Meet Zoe Taylor

We recently connected with Zoe Taylor and have shared our conversation below.

Zoe, so great to have you with us and we want to jump right into a really important question. In recent years, it’s become so clear that we’re living through a time where so many folks are lacking self-confidence and self-esteem. So, we’d love to hear about your journey and how you developed your self-confidence and self-esteem.

I struggled with my confidence and self-esteem a lot growing up. I was a very shy and quiet child in school and struggled with my confidence quite a bit! I remember researching how I could build up my confidence, or celebrities who went through the same struggle. I do value having had this experience though. Since I would typically refrain from talking in large groups or classroom settings, I developed a very observant eye. Which I believe is such a crucial part of my photography and videography career. I don’t want to necessarily capture just my vision. I am looking to capture the essence of my subject. I want to bring out their beautiful and unique personality to show that every person has a story to tell and a life to capture. So although today, I can be grateful for my timidness in public spaces as a child, it was not an easy struggle to overcome. I still have to practice confidence and self-love every single day.

I trained very intensely as a ballet dancer growing up. That world will definitely really test your confidence and self-esteem. Dance is what brought me to NYC where I eventually discovered photography and videography. After college, I decided to throw myself right into the world of freelancing and building my own photography business. This tested my confidence immensely. Although, as a young adult, I did have many opportunities that were confidence-building, like solo traveling, working in the service industry, and living in NYC by myself, the world of freelancing was the ultimate test. Now everything was in my own hands; my finances, my schedule, my work, my life in general. It was truly terrifying because if I failed, it was all on me.

I knew, intuitively, that this was my path though. I don’t know why, but you know that gut feeling, that says “just do it”? Well it was that. I just knew deep inside of me that I had to fully put myself and everything I had out there. I went through moments of feeling like I had it all down. The work was flowing in, I was getting praise from all directions, and I had tons of money stashed in my bank account. To moments where I would look at my calendar for the upcoming month, and didn’t have even one job booked, the money quickly disappearing from my bank account, and scrambling to make happy the unhappy clients. These were all opportunities to build my confidence and self-esteem. Although extremely painful in the moment, I got through. I actually got through just fine. The work started coming back in, the money flowed back into my accounts, and I was able to fix a client’s problem by just working through it with them.

So it was facing the possibility of failure over and over again. I just had to keep my head down, hold on tight as I rode the roller coaster of the industry, and keep plowing through. Just working as hard as I could and keeping focused on my goals. Most importantly, I could not give up on myself. Every single time I was at my breaking point, where I could see failure quickly approaching on the horizon, I would come to some breakthrough. Being so close to that point, would force me to think outside of the box, and come up with a new solution, or a new way of looking at a problem. Each time, I nearly missed a perceived failure, I would gain confidence in my handling of situations. I would feel that I would come out of each struggle stronger, and with much better skills. I would realize that I am capable of handling really tough situations.

Not only did I build confidence through overcoming tough times, but I was also tested in social settings. Networking is crucial to this industry. I still love my quiet space and my very small friend groups, but I had to learn that people are not care and do want to hear what I had to say. The more I would just talk to people, I realized, it wasn’t that bad. And I gained so many friends in this industry. I realized that they wanted to keep up with my work and they wanted to cheer me on.

The last thing that I would like to touch on, to close out my story, is that self-love is a daily practice. I had to go through a huge shift in my perspective on life. I spent about 4 years trying tons of different healing modalities to learn to really, truly love myself. Photography was a huge step in really pushing me through this process, because I learned my success was purely based not on how much others believed in me, but how much I believed in myself. I did meditation, yoga, therapy, breath work, shadow work, journaling, exercise, and visualization practices, trying to ground myself, and learn how to trust myself. Although I stick with many of these daily practices, I’ve narrowed my daily practice down to just a couple. As a lot of these practices taught me that everything starts from within, I’ve learned to find more peace with the uncertain moments, and to gain confidence in my handling of the various situations life will continuously throw at me.

By overcoming each problem, I learn that I am capable. By having a support network of people, I learn that I am valued in the world. And by showing myself deep love through activities that are nurturing to myself, I learn that I am safe. Everyone has their own journey and their own process, but when I look back, I see how far I have come from these lessons. It is still a daily practice of learning how to love myself and feel confident in my skin, but each perceived struggle is now an exciting challenge. Instead of seeing it as something to run away from, it is now an opportunity to push me to grow, evolve, and step into a wiser, kinder, and more knowledgeable version of myself.

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 am a photographer and videographer based in NYC. My business name is Zoe Taylor Media Productions and I have been full-time for three and a half years now. I specialize in weddings, events, and portraits. Some upcoming projects that I am super excited for are a couple of shows with New York Fashion Week, filming a dance show of my brother’s choreography, and a personal photoshoot project with a model for Valentine’s Day.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

I think the three most important qualities or skills in my success would be patience, networking, and consistency. I had to be extremely patient with myself and the world. Things will move at their own pace, but I had to be very trusting of the process. By practicing patience, I was able to hold out during the really tough times. There were months where I had very little work. I had to buckle down, and be patient, waiting for the busier seasons to return. Networking was also extremely crucial in my success. My industry is based heavily on networking. Most of my jobs come from people I know or recommendations. So the more people I know, the more opportunities I am presented. For the first couple of years, I had to do so many free projects and shoots. I was just trying to meet as many people as possible and get my work out as much as I can. This industry is partly based on talent, but I would say, more so on networking. Most people don’t know the difference between a good photographer and a great photographer, but they know the difference between a friend and a stranger. The last thing is consistency. Even on the slow days, where my motivation was low, I had to sit down at my desk and do something. Whether that was posting, or sending out emails, or setting up shoots. I had to be consistent with my work every single day. Also being consistent with my routines was important. You don’t become successful over night. Even more than hard work, consistency is what will get you there. Just put in 4-5 hours every day, and see how far you will come in a year.

All the wisdom you’ve shared today is sincerely appreciated. Before we go, can you tell us about the main challenge you are currently facing?

My number one challenge is balancing out my work through the seasons. So I have extremely busy seasons and very slow seasons. I am working on balancing out my work so it is a bit more balanced. Don’t get me wrong, I love my busy seasons, and I love the time off in the slow seasons, but I would definitely like more balance throughout the year. What I am doing to overcome this challenge is building up my network as much as possible to have a good amount of work during my slower seasons, and to up my prices in the busy seasons so I don’t have to take on as many clients.

Contact Info:

Image Credits

Zoe Taylor Media Productions

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