profits into marketing my studio, from there it grew rapidly to a point where we had to add on a 2nd photographer four years ago.

When did you start the Digital Photo Buzz website?
I started it less than a year ago.

Why did you start the Digital Photo Buzz website?
Starting the website was something that had been on my mind for a while. I’d been doing workshops for almost four years, and I love to share what I know and talk about photography. After workshops, I’d still get people e-mailing and asking me questions. After a while, I decided that I wanted to create a forum for continuing education and inspiration in the industry. I originally used my studio blog to share tips, but I never thought that it was a good solution since my studio blog is a powerful way to share images and information with brides. I then started the Digital Photog Buzz website.

How did you drive professional photographers to the Digital Photo Buzz?
It actually just went viral all of a sudden and traffic on the site went crazy. It’s definitely grown a lot more than I could have imagined!

How do you develop your content and decide what to feature on the blog?
It’s basically about keeping a finger on the industry and figuring out what I would like to know from studio owner’s perspective. I’m also constantly reaching out to people on Facebook and Twitter asking them what they want to know. Part of what I feature is what I think is relevant and educational, and the other part comes from reaching out to people. I get a lot of feedback on Twitter, and I get a lot of good ideas based on these responses.

What are your goals with the Digital Photo Buzz website?
My goals are to create a place where people can come and get really good, quality information and see some great work from other photographers. I want it to be an educational and inspirational resource for professional photographers.

How do you use Facebook or other social networking sites?
Both Facebook and Twitter help me spread the word about recent photography articles, what’s going on with the website, and also helps to provide me topics for discussions. Theses social networking sites are one of the main reasons why we’ve had so much growth in readership. A ton of our traffic comes from these sites. We have new people that are added to Twitter and Facebook every day.

How do you balance having a busy studio while also maintaining Digital Photo Buzz?
I do try and set a schedule, but it doesn’t work out all the time. I try to work on the Digital Photo Buzz in the morning and evenings (during non-studio hours), but it’s not always cut and dry. I try to be a very scheduled person but when inspiration comes to me schedules go out the window and the artist in me takes over.

If you could choose anyone to do a photo shoot of you, who would you choose?
This is the hardest question, there are so many outstanding photographers out there that I admire.  I would have to break this down into the type of shoot, if I was having someone cover my wedding (or vow renewal since I am already married) it would be Marcus Bell. His imagery is amazing, and from the one time I briefly met him seems like a down to earth guy. To pick someone to shoot a family portrait of me I would choose Annie Leibowitz, I have always been inspired by her portraits and creativity.   And to sneak one more in there, if I had someone do a super cool portrait of me with some creative lighting, Zach Arias.  I love his lighting skills and his ability to think of new and creative ways to light.

We would like to thank Mark for taking the time to talk to us about the Digital Photo Buzz website. Mark recently did a review of Collages.net on Digital Photo Buzz. Let us know who you would like us to interview next by contacting customerservice@collages.net. Who knows, you may be next!