Ope hate to break it to ya…but it’s me 👋🏼📸 The amount of times I have to explain to people that there’s more to my job than being “an influencer” gets exhausting. People act shocked when I tell them I’m “working”. Like oh I didn’t know you had to work! Do you think running a business and working with brands and having clients just comes out of thin air? No it doesn’t. It takes a lot of work and a lot of sleepless nights to be able to make this a reality. I’m not just frolicking around traveling from place to place. I mean I am also doing that LOL, but with that comes with work and deadlines and stuff that most people with a job have to deal with too. People also don’t realize that I’m actually a photographer. That’s part of my business and why I’m not just “an influencer”. You may not always see it on here, but behind the scenes I’m doing commercial photography work, getting paid to provide professional photography services for different clients. This is an art and a skill that I’m passionate about and I’ve worked on improving year after year. I picked up a camera way before I ever grew a following on social media. It’s what I love doing and now that it’s a part of my job, it can get really frustrating when people don’t take me seriously. The comments at the beginning of the video are all things I hear constantly. It’s like nobody can believe that a girl that looks like me and has a large following on social media, can also be a photographer and have an actual skill set. That’s why you’ll hear me use the term content creator vs influencer, because it encompasses so much more than just posting on social media to get people to buy things. But even then, being an influencer is a skill set in itself too! Editing, coming up with creative ideas, actually posting and scheduling social media content, communicating with brands - it all takes work and time! Most the time I just laugh and let people call me whatever they want or think whatever they want about my life, because there’s no sense in letting it get to me when I get to live this awesome life - and most people don’t know anything about my actual life anyways! But there’s one thing that I’ve always lived by and pride myself on and that’s hard work. When people treat me like I don’t have to work, it really is annoying. I probably work more now than I did in my corporate 9-5. My job never shuts off. My entire business and livelihood relies on me. Nobody’s sending me a paycheck every 2 weeks. It’s up to me to put in the work to be able to provide for myself. That being said, I could not do it without God’s hand in my life. While it is up to “me”, I can only do it through the strength and ability that comes from someone beyond myself. There’s no doubt that I’ve been incredibly blessed by God. I’ve seen Him work in so many ways in my life and I’m so thankful to get to live the life I do. Philippians 4:13. Inspo for the video was from the very talented @Karlie Place #thewanderingmichigander #photographer #travelphotography #adventurephotography - @thewanderingmichigander