Today we’d like to introduce you to Eleanora Hyde.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
My journey to photography actually started in front of the camera. I had wanted to be an actor since I was a little kid so over the years I had taken headshots with several professional photographers and even tried a bit of modeling. After graduating from college with my BFA Acting degree, I moved to NYC where I was pursuing my dream but mostly that meant lots of auditioning and working various service-related jobs. Things turned for me when I hired REELARC NYC to create my promotional reel and loved the experience so much that through shear persistence and luck I got myself hired there as a director helping other actors! That is where I learned filmmaking and absolutely fell in love with being behind the camera. The creativity, the challenging technical aspects, and getting to use all of my knowledge to elevate actors’ performances made every day so fulfilling.
In 2020 when everything shut down, I shifted my priorities and moved back to Baltimore to be closer to my family but I was still committed to creating. I bought the same camera that I had learned to use at REELARC but without lights and sound equipment, I first began to focus on photography. I think most camera-enthusiast go the other way because in many ways photography is a lot easier than cinematography! A photo is just one frame. A perfect fraction of a second captured without sound. For me, photography felt like a language that I could already understand and just needed to master natively. And my favorite subject to photograph is people! So naturally more people started coming to me for portraits and portrait photography became my main passion.
In the past 5 years of being a Baltimore-based photographer, I have constantly invested in my business and I’m so proud that I now have my own studio where I often work with my partner Michael who is also a photographer. We have professional strobe lights, video lights, sound recording equipment, seamless paper backdrops, and everything that we need for both photo and video. It has been so much work leading up to this but I love that I get to photograph families, actors, models, couples, etc, AND occasionally make fun short films. It’s all art and I feel very lucky that this is my job!
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
The two biggest struggles have been making enough money to justify all of the photography gear and also finding/renovating our studio space.
Getting into photography is not cheap. My cameras (you must have backups) are thousands of dollars NOT including the lenses which are also thousands of dollars. Then the lights, the backdrops, the SD cards, the hard drives. For a long time, I wasn’t making money because everything I made was going into getting better gear. Even still, I’m paying off credit card debt but I’m invested.
The other big struggle was that for a long time I felt like a studio photographer with no studio. I was shooting in my apartment, renting studio spaces by the hour for clients, or shooting on location and lugging a car-full of gear (I still do this though for variety!) It took me a frustratingly long time to find a space that was big enough for all my dreams without bankrupting me. I signed a lease on a studio in Crown Industrial Park last August and I did not realize how much work it would take to renovate the space. After months of literal blood, sweat, tears, a couple panic attacks, and more credit card debt, we now have a space that I absolutely love to shoot in.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I specialize in portraits! That means headshots, maternity, fashion, couples, weddings – if there is a person in front of my camera, I’m happy!
I’m known for my mastery of lighting and clean editing style. My goal is to make every person who steps in front of my camera look and feel like they belong on the cover of a magazine. And I’m most proud of all the times people have told me “I’ve never felt more seen” or put my photo as their profile picture because it is their favorite.
What does success mean to you?
I’d like to be one of the top photographer/filmmakers in the Baltimore & DMV areas but I don’t measure that metric purely by financial success. There are so many talented local photographers at all price points and for me success is being a photographer that even other photographers think of when they need photos taken or a beautiful studio space to shoot in.
Every time a client refers me to a friend, that is a success. Every time I deliver a beautiful gallery, that is a success. And ultimately, because I’m very ambitious, I’d like to direct feature films which would be a huge success just to complete but if my work is well-received then that would feel very successful.
Pricing:
- Portrait photography starting at $350
- Wedding Packages starting at $2k
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.norahyde.com
- Instagram: eleanorathexplorer
