Check Out Jason and Allison Domingues’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Jason and Allison Domingues.

Hi Jason and Allison, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
Jason: I started taking photos at age 15 when my grandfather handed me my first camera, and I’ve never looked back.

I started out working as a stringer for a local newspaper and then became more of a hobbyist photographer as an adult, doing mostly architectural photography. When some friends of ours asked me to photograph their wedding in 2004, I said, “NO WAY”. I didn’t want to have anything to do with weddings. They kept asking and were very persistent. Eventually, I told them that I would shoot it for them IF they let me do it my way. That was really about the time that wedding photography was starting to change from the very traditional, planned style that it used to be to the more artistic, creative, and emotion-focused style that it is today. I threw up in the parking lot of the church that day because I was so nervous, but I got home that night and knew that I had found my calling.

When people ask me what type of photography I do, I now just say “I photograph people”. Because it doesn’t matter if it’s two people getting married, a family playing at the park, a CEO getting a new headshot, or a band playing on a huge stage. Every single person has a story, and I tell that story through the photos I create.

I literally live for meeting new people and hearing about their lives. My absolute favorite thing is when someone tells me they never look good in photos. Challenge accepted. When I hand them their images and they smile or get tears in their eyes, I am reminded over and over that this is what I was born to do.

Allison: I have my degree in Family Studies and Human Services [i.e., social services focused on human development, family relationships, etc.]. I left my career when our first child was born in 2003 and got roped into this gig after being a stay-at-home mom for a few years. Now I can’t imagine doing anything else.

That left brain of mine is my best friend. I LOVE organization and systems. One might even call me a nerd. Bring it. I love supporting my husband, doing all the technical things in our business that he hates doing, and helping every single one of our clients have a stress-free and fun experience. An introvert at heart, I run this show from my cozy home office. Dreamy.

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?
Overall, it’s been awesome. But it hasn’t come without its challenges. When we first started out, we were taking any kind of work we could get. And we do mean ANY kind. We were trying to build a business and just figured that the more clients we had the better. While that is sort of true, it also comes with its own set of problems. We ended up getting off course a few years in and ended up working with a lot of people that weren’t a good fit for us. Which, in turn, made us start to hate what we were doing. It wasn’t until we really honed in on our ideal client, started being 100% authentic with our work and our messaging, and started turning down work that wasn’t a good fit for us [or for the client] that we really found our groove.

Another challenge was when we decided to quit the day job to do this full-time. It was a scary jump. But we rode the wave, worked through the hard times [when money was tight or when we messed up and had to learn from our mistakes], celebrated the good times, and are still here all these years later. We wouldn’t trade all of it for anything in the world.

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
Like we said before, we photograph people. Weddings, families, headshots, bands, you name it. If someone has a story to tell [and it’s a good fit for all parties involved], we’re game. Our clients frequently tell us that the difference they notice between our work and the work of a lot of other photographers is that ours is REAL. And we mean actually real. Not contrived trying to pose as real. And that means that sometimes we are going to photograph things that aren’t perfectly perfect and happy. But in the end, our clients are always so happy they have ALL of those moments documented. Because it’s all part of their story.

While we’re proud to say that we’ve had our work featured in national publications like Rolling Stone and The Knot Magazine, won awards and have been named on several Top 25 and Top 10 lists, none of that is actually what we’re most proud of. We are most proud that we had the guts to start a business, work through the challenges, and that almost 17 years later, we are still here and are living our dream life. We work when we want, take time off when we want, and have met so many amazing people along the way. We are proud AND thankful.

Before we let you go, we’ve got to ask if you have any advice for those who are just starting out?
When we were new in the game, there were a few people who were kind enough to mentor and help us figure things out. And now we are grateful to be able to give that back to others as much as we can. We would tell someone who is new in the industry a few things.

1.] Find a mentor [free or paid] to help get you started on the right foot.

2.] Be honest about what you want to shoot [and what you don’t], and while that might change over time, always let that guide what you do.

3.] Focus more on your clients and making them happy, rather than on comparing yourself/your work/your success to other photographers. If you are always comparing and trying to measure up to someone else’s standard, you will be chasing a dream that isn’t yours and you will burn out real quick.

4.] Don’t worry too much about how many social media followers you have. That is not an accurate measurement of how successful you are. Focus more on the relationships you have with your clients and they will come back to you over and over again [and send you lots of new clients]!

5.] Get business systems in place as early as you can, and put just as much focus [if not more] on the business side of your business as you do on taking pretty pictures. This one single thing means the difference between success and failure for TONS of photographers every single year. And if you aren’t good at the business side of things, hire someone who is. Yes, you will have to pay for it, but you will make that money back [and a whole lot more] when you have a business that runs like a well-oiled machine. In other words, get yourself an Allison [as all of our friends and colleagues like to say].

Contact Info:

• Email: [email protected]
• Website: https://www.jasondomingues.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jasondominguesphotography/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jasondominguesphotography

Image Credits
All images by Jason Domingues Photography