Inspiring Conversations with Anastasia Abdoo of Lillie Mae Photography

Today we’d like to introduce you to Anastasia Abdoo.

Hi Anastasia, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
I first started photography when i was a freshman in high school. I was going into my freshman year of high school and I’d never touched a professional camera but one of my mom’s friends was a professional photographer and I begged him to let me try and use it! I can remember carefully using his camera and not having any clue on what to do. Every photo I took was blurry or overexposed. I ran to him and had him fix the settings and he asked me if I wanted to take a photo of my mom, his wife and him; so I got down on one knee to be level with them and held the camera up and it was a useable photo! He said “your such a natural at this” and that made my confidence and excitement go through the roof! After that moment, I begged my mom to get me a point and shoot camera for christmas and I took photos of everything. By my senior year of high school I was waitressing and used all my money from tips to buy my very first DSLR. Since then I’ve had a camera in my hands and in college I started skipping classes to do newborn sessions and build my portfolio.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Throughout the time I started doing photography I had a lot of criticism from so called “friends” or peers in high school that would snicker behind my back at me attempting to do photography. Building clientele and finding people who would actually trust a 20 year old to take important family photos was difficult at the beginning. I remember doing a lot of photos of my brother to practice posing, doing free sessions to improve my portfolio and doing hours and hours of research and watching CreativeLive, YouTube and Instagram videos to learn from. It wasn’t until 2019 that I started charging for sessions and when I first started I was charging $100 for family sessions.

As you know, we’re big fans of Lillie Mae Photography. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
We love traveling all over Michigan to capture our client’s memories. We have travel all the way to Port Austin, Holland, Kalamazoo, Silver Lake Sand Dunes and beyond to photograph weddings, maternity sessions and family sessions for clients. We are based in Lansing, but work all throughout Shiawassee, Livingston, Oakland and Macomb county. We originated in Oakland County and spent the last 8 years building our business in this area. When I first started doing photography I wanted to specialize in Seniors and Newborns but that quickly grew into me also doing families and maternity portraits as well. We are now going on 3 years of photographing weddings all over Michigan and have been lucky enough to be able to travel to some amazing areas and make connections with some great clients. Back in 2004 I was adopted at 5 years old so I don’t have any baby pictures of me but growing up my mom was always photographing us making memories on trips to Yellowstone, easters with family and such; so I built my love of capturing memories and cherishing having those printed photos to look back on for years to come. Still to this day I look back at those memories with some of the most important people in my life including my grandpa who is no longer with us. Growing up with that mindset has helped me instill the importance of printing your images and memories so that your future generations can look at those moments as well and hear the stories. One thing that I do that I think helps grow my business and sets me apart is that I offer model calls for free sessions every so often. I just photographed a model call cake smash session for a client for free; because I know the importance of capturing those memories and having them to cherish. Money will come and go, I can make more money by booking other clients but photographing the smiles, joy, silly facial expressions your baby makes during their first birthday shoot is something you’ll want to remember. I photograph all the important life moments that a family may have. I tell clients I can be there from the moment the baby is in your belly to your baby getting married. I photograph maternity, newborn, milestone sessions such as 6 month, 9 month and cake smash sessions to family photos, senior portraits, engagement sessions and then their wedding day. We work hard to accept all clients, we don’t want to turn anyone away just because you have a small budget, so we do offer payment plans so that your moments can be captured beautifully.

Networking and finding a mentor can have such a positive impact on one’s life and career. Any advice?
Being introverted and shy has made me not want to network. I hate meeting new people and being in large crowds but with this job that inevitably happens. I found that following other business owners and photographers on social media not only has helped me improve my work but it has opened doors to communicate so much easier with other creatives. Having connections with other photographers and networking with them online has helped me not only refer clients to them when I am not available but they refer their clients to me. I have so many photographer friends now that when I get an inquiry for headshots or small elopements that I don’t specialize in I have a small list of people I instantly think of referring to them because I connected with them on social media.

Pricing:

• Family Sessions – $350
• Newborn Sessions – Starting at $300
• Senior Portraits – Starting at $350
• Weddings – Starting at $3500

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.lilliemaephoto.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lilliemaephoto
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lilliemaephoto
• Other: https://www.newbornsbylilliemae.com