Meet Daniel & Kendra St. John of Lightshed Photography Studio in Salem

Today we’d like to introduce you to Daniel & Kendra St. John.

Freshly out of college, Dan & Kendra moved to the Northshore area in 2007. Along with a third business partner, Rob, the three students turned business owners opened up shop in downtown Peabody and began operating under ( the soon-to-be-discovered false ) idea that if they built it then people would come. Three years and multiple jobs later the three owners shifted their focus and physical location to downtown Salem.

Over the course of the next seven years, Lightshed Photography Studio slowly pivoted. Dan and Kendra bought Rob out in 2015 and split their concentrations down the middle; while Kendra focused on growing the family portraiture side of the business, Dan spent the majority of his time focusing on headshots and commercial work. Today Kendra can be found rolling around the ground at the studio with little kiddos while Dan works on an ever-expanding repertoire of bad jokes to keep adults at ease.

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
We decided that we didn’t want to bother with loans right out of school in 2007 as we had accumulated nine years of educational debt between the three of us. Our decision to open a physical location right away also meant that we immediately began incurring costs that no business had yet been established to support. The result was all three of us taking on side jobs ( that due to the 50+ hours a week we spent at them really made them full time jobs ) to pay for the dream we hoped to accomplish. We used to put a few dollars away from every restaurant shift we worked, only to return half of that money to our checking account to pay the rent every month ( and by pay the rent, I mean our apartment AND our studio space ).

As if that wasn’t enough, the market more or less imploded in 2008 / 2009 and even our side jobs didn’t end up paying so well. It took a number of years for us to sit down and take a hard look at the numbers to realize that things needed to change if we were ever going to make it. After moving the studio to Salem in 2010 we started to gain some momentum and networked our way into a better business model.

So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Lightshed Photography Studio story. Tell us more about the business.
Lightshed Photography Studio is the culmination of a lot of talent in many different places.

Kendra excels at simply out-working 95% of the people we know and making sure that all the details (even the stuff we hate doing) gets done in a timely fashion. She’s also the risk-taker: our prolific move to Salem would have never happened if she hadn’t flat-out insisted that we do it. She’s also the entirety of our children’s department and has endless patience with families and kids.

Dan has a very particular aesthetic and beats himself up about his own work more than anyone else ever could; constantly analyzing best industry practices and efficient ways of getting things done, he helped oversee 200% + business growth over multiple years after moving to Salem. Branded “intelligently-lazy,” he’s always looking for a way to deliver outstanding art and customer service in the most efficient way possible.

Lastly, our co-founder Rob was a driving force in being able to MacGyver pretty much anything we needed for the first few years of the studio’s birth. Any given day would find him building many of the props and a handful of the furniture pieces we still have at the studio today. Also a master craftsman, he insisted on perfecting everything he worked at.

Today Lightshed Photography Studio is known for the two categories we focus on: family / child portraiture and headshot / commercial work.

Has luck played a meaningful role in your life and business?
We were all very fortunate to be born into loving families that backed us 150%. I imagine it’s difficult to raise your children for eighteen years and then listen to them insist they’re going to succeed in any arts field (where the value of everything you sell is subjective) which, by its nature, is typically an entrepreneurship of some sort. Our parents never doubted us for a second (if they did, they hid it well) and insisted along with us that we would succeed.

The other part of luck is just knowing when to act. We were lucky to have someone as headstrong as Kendra to make the uncomfortable jumps every business needs to make, and we were lucky to network with individuals that guided us with awesome advice. Luck played a big part in many things, but I want to think that we used what we knew to make ourselves as lucky as possible.

Pricing:

• Headshots starting at $275
• Family & Newborn session starting at $350

Contact Info:

• Address: 79 Washington St.
  Salem, MA 01970
• Website: www.lightshedphoto.com
• Phone: 978-854-5348
• Email: info@lightshedphoto.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lightshedphoto/
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/ightshedphoto
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/dstreetjohn

Image Credit:
Copyright 2016-2017 Lightshed Photography Studio