Back in May 2016 we met Victoria Metaxas, a London-based travel and fashion photographer to draw on her experience on how to make your passion a career. Almost 2 years on, we caught up with her on the launch of her latest venture: Victoria’s Stories, an online travel print shop where you can purchase her beautiful photos from all her adventures to hang inside your home.
Can you bring us up to speed with what you’ve been up to?
I’ve been working for myself for the past 2 and a half years as a freelance photographer shooting for fashion, travel and lifestyle brands as well as fashion bloggers. I recently shot a campaign for Oasis fashion where my images were featured in Oasis stores all over the UK – that was an amazing personal achievement. I also run my own travel blog that I keep up to date with all the trips I go on, offering tips for hidden gems on where to go and what to see. The focus has really been on building my brand and delivering high quality shoots for my clients.
Tell us a bit about Victoria’s Stories
This year my work has taken a slightly different turn as I have decided to open an online print shop of my travel work, Victorias-Stories.com so people can shop a selection of travel images I have personally curated from my adventures abroad. I’m very excited about the doors this new venture will open and how people will react to my new business. What an amazing thought it is to think people might have pictures of my work hung up on their walls at home. Prints are available individually, but also in sets of 3 – I’ve done a number of series on London, Venice, Paris and the Greek islands.
How has your work and the influencer industry evolved since you first started?
The biggest thing I would say regarding the way my work has changed is my photography style. Over the 3 years that I’ve been working for myself, photographing a wide variety of people, places and brands, I can safely say I’ve found my true style of imagery that people can easily spot and say it’s mine. When I was starting out I could never have imagined my work would develop into what it is today: feminine, romantic and colourful. It’s very important for a creative to find a niche in your work and a style that represents you both as an individual and a creative. You will then feel that the images you’re creating and the content you’re sharing is a true representation of who you are. This is something I’m also noticing a lot with the influencer industry – people are slowly but surely honing in on their personal brand as an influencer. Whether that be working with the right brands or shooting in the right places, influencers are becoming better at finding a style of imagery that accurately represents them and the content they would like to share with their followers. I suppose as the industry is developing, both brands and influencers alike are becoming more aware of their content and their audience, so in a nutshell, the industry is becoming a lot more clued up.
Has the way you approach your work as a self-employed individual changed since you first started and is there anything you’ve learnt along the way?
There are a number of things I have learnt along the way for sure, like anyone would as their career progresses. One thing that comes about when working for yourself is having confidence in yourself and your work. Over time I have built up confidence in believing in the quality of the work I offer to people, from day one to now I’m a different a person. You truly grow into a confident individual the more jobs and projects you’re involved in. When you work for yourself and offer a personal service, it is very easy to play the comparison game, especially with social media being everywhere and all around – you have to remain grounded in the fact that you offer a high standard of work and take pride in everything you do in your business. Something else I’ve learnt along the way is that your time is precious. It’s easy to think that a day spent at home answering emails isn’t worth as much as taking on another job, but it is. You could be sealing new deals, contacting prospective clients, updating your website, or simply taking a morning to read that business book sat on your bedside table, allowing your mind to be inspired. Days can become back-to-back very quickly, but remember your time is very valuable so use it wisely.
What are the next step you’d like to take in your career?
In terms of photography, I would like to continue to develop the fashion and lifestyle photography service I offer to brands and bloggers. The influencer industry is truly booming right now so there is always a new and exciting project around the corner and a way for you to keep developing your skillset. In addition to this I want to continue working on my travel blog and content. I love to hopefully provide a destination guide on all the places I sell prints for on my print shop, in other words, bridge the gap between my blog and the print shop. The dream is to one day have some sort of wider travel brand that encompasses all my work from the print shop through to my travel guides – it’s the area I’m most passionate about and therefore the area I’d like to focus quite a lot on.
What sparked the idea of the Victoria’s Stories travel print shop?
The idea of the print shop came about at the end of last year during the Christmas holidays (it was an idea that had sat in my subconscious for a while but hadn’t yet come to life). I was scrolling through my travel photos from the year, as is normal during that time of reflection before the new year begins. I realised, when 10 minutes had become 2 hours, what a wonderful collection of travel photos I had. The sad thing was that they would remain trapped in digital files on a hard-drive (or blog) and never brought to life. Hence, the idea for the Victoria’s Stories print shop was born. I also decided to rebrand my blog (originally Aurora Stories) to something more personal to me, as it is my work and brand after all. I’m hoping that with my travel photos, people can bring a bit of colour and adventure into their lives and homes. Travel is first and foremost the thing that inspires me in my work, and so with my print shop, blog and Instagram, I hope I inspire others to travel more and live a colourful life!
Where do you hope your new venture can take you?
As I would like to stick to my niche of “colourful” places, I hope that through my print shop and travel photography work, I will be able to see and photograph more of the most colourful places in the world. My next step is to create a list of places I would like to visit and plan for those in this next year (I visited Cinque Terre just last month and have some more stunning locations coming up this year!) I would also love the opportunity to work with more travel brands, I’m a big fan of Live2Leave, a new travel app that lets you document and share all of your travel recommendations from your trips with your group of friends and followers. It would be great to be able to work closely with them in developing Victoria’s Stories travel itineraries for Live2Leave around the world – there is something really compelling about having travel tips from people you trust.
I can safely say, when you work for yourself you never know what is coming around the corner. I could have never imagined 3 years ago that this is where I would be today – it’s been an amazing journey so far and I cannot wait for what’s next!
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