What do my professional picture and this picture of Ed Sheeran have in common?
Gaby Deimeke took both of these last year. I am so lucky that Gaby is one of the first people I met through YWA and had the chance to experience a photoshoot with her. Not only did the pictures turn out beautiful, but also her energy lifted me up and empowered me to follow my dreams. Gaby Deimeke is a successful photographer, entrepreneur, creative, and community leader. Today, she is on tour with J Balvin, capturing photographs of musical artists all around the world and featured in Austin Woman Magazine as a woman to watch! So how did she land this dream job? Here are 3 takeaways I learned from Gaby’s journey:
- Passion-first: The first minute I met Gaby, I could feel her pure love for photography. She makes you feel seen as your most authentic self and works her magic during the process to bring it out to life. With her joy in taking photos for over a decade and her other love, music, she is simply doing what she loves. On the power of passion, she says, “Oh, maybe I’ll do it later. Or after XYZ.. and make excuses to put their passions on the backburner vs. -if you’re passionate about it, you should just give it a shot!”
- Network and Build a Community: Gaby joined YWA within 1 month she moved to Austin, and was looking for ways to get involved in her new community. In New York, she was previously in a group called “She Runs it”. It was a great place to find a community to connect with other women and have a space to talk about women in business. If you look at her most memorable pieces, like the Badass Women Series (#BadassWomenATX), she highlights other women business owners and shares their stories through her work that was inspired by networking and getting coffee with other women entrepreneurs. Networking was powerful by asking other photographers and researching online on who she should be having coffee discussions with regarding these opportunities.
- Do the hustle: So how do you get started? For people who are in the process of just starting, Gaby says “Do the hustle”. “You will be in the thick of it for a while, grind, and work every weekend…. That built my business 10x faster than everything else. I was shooting anything I could to build myself in Austin. I started at YWA shooting events, and weddings, knowing that music was my end goal.” With a passion for music, she built her portfolio with concerts and festivals like South by Southwest and Austin City Limits and over 100 concerts in New York.
So what’s next for Gaby? Her humble answer is, “People don’t talk about what you do once you accomplish your goal. At first, I couldn’t believe it and I feel like I’m still processing and thinking about my new goals. Maybe I can go to the Grammys, or be a creative director for music videos.” It’s inspiring to know that with Gaby’s accomplishments, she is celebrating and soaking up this experience all the while thinking about all the possibilities of what the future holds. It doesn’t just end here, and that is the beauty of it all.
You can watch her YWA Instagram takeover from before her tour where she walks us through a day In the life of a professional music photographer at a concert shoot in Chicago.
Love what you see? Let us know if you want to be featured in our next blog! We would love nothing more than to showcase you and your passion.
Stay tuned for our next members highlight! See ya’ll real soon!
