060: Martina Hohnjec – Top Tips for Multicultural Weddings, Destination Shooting & Documenting an Arranged Marriage

April 30, 2022

“No, is a full sentence.”

MARTINA HOHNJEC

Hey everyone! It’s Sally here, from Studio Ninja. Today’s episode is all about Martina Hohnjec!

Check out some of the biggest points from Martina’s interview below:

How can photographers start to market themselves for a destination wedding?

You know, what I learned from my experience is there are two things you can either target the clients, the bride and groom, or you can target the wedding planners. The, the wedding world changed. So a lot of destination weddings are going through the wedding planners. So if they have a good connection with them, they will recommend you. So go towards the wedding planners that might even be easier, but then you kind of lose a little bit of your own. I’m not sure what, what word to use, like maybe freedom in communication with the bride and groom, because you’re going through a wedding planner. If you wanna target clients directly bride and groom, then it’ll be good that you have a portfolio that kind of resembles the location where they’re getting married for UK is very green. UK is very gloomy in sense that there’s not a lot of sun compared to Spain, for example, where you shot the, the Ibiza wedding. So, you know, if your portfolio shows only beautiful greenery with typical British castles with the gloomy weather, and you’re trying to get a wedding in Ibiza, well, that’s gonna be hard. Cause the bride room are gonna see like, yeah, but this is not what we want. You know, we are gonna have a wedding during the sunshine and it’s gonna be all sunny and it’s gonna be sunset and girl, you haven’t seen sun, you know?

So it would definitely be great if you can create a portfolio that, that speaks to, to the clients that you wanna attract. Now, of course, if you’re in UK, how, how do you do that? How, how do you get a sunny beach and beautiful golden hour with cocktail bars around you? This is why I, you, to my way, vacations as well. Like when I travel somewhere, either personally or for another work, I like to use it to the max, which means if I wanna have extra portfolio from that place, I would create a shoot. I would organize something where I can show people, look, I’ve been here. I know the area, I understand the location. I understand the people, I understand the culture and this is what I’m capable of. So I create the trust with the people who might be, might be getting there. And thank God we have social media and internet. So it’s super easy to find people around like 10 years ago when, when I started, that was impossible. So today things are super, super, super easy. I think that’s the easiest way to start and then see how it goes. And then maybe in the meantime, realize I don’t actually like destination weddings, you know, that can also mean a chat.

Can you tell us about a few experiences of multicultural weddings?

Well, you know, I, I, I was photographing weddings obviously in, in Europe and in Africa, I was in Morocco, middle east. I was in few countries here and I was in India. And for me, it’s really cool how you get to learn about different culture and traditions and wedding habits in different places. But it’s also interesting that some of the places have similarities. So it, it, it’s, it’s incredible learn about the culture through, through the wedding. As I mentioned mentioned before middle east and India, for example, they would have more arranged marriages than what we have in Europe. I don’t actually think anyone in Europe is having an arranged marriage and in more, because we are very open-minded and independent and free in a way that we get to choose our own partners and date them and live with them before we make such a decision.

Yeah. And some countries don’t have such benefit. You know, the places that are very traditional, they still go through arranged marriage process and photo. Those kind of weddings can be tricky at first. And going back to it, it allows you to grow as an artist, you know, being in a situation that is very new, very challenging in a way, and very unpredictable because you don’t know what’s gonna happen. Definitely. Let’s you go? I was photographing weddings on which I did not understand the word that was going on. I had one Russian wedding. I had one Lithuania wedding as well. Okay. With Russian and Lithuania, they were pretty much similar to what we know. You would have small differences, but then you just go with the flow and see what happened and you are there to, to capture it. But yeah, I mean, it, it, for me, it’s not that challenging nutshell. It is challenging. It’s not hard to photograph weddings that I might not know everything that’s gonna happen as it is. Cuz it’s always full of surprises. I think the bigger challenges to work with arranged marriage couples. I, yeah, definitely. That’s that’s more challenging.

If you could add one final piece of advice, something that’s made a difference in your personal life or your business life, what would that piece of advice be?

One major thing that I feel that I’m still learning, I’m much better in it, but I’m, it’s still work in progress is to learn that ‘no is a full sentence’. Especially when you start working weddings or if you’re doing collaborations with planners who are at the destination, you want, you really need to learn how to say no, if something doesn’t fit your style or your brand or you don’t feel it, there is something off. And it took me many, many years to start remotely being comfortable by saying no, because I always felt like a boogeyman. If I would just decline something and it’s not, it actually serves you and serves your business and you end up being more clear with the direction you, you wanna go. As I said, for me, it’s still work in progress. It’s not 100% there, but I’m much better, better than before.

And I can see more happiness around what I do when I have control what I accept and what I don’t. And maybe the second, I’m not sure if that’s like a proper advice, but it’s something that served me very well. Both in my professional life and personal is to ask questions. I know it sounds super silly. Cuz why would you ask questions or, oh, I’m already doing, but the more questions you just ask, the more things you’re gonna discover and what I noticed long term, it helps me removing those situations where there is miscommunication or your, you are not able to fulfill your client’s expectations because oh, you thought something, but what they actually thought with something else. So I love to ask questions, not only in terms of that, but also to understand who my clients are as people to understand their personality and then to be able to serve them better when they’re in front of my camera,

Thank you!

Thanks again to you all for joining us and a huge thanks to Martina for joining us on the show!

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That’s it for me this week, I hope you all enjoyed this episode.

See you soon,

Sally