“Show Notes”
Charlotte set up Shot by Char in 2019 and is a brand Photographer. Charlotte studied fine art photography at the University of Manchester. After university, she started working for photographic studios, selling portrait vouchers on the streets. From there, she also managed to secure work as a photographer in the studios. While working in a studio, she also started to build her own business. Eventually, she earned enough money to pay off her debt and started to travel. And while travelling she taught English and worked as a photographer. Gradually, the photography went well enough that she could drop the teaching. Eventually, she moved from shooting tourists to shooting brands. She noticed how there was a big disconnect between the photos the brands and personalities who are being photographed.
Marcus asks about the market in Thailand, and she says there is less money in Thailand. However, Charlotte says she is still changing her pricing and increasing her prices. Pricing is an area she is still working on. She lives in a relaxed rural area but is getting clients, both local and those passing through. But she also works in the capital, Bangkok, which is very different. She is also building customers in the UK.
Charlotte is opening a “creative space”. It has different floors, including a studio, podcasting space, headshot area and a lifestyle studio that you can also rent and stay in as an Airbnb. This is going to be available to photographers as well as businesses.
Charlotte Graham has over a decade of professional photography experience working with businesses and individuals across different backgrounds. Her end goal is to take pictures that help open up more opportunities for her clients. She works to capture beautiful photographs that showcase brands’ vision and their authentic vibe. Originally from the UK, Charlotte is currently based in Chiang Mai and covers the whole of southeast Asia.
You can find Charlotte on LinkedIn here
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“Show Transcription”
Sam: Hi, Marcus. How are you doing?
Marcus: I am terrific, Sam. Thanks for asking. How are you?
Sam: Excellent. Very good. Yeah, yep. And is it starting to warm up a little bit over there, Marcus?
Marcus: Sam, it’s going to be into double figures. We’re getting 18 degrees today, the hottest day of the year so far.
Sam: Whoa, that’s amazing. But like me, our guest is not worrying too much about the British drizzle because we’ve got with us Charlotte Graham from Shop Bytes. And she is over in Thailand. Hi, Charlotte.
Charlotte: Hi, thank you for having me. How are you doing?
Marcus: Hello, Charlotte.
Sam: And we normally start, oh, yeah, well, we always start, I guess, by guest introducing themselves. So Charlotte, would you like to introduce yourself?
Charlotte: Sure. OK, my name’s Charlotte and I am the owner of Shop Bytes. So I created this company in 2019. And that was the moment that I niched into personal brand photography, some personal brand photographer. And I create images for entrepreneurs helping people get visible online.
Sam: Amazing. And then with most guests, we say, tell us a little bit about how you got to where you are. But from our little conversation, this isn’t going to be tell us a little bit about how you get out. This seems like a rags to riches fairy tale, I think, from where you started and where you ended up almost.
Charlotte: It’s like, I don’t know. Yeah, it’s not a linear as well. Am I at the fairy tale? Yeah, I don’t know.
Sam: We’ve got some ups and downs on the way.
Charlotte: It’s been a long journey, for sure. So, yeah, so I did Manchester, loved Manchester. That’s where I went to uni. And I so actually, I was doing photography like in as a kid, and I was also doing painting. And then I just had like a moment where I was like, I can’t be a painter. Everybody else is so good. I can’t do this. And I just like switched to photography. And then I actually went to Manchester because college teacher was like, just try it. And you’re supposed to do a foundation before you do an art degree. But she was like, just try it. And I had these photos I took in Egypt. This is all on my website, actually, this little story. And I just went in for the interview and I got a place, which was great. But I was actually too immature. I was way too immature. I actually did need that foundation. Yeah.
Because, yeah, I probably could have used my time better when I actually got there. But I wanted to move out and that was the plan. And I did. I went to Manchester.
Marcus: Nice. What particular style of photography or what type of photography did you study in Manchester? I know they do various courses there.
Charlotte: It was a fine art photography course. So it was very like, you know, you’d be you find your journey. And I was obsessed with film. I just spent the whole time in the dark room. Like, yeah, that was where I was. If I was ever in uni, I was in the dark room.
Sam: OK. Hidden away.
Marcus: Tell me about it. What else would you be?
Charlotte: I love the dark room. Yeah. And then from that point when I left uni, I was like, either go back to London, move back in with my parents and start us, which I assumed would be like a slower track or just like go for it now. And I literally like left uni and I couch surfed for like eight months and just got tried to get work in Manchester City Centre and all the different photo studios, the portrait studios. Yeah. And that’s where I started out. And it was from there an even longer journey to get the like good amount of money. But yeah,
Marcus: it’s always a long journey, Charlotte. There’s no such thing as overnight.
Sam: So were you in those studios? Were you being photographer or doing other things? Making tea.
Charlotte: So I started out. Yeah, I started out actually selling vouchers on my market street.
Marcus: Oh, for like portrait, for like a portrait studio. Yeah.
Charlotte: Yeah. To get people in. So it was like Mac makeover. That’s actually how we would sell it. It was like, do you want a Mac makeover?
Marcus: Yes. Yes, I remember that. I did something similar, but I was I was on the phone doing it on. In the office.
Charlotte: Yeah. Yeah.
Marcus: It was too cold. I was out. I was out. I was too wimpy to go.
Charlotte: I was out in that brutal weather.
Marcus: I tell it, though, it’s a good learning experience, though, that Charlotte, isn’t it? Because you really do learn about selling. I learned. I think I learned quite a lot about selling doing that.
Charlotte: Yeah. I feel like I don’t. I’m not a great sales person. Like I do want to improve on my sales. But that taught me that no matter what happens, I can sell a piece of paper and get dinner. Yeah. And from that, I like clawed my way into the studios. And then it was kind of I worked both jobs for a while. And then actually all the photographers in one of the studios, like banded together and they were like, Charlotte’s good enough. She shouldn’t be working on the streets anymore. She should just be a photographer. And they like got me off the streets. I felt like I was off the street, but I wasn’t.
Sam: They all helped you in. So then you were so then you’re employed as a photographer in a studio.
Charlotte: Yeah. Then I was there. And as I was doing that, I was doing weddings and babies on the side and like shared studio with people in the old mills. And yeah, it was it went up and down, round and round. But it was the same kind of work.
Sam: But you were doing into. So you were doing some work for the studio and some for yourself. You’re kind of mixing and matching a bit.
Charlotte: Yeah, sorry, because it was contracted work. So I was a full time person. And I’d work like four days a week, maybe. And then on my off days, I’d try and build my own business. And which was like weddings and babies,
Sam: which isn’t what you do now, which may say something about how much you enjoyed photographing weddings and babies, I’m guessing.
Charlotte: Yeah, I don’t like wedding. I think they’re beautiful. There’s so many nice things.
The photographic weddings, the actual job itself is not for me. It’s just not for me.
Sam: So more fun being.
Marcus: Well, I just think what, you know, I think branding photography for me anyhow, and I’m hoping you agree. I just find branding for me is more creative because you’ve got more control. I know we were talking earlier that you were involved in fashion photography early on. And yeah, with branding photography, I think you just got so much more say in how the actual output of the shoot is going to be.
Charlotte: Yeah, it is. It’s like a nice little in between with fashion and weddings, I guess, because you do you curate the shoot. The main thing that stands out to me is that the person on the shoot with branding photography wants to be there. And you know, when you’re doing families and portraits, there’s always one person who doesn’t want to be there. Yeah. And with the branding shoots like that person has invested and we’re in it together and we’re collaborating together and I like that.
Sam: Yeah. OK, interesting. So how did you so to to finish the story, how did you end up from doing shots in Manchester to having a business in Thailand?
Charlotte: Well, yeah, OK. So eventually I got out of those studios because they weren’t the best environment. They were great. I learned a lot. I learned a lot actually. But, you know, sometimes they were a bit management was a bit toxic. So then I got into doing fashion and e-comm and that kind of stuff more towards what I was wanting to do. And I’ve started earning enough money to pay off debts. And for me, traveling was always something that I wanted to do. So as soon as I paid off enough of my debt, I just left kind of thing. So I kind of got to the point where I felt like I’d succeeded as earning a good wage and just left the UK and had to start all over again. But it was OK because I knew what I was doing at that point.
And then I traveled with a tafel. So teaching English as a foreign language.
Marcus: Oh, yes. Very cool.
Charlotte: And then wherever I decided to stay, I would also do photo shoots on the side. And you can do like so I was doing like engagement shoots, family shoots, like walk around the cities, these kind of stuff through agencies. And they would take a big cut, but it was like cool to just.
Marcus: But they’d get you work.
Charlotte: Yeah, working as a photographer. And then eventually I would get enough. I was in Vietnam and I had enough clients. I stopped teaching and I just was doing photography.
Thailand was doing the same kind of thing. And I was just having fun as a psych and living life because it wasn’t very stressful. I wasn’t finding my own clients. I was just turning up, taking the pictures, editing and sending them out. And then Covid hit. No, it was before Covid actually. But Covid cemented the idea. So I decided to go to branding just before Covid. Then Covid hit and I was like, oh, there’s no tourists anyway. So it was just entrepreneurs.
Marcus: Yeah, OK. But of a tourist marketing there for you?
Charlotte: Yeah. So yeah, I just pivoted and fell in love with that. So I started doing the brand shoots because I got asked to reshoot people’s brand shoots. And I realized the disconnect was people, they were having nice photo shoots, but they weren’t connected to their brand. There was no strategy. There was no alignment with what they were like marketing out.
Sam: So they were coming in with a set of pretty pictures, but absolutely relevant to what they did and who they were and their personality and that sort of thing.
Charlotte: So I had a really… So one of my friends, Leah, super colorful, vibrant person. She had a branding shoot and they did it in like a concrete location and it was really dark and they’d edited it like really muted colors and it was just not aligned with who she was. And then I realized there was like a huge disconnect happening. So there’s like loads of talented photographers here, but they’re missing the branding aspect of it.
Marcus: Yeah. Because you did your fine art background. The degree in fine art I always thought was so worthwhile because it gave you a very broad aspect, a lot of different types of media, photography, film, et cetera, et cetera. And from that media, from those things, you get ideas. And that’s what obviously I think what you’re really good at, Charlotte, you’ve got good ideas. It’s not just about being technically good, it’s about having good ideas, isn’t it? And that’s what made you, if I may dare say that, gave you the opportunities over there in Thailand.
Charlotte: Wow, thank you. Yeah, possibly. I always thought, why did I do this art course? I was too immature to do it. I didn’t put in enough effort. I could have learned so much more.
But that was definitely… It was definitely what I needed. I needed that time to grow as a person and to evolve. I do wish I’d gone to more lecture.
Sam: I don’t think you’re alone in that one, so let’s be honest. This is a common, common thing. I think when I was a teacher, when some of the kids used to come back and visit school, the most common thing they said, even reflecting back on school as well, I wish I’d listened in school.
Charlotte: Yeah, it was a great course, then.
Marcus: Yeah, well, let’s dig a little bit deeper on the kind of photography you’re doing, the branding photography. And as you said, it’s quite a recent sort of style of photography, isn’t it, branding? I can recognize it within the last five years or something. What do you think about that?
Charlotte: Yeah, 100%. So it’s obviously like commercial brands, but that’s just commercial probably, right? But yeah, it’s the rise of the solopreneurs, the entrepreneur, the online market has just made this perfect storm for this new kind of photography.
Marcus: That’s right.
Charlotte: Yeah, and I saw that there was an opportunity for it, and I just took it with both hands. And I had no idea what I was doing, so I never used to promote myself. I never used to tell people I was a photographer. I would never even say that to people. I was so hated having my photo taken. So I had to go on this journey of, I’m going to have to have a brand now, and I’m going to tell people that they should have a brand, I’m going to have to have a brand. And within that, I had to learn about branding. What is a personal brand? What is messaging and all of that? So it’s been like a huge journey of learning. And it’s been, I’ve just got more passionate about it the more I’ve learned about it because it really is such a powerful tool in your business. So yeah, I really enjoy it now. And for me as well, when I decided to niche into this new area of photography, it was a switch in my mind from freelancer to business owner, which was huge, like so big. Because it went just from, it’s not just that I have a website and I have clients, and I have to have invoices and contracts.
So I was doing that. But now I have like a brand, I have a message, I have a like reason. And because of the brand strategy, that really helped me.
Sam: Amazing. Cool. So I mean, so almost that can be really powerful, presumably for your customers, because you’ve gone along that journey. And so you’re kind of helping them go on it and you know what it’s like, because it’s not that long ago. You’ve done that kind of gone along the journey in the same way.
Charlotte: Exactly. I feel like we’re in it together sometimes. So like when I learn new things, I can like message them and be like, oh, you thought about this, you know, because it’s constantly evolving. Like it’s so new.
Marcus: Can you, for our listeners, just tell us a little bit about what the market is like over there in Asia, compared to maybe the UK market or other markets you might know.
Charlotte: It’s definitely, there’s not as much money by the spending power is less, but I do think also that is a mindset thing. So for me, I’ve had to go on a journey and I’ve had to come back to, so now I’m pretty happy with my prices, but a lot of people will say that they’re still really cheap. If you compare them to UK, the US like crazy like that would be.
Marcus: Yes, yes. It’s all, but you can’t compare them globally. You can’t, it’s very hard to compare pricing globally, I think, especially.
Sam: Well, I guess one of the things is the cost of living. Do you have a much cheaper cost of living there than you would in the UK?
Marcus: Exactly, Sam.
Charlotte: Yeah. But I struggle with the cost of living because obviously there’s, there’s some things that are crazy cheap, like rent, like electricity is like everything like that is a lot cheaper. But then if you want to go out and get wine, if you want to do anything that’s super Western, then it’s like double or triple the price. Yeah. So if your lifestyle, you can like actually even out, but that’s the market question. So I have decided that it is not, none of my it’s, it’s my business to test the market and to see if a product works or a service works.
But if it works, then I’m not going to go, I’m not going to get dragged down too much by what I think that, by my opinion of it or my idea of it, because I don’t think I don’t want my mindset to get in the way, which it has been.
Marcus: Right.
Charlotte: And so I’ve been raising my prices slowly and people are still booking. So when I get to the point where people can’t book anymore or stop booking, um, then I’ll be like, okay, this is obviously like the cap or something, but that so far there hasn’t been a cap. So I feel like, yeah, I don’t want to get too in my head about it. Shanghai itself is a quiet touristy, sleepy place. we have a saying survive, survive. It’s like the slow life. Like it’s chill. Like, and my services for business owners, entrepreneurs, people who are building brands, which is like not really aligned to this area. Yeah. I still make, I still get clients. Um, normally they are passing through.
Marcus: I was going to say looking for your website, Charlotte, I know that you work a lot with, um, well-being brands, yoga teachers. Is that, is that something that you, are you niecing down with this kind of clients or are you still keeping it fairly broad?
Charlotte: I’m keeping it broad because my service is so niche. I think. Anyway. Um, it’s all I do. Like if you want to come well, but yeah, it’s all like shot by charters. Um, so if someone asks me for like a wedding or family, I’m not like, no, I’m sorry. There’s other people that can do that. Cause I have specialized in this and my process is amazing. And this is what I’m doing. So I’m happy just to serve people that I think are a good fit and know the worth of the investment. Um, so I have like dog trainers, estate agents, a lot of wellness people because of my location, I think. Investors. I’ve had investors. So it’s, but it’s broad.
Sam: Cool. And then I gather you’ve got some exciting, you’ve been really working hard on this exciting news about a studio. Well, more than a studio, it sounds like it’s a whole complex almost.
Charlotte: It’s very exciting. I’m very excited about it. I’m opening a creative space. Um, so it’s going to have multiple layers and it’s going to have different, um, different things they can do. So the ground floor is like a studio. It can be, it will be a lifestyle studio. It can be natural light and it can be flash. So, um, you know, it’s got furniture and stuff, lifestyle studio. And then the second floor will have like a podcast thing. Um, this, you can change the set to your brand. Cause obviously I’m all about the brand. I’m all about making sure everything’s aligned. So we’re going to have different sets that you can switch it out to. So it can be like feminine, masculine, that can be different stuff. So it’s a podcasting set that would be videoed as well and then a headshot area and then another lifestyle apartment on top, which can also be a short term rental.
Sam: So you could air B and B stay there, do some shoots while you’re there.
Charlotte: Yeah, you can do it all. You can stay there and get all your content done, all your creative stuff done and then fly off.
Sam: Amazing.
Marcus: So you’re putting in, you’re putting in a flashlight in there. You mentioned, um, any particular brand or anything that you need to mention?
Charlotte: I have my Bowens like lights that I love. Everybody uses Godox here.
Marcus: So I guess it’s made over there, isn’t it? It’s made in China.
Charlotte: Yeah. I guess I’ll just get on that bandwagon. And then I, I did have a really good set of lights there in Bangkok. Cause I, I leave my lights in Bangkok. I don’t know what they’re called, but they’re a Chinese brand and they’re really good. It’s like, Yeah. Underdark. And I’ve had them for years.
Sam: Okay. And then the studio, are you thinking that’s for people in the local area or more thinking people coming from, so I think we talked about this earlier, you’re about an hour’s flight from Bangkok. We have customers there. So you thinking of people kind of coming maybe from Bangkok to you or even from the UK to you in this new place, or is it more for local people? What’s your plan? We’ll see what happens.
Charlotte: See what happens. Everybody’s invited.
Marcus: It’s a party. Come on down.
Charlotte: It is a party. I have a lot of returning clients within my business and a lot of my clients are really excited about it. So I think some people will travel to it, but also it’s for photographers to rent. I can rent it to other photographers.
Sam: Yeah. That was going to be my next question. So it’s going to, so a photographer could rent it, do a shoot there.
Charlotte: Yeah. Because Chiang Mai doesn’t have many studios like that, that can be rented out. Bangkok, it’s full. It’s an amazing city to rent out studios, similar to London, not cheaper. But they’ve got some beautiful lifestyle studios, and Chiang Mai had one, and it’s just recently closed. So now they’re gone.
Sam: Okay. So you are now Chiang Mai’s premium brand photography studio.
Charlotte: Or anything you want to create.
Sam: And Airbnb. Amazing. No, that sounds really interesting. So then, so how do you manage with the customers all over? So do you, you’ve got somewhere you are, some kind of an hour’s flight away. And then have you got some in the UK as well?
Charlotte: So I’m, yeah, I’m building my base in the UK. I, when I used to live in the UK, I lived in Manchester. So now when I come home, I go back to my parents in the South, and that’s where my sister is and my nephew’s. So I’m building my base there. That was a lesson, because I’d obviously done this a few times, like building a photography business in different countries. And then I came back to the UK, and I hadn’t done branding photography in the UK before. So all of a sudden I had to like find a market. And I actually did a promotion of free photo shoots. And I just went to all the networking things and just gave out seven, I might have even done 10 free photo shoots. And now I have 10 people that have worked with me. They know what I’m about. They follow me and they can tell their friends. So I think that that’s my foundation. And then next time I come back, I will build from that. That was going to be this year, but now I’ve taken on this huge project. I think it will be 2026 now.
Marcus: Yeah, don’t blame me. So just coming back to the idea on branding photography, what a branding photograph is, I did a little post this morning in our Facebook group about the photographer August Sander, who is around most prolific in the 1940s. And basically he photographed portraits of people doing things. He wanted to document Germany and what their industry was about. So he photographed people doing things. And I put up on our Facebook group a picture of a guy who was a chef. And I just made this sort of comment.
I wonder if he was the first branding photographer. So my point I’m making there is with branding photography, I noticed you do it, but is that you can look at your photographs that you take of your clients and you can work out within one or two images what they do.
Charlotte: In a sense, I like to look at it more in how they’re doing it because the person that’s searching for them has an idea of what they’re looking for. They’re like, okay, I’m looking for an accountant. So they’re already looking at accountants, lots of different profiles. We’re trying to create an emotional reaction so that they remember that picture or they’re drawn to that picture for certain aspects. That way the image is working as a marketing tool before you’ve even read the copy. So we really wanted…
Sam: So you’re more getting across who they are rather than what they are. So you don’t need, because they’re accountant, they don’t need to either be it a laptop or have a silly hat or have a book in front. And the idea is more who they are and how they come across. Because someone’s already looking for an accountant and you want to make them stand out from those other accounts.
Charlotte: That’s the meat of it, yeah. When you’re doing a big session, you’re obviously going to show what they do because that’s nice to do and they’re going to use those photos as well. But the meat of it is how are they doing it because you’re trying to attract their ideal customer with that photo.
Marcus: Yeah, and photography is particularly well positioned, isn’t it, in that you can do that. You can get that message across very, very quickly in a very short, less than a second or whatever it takes. That is a big power of photography, isn’t it, for sure.
Charlotte: Exactly, yeah. And even though video is like having its moment right now, photos are still going to be the, like we can still have that recognition, that memorability from a snapshot. Yeah, I went and went to Calais and volunteered from one photograph. Like people would make wild choices just from looking at one picture, like if it has the right emotional connection to them, you know.
Marcus: Oh, right, exactly right. You keep talking my language outside. That’s brilliant to say that. Thank you. Thank you.
Charlotte: I love it.
Sam: Yeah, thank you. Right, well, I think we’re about coming to the end of the show. There have been loads and loads of interestings of that. Yes, quite a story there, Charlotte. Quite a lot of loads of stuff to share. That was really interesting. Anya, I’ll see how many of our listeners want now to come and do a brand shoot over in Thailand. If they can persuade a client to go, that could be quite fun, couldn’t it, really? So, yes, thank you for sharing all of that with us.
Charlotte: Thank you so much for having me. I had a great time. Thanks so much. See you again. Yeah, I’d love to speak to you soon.
