Meet Erika Dely

We were lucky to catch up with Erika Dely recently and have shared our conversation below.

Erika , appreciate you making time for us and sharing your wisdom with the community. So many of us go through similar pain points throughout our journeys and so hearing about how others overcame obstacles can be helpful. One of those struggles is keeping creativity alive despite all the stresses, challenges and problems we might be dealing with. How do you keep your creativity alive?

Being creative is innately part of me so I am always full of ideas, thoughts and emotions. It doesn’t take much for me to dream up a design, an event, an outfit or a photoshoot. Keeping it alive within me has hardly been a problem, and I think I owe that to my inability to settle. Unless something has soul or feeling, it doesn’t work for me. That can be anything from the space I live in, the places I work in, the relationships I allow in my life and where I travel. Although I often crave it; routine, mundane, the same ol’ is what kills my creativity. I run my business in a way where every single day is different. Every day I am seeing new places, meeting new people and practicing my craft in a new environment. It is within this non routine, this day by day variability that I find myself between moments filling it with dreams and thoughts of what’s next, what could be. It’s the perfect balance of time to myself and time in new places, amongst new people that feed my creativity and help it stay alive.

From a very young age I was filled with creativity in so many forms and our yearly family vacations fed that love for new sights, new tastes and new things to experience which led to new ideas. To this day I still value not only my day to day ventures but my quests traveling. I travel with a completely open schedule, with little planned and just see where life takes me, who it introduces me to and how it guides me to what’s next. The unknown adventures that life provides me have been absolutely incredible and have fed my creativity in the most humbling way. Allowing yourself to just be, to let go of control and let fate plan for you opens up incredible opportunities to feed, engage and share your creativity.

Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?

I have spent the past 15 years consistently serving Chicagoland with my high volume wedding and portrait business. It focuses on moment driven photography that captures unposed emotion with a light, airy, whimsical feel. While throughout the years I have had a little help here and there, the photography portion of it is one hundred percent done by myself; nobody touches my photographs and that is a non negotiable for me. In a very saturated market I have stayed booked 100% with a $0 marketing budget. I stay booked based on word of mouth and through the sharing of my art – and that is my favorite part of my business. There is no selling, I put a good product out there and people find me.

Behind the scenes of my portrait business is the part of me that craves getting lost and finding my way, camera in hand. Throughout the past fifteen or more years I have built a collection of travel photographs that have never been seen by anyone but myself. This year I am excited to be launching a new online print shop that showcases and offers those images as prints and wall art for purchase. These photographs are my past, my story, my soul and I am excited to show them to the world. Showing these photos exposes a lot of myself, as my camera and the images I take with it are the way I express my feelings. I am really proud of these and the journey I’ve been on to get here.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

There are three take aways I would offer to anyone starting…

First, do it your way. There are an endless amount of people who offered ideas, advice and antidotes on how to best run a business like mine. I was shown models and molds of how others were successful and told how I was creating more work for myself and running myself into the ground. Have I occasionally? Yes, more than occasionally. But I ran the business the way I wanted so I wouldn’t lose my love for my craft. Photography has been more than just a career for me, and if I followed the advice of those who didn’t know my heart, my journey, my struggles, my pains, this would be only that, a career. Instead, it has been one of the greatest joys of my life. Embrace who you are, no matter how hard it is, you were made that way for a reason.

Second, be kind. When someone asks me what the secret is to the success of my business I always say a good product, consistency and kindness, with the latter being the most important. When someone comes to book with me they will get a consistent product with what they see presented and they will always be treated with kindness. Always remember that life happens to us all and we are all rattled by it differently. If someone is seeking you out as a professional to deliver them a product they desire they are supporting that thing that was once a small dream to you. Thank them, and handle any issues that may arrive during the business transaction with ease, and careful kindness.

Third, own your craft. Out of 365 days in a year, I am taking photos probably 330 of them and have done that for over fifteen years. While this is a bit excessive, I do photography the way I want to do it, the way I love it and because I am so practiced in it, there is hardly any room for error. From thinking ahead to any technical errors that could occur, to understanding light and knowing my camera as if it was an extra appendage, it is such a part of me that there is no doubt when my clients come to see me that they are in excellent hands.

Is there a particular challenge you are currently facing?

Who is Erika without the camera? Erika IS Luved Photography and Luved Photography IS Erika. It is this incredible achievement that over the years so many would choose me, would choose my work. At the end of the day my greatest love is my greatest challenge – how to put the camera down and see who is behind it and see what could be in store if I didn’t spend all my time working, and to ask myself ‘what more do I want from life’? Last year I put my business aside and I left town for a month. I planned 8 days in Southern Italy, a place that has always spoke to my soul. I let life plan the rest. When I met people, I introduced myself as Erika. Just Erika. As I got to know people more and they asked about life and I noticed I had little to talk about besides what I do for work. Over the months since then I have realized more and more that to have any sort of life beyond being “the photographer” would require me to put it down a little more often, something that I fear. I don’t know who I am without it, and my greatest challenge is figuring out how to move forward.

I now go to Italy every 2-3 months to just be Erika. And little by little I am making a plan on how to move forward.

Contact Info:

• Website: [email protected]
• Instagram: luv_edphotography