Check Out Kayla Maltese’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Kayla Maltese.

Hi Kayla, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
In high school (San Diego’s own School of Creative and Performing Arts) I took a photography class and felt truly connected to art for the first time in my life. After graduation I went to college, got married, moved away, and didn’t give it much attention again until I gave birth to my first son. I was living in Washington at the time and most of my family was in San Diego. High on my list of priorities was finding ways to keep them involved in my son’s life. Smart phones and social media 13 years ago weren’t quite what they are today and so I picked up a camera.

I started documenting my son’s daily life. When he was a year and a half old I started a 365 project, one photo a day for a year. During that year I found my style and fell in love with documentary photography. My husband was (and still is) active duty Air Force and I started toying with the idea of starting my own photography business, a job that I could take with me whenever and wherever we moved.

I knew right away that traditional portraiture wasn’t for me. It wasn’t what I wanted for my own family and it wasn’t what I wanted to shoot for other families. I took a storytelling photography workshop by someone who became a mentor and then best friend and that workshop bridged the gap between how I was photographing my family and how I could photograph others. And so my storytelling photography business was born in Tacoma, Wa.

After being open for business for just over a year and right as things were starting to pick up for me, the Air Force moved us to the Netherlands. Because I moved there as a military dependent, simply re-opening my business and working on the local economy was not an option. I looked for other ways to keep afloat and pivoted to primarily mentoring and licensing images and video clips. Four years after moving to Europe, we packed up again (with two kids this time) and moved to Guam.

Re-starting my business on Guam came with some unique challenges but also allowed me to finally see what I could do. Resources were limited, money circulating the island was limited, marketing that I was used to didn’t work there, and, right as things were starting to pick up, COVID-19 hit. Finally in the fall of 2020 we were cleared to resume work and my calendar stayed full until we moved. While living on Guam I started doing commercial work for businesses that wanted to incorporate a more human and down to earth side to their brand.

Ten years after starting my business I finally moved back to San Diego. For good. I’m currently working on picking up steam here and setting deep, deep roots.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Not particularly! Stopping and starting my business four times in ten years was rough. And not just starting and stopping, but moving to locations that came with some serious constraints. I sometimes wonder where I’d be if I could have stayed in one location for more than a few years.

That decade of growth for my business was also a decade of growing our family. I started my business when my oldest was two years old and gave birth two more times over the years. I was always only able to dedicate a portion of my time and a portion of myself to this business. While my husband worked full time and was occasionally gone for weeks at a time, I had to fit in editing, blogging, and marketing during naps and after dinner. I had to learn that it was better for my sanity and household happiness if I had dedicated time to work without distraction, even if it meant I had less time to work overall. I had to accept slower growth compared to my photographer friends with older kids.

After moving back to San Diego, I also became a lactation consultant (IBCLC) and started working at Breastfeeding Fixers under my preceptor. Finding balance with both jobs has been my most recent struggle, though my busy periods seem to alternate nicely. There is quite a bit of overlap in the clientele and subject matter but I have to use two completely separate parts of my brain and the switch is sometimes difficult.

This fall all of my kids will finally be in school full time and I look forward to hours and hours of uninterrupted, coffee-fueled work.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I specialize in a documentary style of birth, newborn and family photography and videography. I focus on telling the stories of my clients’ everyday lives, the ones normally relegated to cell phone cameras. There’s no poking or prodding or setting up scenes or forced smiles. I let families behave as they normally do (on their good days) in places that mean something to them (often their homes) and document so they’re able to experience the good old days over and over again.

Along my journey, I said yes to any opportunities that could keep my business alive and keep me active in the photography communities I was part of. One of those Yeses led to a two page spread of one of my photos in Kek Mama, a popular parenting magazine in the Netherlands. We were living in the Netherlands at the time so I was able to walk in to the grocery store and buy the magazine off the shelf. It’s still one of the coolest moments in my career.

I was also published in Eltern (Germany’s Parents magazine) while living in Europe and featured on a few mainstream websites for a personal project I did while pregnant with my second son. During that time I also started getting into licensing photos and video clips. My work was featured in a national US insurance commercial and I worked regularly with Motherly for their video essays. Most proud licensing claim to fame? During COVID Apple reached out to licensed one of my photos and used it in at least two separate contexts.

I think though, I’m most proud of all the times I’ve had clients tell me that they hate family photos, they hate having their picture taken, but felt drawn to my work and decided to try my approach. Being able to take those families and show them how amazing they are, just as they are, is the most gratifying part of my job.

Do you any memories from childhood that you can share with us?
My favorite childhood memory is probably actually six memories. My mom, a retired home birth midwife, gave birth to six of my younger siblings at home and I was able to be there for each one. Witnessing undisturbed, natural child birth influenced much of my parenting and career choices. Being comfortable with child birth (and breastfeeding) made birth photography a pretty clear path to include in my photography journey. I don’t photograph many birth these days but I will always feel connected to birth work. For now that looks a lot like newborn photography and lactation work.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://kaylamaltesephotography.com/
• Instagram: @kaylamaltesephotography
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KaylaMaltesePhotography
• Other: Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/user58476701

Image Credits
Kayla Maltese Photography LLC