Natalie Santano has experienced “camera shy” from both ends of the lens.
Some of the Creston photographer’s subjects are painfully uncomfortable in front of a camera, while Santano herself is at her most effervescent, outgoing best when she’s behind one.
It’s a contrast that works well for the 25-year-old, whose budding business has exploded in the past year thanks to a host of satisfied faces whom she has snapped, as well as an even greater number of Facebook followers who have rendered conventional paid advertising redundant. Word of mouth and the World Wide Web have the mother of one as busy as she wants to be.
“Right now I’m almost completely booked with weddings for 2011 (and) already booking into 2012,” says Santano, whose services are sought after by customers from around the Kootenays and beyond. “I’m surprised that I’ve got so many bookings for January and February this year. Usually winter is slower.
“Facebook has been huge for my business. I just put my pictures on there for friends and family to see, and a couple clients, but I didn’t think it would go as crazy as it did. I’ve got a photography page on Facebook with almost 3,000 fans, and that right there has been a huge boon. A huge percentage of people find me on Facebook.”
Natalie Santano Photography wasn’t founded until 2008 but it had been in the cards since its sole proprietor was in grade school – even if she didn’t realize it while growing up in Salt Lake City.
“I’m obsessed with pictures. Ever since I was a little kid I just loved snapping pictures,” says the dual American/Canadian citizen. “I would sneak up on people and take their picture, whether they were doing something silly like sneezing or blowing their nose or whatever it was.
“I remember doing it when I was 7 or 8 with just this little cheap, second-hand piece of junk, a little tiny point-and-shoot. I would save every penny I got to develop film. As I got older and more self-conscious about how I looked myself, I wanted to capture other people’s beauty and the moments that make them beautiful.
“It wasn’t really something I thought I would be until I started taking pictures of friends and they said, ‘Hey, you’re pretty good at this.’ Then I started charging a small amount and getting my name more out there.”
Santano, who moved here with her mother and one of eight siblings in 1996, remembers well the first assignment for which she was paid – and reluctantly at that.
“It was for a friend’s wedding,” Santano says. “It was spur-of-the-moment and I was like, ‘Oh, I can’t charge you,’ and she was like, ‘Yes, you charge me something.’
“I felt so guilty. (But) she loved the pictures and (said), ‘You really have a gift. You need to be doing this.’ That was what really jump-started everything.”
Within months Santano launched her career along with the business, the second one she’d been in on the ground floor of, having helped partner Kitt Santano establish Pro-to-Call Computer Services the year before. The couple married in 2008 and have an 18-month-old son, Porter, who remains a priority for his multi-tasking mom.
“I like to keep a balance between home and family,” she says. “The most important thing to me is being a wife and mother. That means more to me than my business. I try not to get too out-of-control busy that I forget about that.”
Nonetheless, Santano entrusts Porter to the loving care of his grandma while conducting an average of eight photo shoots per week. She can’t comprehend that people from Cranbrook, Kimberley and Nelson – even Lethbridge and Kelowna – bring their business to her.
“It absolutely amazes me that they would travel all that way,” says Santano, who has a small home-based studio but conducts most of her shoots in outdoor settings like backyards and parks. Family and individual portraits, engagements, babies, children and even advertising and corporate work are within her repertoire.
“I love this business because I get to meet the most amazing people, and most of the time these people are celebrating the happiest moments of their life,” she says. “It’s when people are the happiest that they call me. That’s what’s so awesome about it. When I show up for my job every session it’s like, ‘We want to celebrate. Let’s get pictures.’
“That gives so much energy. Each photo shoot makes me fall in love with photography again.”
Santano is self-taught, possessing no more formal an education than attending a couple of workshops and leafing through a few books.
“Mostly it’s just trial and error,” she says, “doing things and doing them again and learning from that.”
Beyond the technical aspects of composing and touching up digital images there’s a component of human psychology to the job for which Santano also has an affinity. Like what to do with the person who not only won’t smile but looks as though undergoing a root canal – minus the freezing – would be more palatable than striking a pose.
“No two photo shoots are the same. That’s what I love about it, being able to capture each unique personality,” she says. “Most of my photo shoots now, I don’t know anybody and it’s like, ‘Is this who they are? Is this what they want to portray?’ I just talk to the people at first and interact with them a little bit before we start. Usually I can get a sense within the first few minutes.
“I recall several awkward instances where the clients might at first seem a little unapproachable and very hard to work with. They’re stiff and absolutely uncomfortable, shy, not camera-friendly, and I know that the last place they want to be is in front of the camera.
“But I try to make a witty remark or whatever it takes to get them to smile, whether it’s barking like a dog or jumping in a puddle so they loosen up and let go and just embrace the moment.”
It’s her worst professional nightmare – the subject she can’t crack – but one that’s never come true.
“My mind is running 1,000 miles a minute,” she says. “ ‘What can I do?’ especially dealing with kids who don’t want to co-operate. (Or) it could be a 40-year-old man who absolutely hates the camera and just doesn’t want to smile.
“After the photo session is done and the client sends me an e-mail or leaves a message saying, ‘Thank you. That’s exactly what I wanted. You’re the best,’ that’s what really makes me feel like, ‘OK. I’m really doing what I need to do.’ (Those are) the magic moments.”
Santano fires off hundreds of frames from which she selects 50 or more for editing. “That’s when the real work starts,” she says. “I like to say that showing somebody their picture on the camera is like showing a cake before it’s frosted. Once I get home and do the editing, that’s when things really start to happen. I never make them not look like themselves but always enhance their beautiful features.”
Unlike many portrait photographers who retain the rights to all images, Santano releases the final product on disc for clients to do with as they please, “because I feel once I’ve taken the pictures, they’re their pictures. I don’t feel like I should be keeping them to myself. They can go to whoever they want to get them printed, (although) more and more I’ve had people coming to me for prints lately, which is great.”
What’s the secret to her sudden success, which includes 2010 awards for best photography and best wedding services in the East Kootenay, as determined in a public vote?
“Let’s just say that I have the confidence now that I can get the pictures that the clients want,” she says, “whereas five years ago if you would have asked me to do your family pictures I wouldn’t have been able to sleep at night.
“I think I’m probably an introvert by nature, but really, once I have the camera and I’m doing my job, I’m really out there. This is who I am.”
Santano’s passion for photography is such that it doesn’t matter whether she’s taking the pictures or not, as long as the pictures get taken.
“I recently had a bride send me a heart-felt e-mail saying that her mother-in-law passed away this summer,” she says. “The pictures I got from her wedding are the last ones of her mother-in-law and definitely the best to date because I was able to capture her smile, whereas usually she’s very uncomfortable in front of the camera. That was another affirmation (of) how important it is to preserve these memories.
“You don’t have to be a professional. You don’t have to have a super-expensive camera. You just have to take the time to create memories . . .because we forget.”
For more information on
Natalie Santano Photography
call 250-402-9127
or visit www.nataliesantano.com