Meet Christi Schuman | Photographer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Christi Schuman and we’ve shared our conversation below.
Hi Christi, we’d love to hear more about how you thought about starting your own business?
I’ve always loved the idea of having my own business where I can make my own schedule and so I dove into multiple entrepreneur adventures to which I realized I wasn’t a sales person. I always loved taking photos throughout my life and felt it really rewarding to take some macro landscape and portraits of people. Then as I kept shooting and being involved with some wedding shoots I had a thought ‘Hey, I could do this!’ and why not do something you love!
Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
I would say taking portraits of people with the intention to make the shoot more of a moody shoot with dark colors and shadows to really bring out some different feelings in an image is something I look forward the most to when I go on a shoot. With every shoot I normally edit all the photos with a normal warm looking color that matches whoever is in them, then there are some that I like to spend a little more time and make them a bit more moody and I let my clients know that they get all the edited photos, even if I went a little out of the ‘normal’ edit to see what I could bring out of the photo.
With anything that you wanna succeed in, takes work. I made the choice in 2019 to go full time with photos and the road hasn’t been easy, but nothing worth doing comes easy. The more I put into my business the more comes out of it. I think there will always be challenges, like here in Arizona in the summer time it can get super hot outside so there tends to be less requests for photos with temps reaching over 100 degrees, so knowing that, I can market things more in the cooler months to make up for a slower business time in the hot months.
I have learned like I said earlier that you get what you put into it, so the more you advertise and follow up with previous clients the more they are going to remember you for all their future photography needs.
I love meeting new people and making sure they are comfortable and feel they’re best on every shoot! And also, you get TONS of photos. 🙂
Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
First we would visit some local cities that I love to go to and as well as take photos at that are all different looks, from an old town like Prescott to a high end city life like Scottsdale. Then we would find all kinds of different foods choices cause lets me honest, who doesn’t like tasty foods? We have tons of different options here in Phoenix from REALLY good street tacos to wood fired pizza and to which aren’t all that far. My favorite burger place is in wickenburg called ‘Screamers’ and that’s a definite spot to hit if you visit. There are lots of little mountains here in Phoenix Arizona that you can hike to the top and see the sunrise or sunset as well as great city views with stars in the sky. I personally love the mountains so getting out of the city to the nearby city, Prescott, is always a great time. You get the woods area with a few lakes to have a picnic at and then finish off with walking around downtown Prescott by the courthouse for some older buildings with cute little shops to visit.
The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
Brooke Brueckner – Yoga Teacher with Armored Yoga in Black Canyon City, Arizona, definitely deserves a HUGE shout out! She has been such a huge support in my life personally and with her knowledge of the body and how to keep me in shape to be able to take all the photos I want.
Website: www.christischuman.com
Instagram: @christischuman
Facebook: Chasing Wonders Photography