Kim Ortiz Portrait Art Feature in Austin Business Woman

thanks for having us at your beautiful studio yeah thank you for being here i'm so happy to be here tell us more about your work tell us how you became a photographer sure so that was a long time ago in 2008 my daughter who's now 20 was three and you know i've always been a creative person like i've done scrapbooking jewelry making all we had i always had a camera and so i thought you know i'm just gonna take some pictures of her and i decided i took a class at the community college and then i'm like oh this is actually really fun so i decided to launch my business but i was working full-time in an internal audit back then my background is in accounting and finance and i'm also a cpa which is kind of strange because most cpas don't have the right brand creative side so anyway i launched my business part-time and i specialize in seniors this is in dallas in 2008 and then i did it part time and i realized that my time away from my daughter on the weekend was just really important um so i had to charge appropriately and i charge like a business so i did that for a few years but i always realized in my heart that i wanted to do this full-time eventually have a studio and every year i would go to work and i never felt like sort of satisfaction and i had this little sign i think it's sitting over there it's called has love right in the middle and then it has do what you love and love what you do and i carried that sign everywhere to every job i had and it sits right in front of my desk and i would look at it every day and i'm like one day i'm gonna do what i love so in 2012 i got laid off from baylor healthcare i was in hr and that was the turning point of my photography career and i said to my husband you know what i'm just gonna do what i love i'm gonna open a portrait studio and do this full time and he looked at me and he's like are you crazy and i said yes i am and then three months later i built a studio from the ground up at a retail storefront place in my community of castle hills in dallas and it was amazing my first year i did really well the second year i was almost at 200 000 in revenue and then it just continued on so i was here for five years and moved here to austin in 2019 so this is my second studio wow congratulations it's a really inspiring journey thank you how did you decide to specialize in family portraits and portrait art and art portraits and pets of course yes so you know i truly believe that you have to do what you love so when i was in dallas and i had my first studio for five years i did mostly high school seniors i had an ambassador program i did 15 to 30 seniors a year and then it was just really great most of my income came from seniors but then i started to add in families at first it was really hard because you know as seniors it's just one but family get like 10. i have a family of 26 ones and that's a lot more challenging and but i got better at it and then i realized families wanted big wall portraits because what's more important than your family right on your wall so i started doing really well with families did lots of families and then of course pets i mean i mean who doesn't love dogs right so i have six dogs i don't know if i told you that but i'm a huge animal lover i have six rescue dogs including of course here's leilani her name is leilani princess leila on instagram um but she is my latest rescue and i even have a hawaiian dog that i adopted from kauai so i'm a little crazy about dogs and i always love dogs and i always love photographing them and i do a lot of fundraisers for animal rescue so that's my other passion but yes i just love families dogs high school seniors and i originally started launching into the 50 women 50 and over because i'm 54. she turned 54 this year wow really yes it's hard to believe thank you you're clearly a happy person happy birthday oh we thank you it's the dogs and we see this beautiful portrait behind you is it your work yes so it's one of my wonderful families in dallas i did the family i did her sweet 16th i did her high school seniors i did the dad's headshots so literally i photographed pretty much everybody in the family with multiple different options but i this is uh the hong family and they're just a beautiful family and so it's a premium product that i have i want to be known for it it's called a mixed media painted portrait so it starts with the photography and then there's multi levels of editing and printing and hand painting so in the end you get this beautiful painting and it has acrylic and oil hand-painted and it looks like a beautiful piece of art like an art like a painting and it's just that um you can get this at a fraction of like an actual commission where you commission an artist to come and you know you have to sit there really still so this is completely different but you get similar result at a fraction of the portrait price so a piece like this runs about five to six thousand dollars without the frame which is very reasonable considering that it's a legacy piece yes definitely it goes from generation to generation and it's very true to life right because it's big expression right there is no much artistic freedom which is great for family yeah but it is one of my favorite products that i offer so you know like i mentioned i do portraits wall portraits of families and dogs and seniors um but the painting is what i want to be known for as the mixed media painting we also noticed that you have this beautiful setup for christmas projects oh yes i bought it how did it all come to life so six years ago i took a mentor course from a well-known uh photographer he's known as the uh the santa portrait photographer and i did a whole workshop with him so i learned how to create the santa's magical experience and all of my set that i have set up right now is all antique and it's set to the night before christmas so you know people think about santa photos as like mall santa you sit on the lap you click and you're done well my santa experience is like set at the night before christmas and it's a private setting in my studio here at the hill country galleria and everything in my set is our antiques that i've collected over the years actually i bought a box last year at an antique store in solano salado near georgetown and i opened it up and it had the inscription of the person from canada like 1800 so i did a little google and i found out some information about the person i opened the box and there's like a 1912 newspaper so it's actually still in there so everything in the set are old and antique and so the kids they get to spend 20 minutes private in the studio with santa i have the best santa in austin he is very bonus here's the real santa he flies in from the north pole and he's santa phil he's very well known uh he's very popular but i am the only studio in town here in the v cave like travis austin area that just the night before christmas santa's magical experience so the kids come in and they get this private interactive experience with santo when they get to see if they're in the nice book or do they make the naughty list the kids are always like so worried they make the naughty list and when they see the expression their their name in the nice book oh my gosh i sit back and i get to capture the whole interaction and their face when they see their name in the nice book it's just amazing and then we move on so i help guide this transition from scene to scene and after the nice book we do magical painting with santa of course the magic is added later but the kids don't see they don't they really believe that they're actually painting with magic with santa and then santa adds some magic to the brush and it's just so magical and the kids love it then we move on to going to the globe which is over there there's an antique globe so santa will show them like where he flies in around the globe on christmas eve and then the kids get to twirl the globe and then they tell santa where they live so it's and then he adds magic too and the kids look up and they're like oh my gosh there's the magic so there's lots of magic in my santa's experience then they get back and they get to sing and then the elves call from the north pole in the red phone and then they get to talk to the elves and bernard who is the main uh elves from the north pole he really gets um excited and then tells the kids all the toys that they're making for the kids and the kids really get excited and then after that we sing all kinds of different songs with santa and then they get to see if they got the gift certificate that if they made the nice list or the naughty list and they love that and then they leave with cookies from that mrs claus but baked for them so a nice warm uh sugar cookie that mrs claus made and santa hands it out to them and they're just so excited but so my whole experience is not just like people think oh i'm just gonna go to the mall wait in line forever get sit on santa's lap and then click and then we're done this is no line private appointment they get to enjoy time with santa and just have the most amazing experience so most of the clients that do this they always get a beautiful beautiful album that tells the story that i capture set to custom poetry that i write so it's it's really beautiful it's over there and we can show you in a little bit and then or they can get a beautiful metal paint a portrait of one of the scene and it becomes a piece of art so they hang it it's framed in gold and then the parents hang it on the wall year round they don't take it down because it is like a piece of art it's not just sanitation so i want people to realize that my santa experience is very special and i love it santa loves it the kids love it the parents love it and they actually come back because last year had one boy his name is maddox and he was seven months old and they did a wall portrait and then this year he came back at 19 months and he loves santa and it can actually interact with santa this year and it was so awesome so they did a beautiful album to tell the story and then another painting i mean portrait so that they can see the difference the transition between seven months and 19 months and they're gonna hang it like next to each other so it's just a great way to capture that legacy and one day that album that he has he can read to his kids when he has a family so it's one of those that it passes down to generation i know actually i'm very passionate about it well i couldn't tell no it's a wow it really is an experience it is it is a very difficult day with santa it is yeah elves and magic so it's not it's a process oriented yes it's an experiential experience so it's just like getting to enjoy the night before christmas really getting believing that you're there with santa the night before christmas and reading the book read oh i forgot they all should get to read the bible and pray with santa and that's very special to a lot of parents so yeah of course uh well you seem to have picked the most difficult models for yourself it's pets and it's little kids so how do you manage them on the set and who are harder to work with oh yes so dogs and kids i would say dogs are easier because i can always entice them with treats and with kids it's a little bit harder especially kids under five um i like with santa's i do kids ages six months to maybe nine are ideal ages for santa but um kids in general if they're five and older i'm really great at it under five sometimes it just depends on their mood right but with dogs it doesn't really matter how old the dogs are either puppies or their senior dogs as you can see leilani like this is dogs they kind of gravitate toward me anyway because they know how much i love dogs and dogs have that ability to recognize a person who loves dogs so i'm known as the dog whisperer and i know how to get the dogs to pay attention to tilt their heads i make weird noises i always tell the parents i'm going to make some weird sounds so don't be freaked out if i make weird noises but your dogs can react to me and then i use treats and you know different squeaky sounds but i'm always able to get some beautiful portraits of dogs and a lot of times i'll ask people so would you like to include your dog in the pet family portrait session because i always love to add dogs into family portraits because dogs are family too right and they're like oh no no my dogs are really really misbehave i'm like don't worry about it bring your dog we'll get beautiful portraits and then when they come to see the design consultation appointment where i designed a wall portrait like how did you get that like i told you i'm the dog whisperer but there's certain tricks that you have to do as a photographer who specializes in pets and families to get the dog's attention and so a lot of times people would hire a photographer who does families and not realize that there's a special type of person or photographer that is good with dogs and so if you want family portraits with your dog or dogs by themselves you gotta make sure to find a photographer who specializes in pets because it's a little bit different um there's certain things that and they also have to love the dogs right because if somebody doesn't like dogs and they're doing dogs the dog senses in my way so yeah that's true they can tell us yes does it look like she's mellow now like she's she's really enjoying the interview and what was the most memorable project oh you know as you know my passion for animals and for the last 10 years i started in dallas i have been doing a pet calendar fundraiser where i photograph dogs they have to enter their dogs and then we have to do this huge voting on facebook it's very competitive and i also liked a local shelter and i raised money and donated too so this year i just did my 10th year calendar and charlie is the winner and it's the 2022 calendar and i select a safe refuge of central texas to donate the money to so i have raced over the last nine years not counting this year which is the tenth year twenty five thousand dollars that i have raised and donated so for me that's my biggest project very passionate about it it's very time consuming but for me i love it because i have six dogs that i all that i rescue them from rescue you know different groups and i just love to help these animal rescues save more animals from being euthanized so safe refuge stands for the safe park stands for save animals from euthanasia so what they do is they go and they rescue all these little dogs from small town animal shelters and then they give them home so it's just really one of those passion projects that i'm very passionate about and i love raising money all kinds of fundraisers i love giving back to the community that's my big thing so the calendar is one of my biggest projects and it's you know my 10th year now and i'm launching i just launched in 2021 another project and it's going to continue into 2022. um it's called the tails of austin coffee book fundraiser project so this project is going to be even bigger and has a lot more meaning to me because it's going to be a project a book project where the dog has to apply and based on their story i will select them to be part of the project and for a hundred dollar donation to safe refuge again um i i donate all of that of course and then they get a portrait session on my two acres property on lake travis it's beautiful the lighting is gorgeous and then the dog gets a portrait in the in the coffee book and then the parents mom or dad um get to write a love letter to their dog which basically tells them how their dog has saved them from whatever like for example let me share my story of leilani leilani's going to be in the book too actually all my six dogs because they all have a story so leilani was rescued by rescue row and i adopted her three years ago when she was i think she was one she was the cutest little five pound dog and lexi who is my studio dog for 12 years her porch is all over the studio she was a long-haired chihuahua and she was my heart dog like i love her so much so much so anyway i'm gonna cry i always cry when i tell this story so lexi passed away unexpectedly after a next surgery and i just went into major depression but then leilani came into my life and i saw her and i rescued her and she saved me so after i adopted leilani i cried for like half an hour in the car and she's with me all the times i love her but i always cry when i tell the story so the book is about how your dog transformed your life and saved you and the love the love letter that the owner writes to the dog that goes into the book is all about how i know how how all about how the dog has made an impact on the person's life so there you go i cried on team on camera but i do that all the time and that's why i'm so passionate about dogs and portraits and how you know how dogs stay only with you for like maybe 10 15 years of your life but if you do a portrait of them and their hair it's a painting or a wall portrait it hangs on your wall and it lives forever so as you can see lexie's over there with the painting she's over there she's over there she's everywhere so when i'm here at the studio i have lexie with me um and of course my body's here all the time so that's why i'm so passionate about dogs and families and families are part of the dogs are part of the family and so every time i do a family portrait i always ask the family do you have a dog and they're like yes i'm like well let's include your dog because they are part of the family and people in austin they love their dogs i mean this is like the perfect uh city for dog lovers and dog porch dog portrait photographer artists like me because there's a dog on every corner um actually here at the galleria where my studios locate the hill country galleria um i am putting on a dog cost halloween costume fashion show next saturday it's going to be at the main center called the central plaza and we're doing a fashion show was a dog costume contest and there's gonna be three sponsors me kim ortiz portrait art and then camp bow wow and then healthy pet which is at the galleria so we're gonna have prizes for different categories it's gonna be so much fun and i'm raising money for divine canines as you can tell everything i do has some sort of fundraiser aspect to it because i believe that we as business owner we are given a gift god gave us a gift and so we can use that talent that gift to give back to those um in need or of passion that you're very passionate about which for me is anything dealing with animals so i just kind of love that and is it the choice to have all rescue dogs or was it okay so i am all about animal rescue but i have to tell you that lexi was not a rescue dog she was my long-haired chihuahua for 12 years my husband gave her to me as a gift for christmas after my first dog taxi who was a long-haired chihuahua and a rescue died and i thought i was gonna die too because you know we love our dogs so much so when one leaves us we feel like part of our heart has been ripped away but so lexie came into my life at two and a half months and she like lilani loved me like just so much and so she was my heart dog and um all the dogs after her are rescued and i do a lot of volunteering and do you know vlog i donate my services to any rescue organization or foster parent that has a dog that wants to bring the dog to my studio and i will photograph the dog at no charge so that the dog can get adopted and i have helped so many dogs get adopted especially black dogs so that's kind of one of the reason why i end up with six dogs because i it's so hard when you're seeing these dogs and you just want to take them home and but six is a lot and i think i capped it at six so we have six i have a husky sasha uh lava doodle uh apollo he's actually in that portrait over there he he got married i married him to his wife but she moved to costa rica they had two babies together and then i have makai who i adopted we went on vacation to kauai and he's actually hawaiian and then i have malia and then chloe who's a 10 11 year old chihuahua she's the oldest and the smallest and then leilani who is four three or four i'm not quite sure so uh the six dogs are called the six-pack and they're cute so i was thinking about if that i should get a shirt that says on the front do you want to see my six-pack you know like people think you have a six-pack like you're ripped but then on the back it would have my six dogs so i thought that was a cute shirt i may i may get something and make it like that is your family jealous of your six-pack oh my husband is oh my gosh my husband well my husband is jealous of my six dogs but i love my husband i just he's kind of number seven i know and he knows that he understands it i mean the dogs all sleep on the bed and so he gets it that the dogs do come first even though i love him we've been married 23 years and then my two girls one is 29 and one is 20. they all know the dogs come first too but i love my girls too and my older daughter ashley it was an emily she just got engaged and she's getting married next year so she you know how many dogs she has she followed her mama's fifth steps she has four frenchies and her fiance has a german shepherd and so for their engagement surprise a month ago all the dogs were in it it was really crazy i could show you the video but yeah so she is a crazy dog mom like me and she has a huge instagram following with her dog i think she has like 13 500 followers on her dog's instagram page called stanton odin oakley emma and forgot whatever the dog's name is that's who we need to keep those names yes she keeps adding she keeps changing the name because she keeps adding dogs to it so i'm like honey don't get the don't get to the six-pack but she did play a joke on me about a month ago she said mom i just got another dog and it was another frenchie and i was like oh my gosh you got a six-pack now and then she goes mom i was just playing with you i'm like oh so so she's stuck at five that's pointy that's a good wedding gift you can give her another one no i did give her a wedding gift of a wedding photographer because i don't do weddings so yeah so i want her to have the best portraits so i did hire a photographer where do you see your business in five ten years from now do you want to do it forever or do you want to change something so in five years i mean i would love to be known in the austin lake travis e cave area as the portrait artist that does painted portraits of families and dogs and high school seniors because for me having that beautiful painted portrait of your family or dog or your high school senior who's going off to college that you can see every single day and then one day you pass it down to your kids and they pass them out with their kids you know when you go to the museum you see these beautiful pieces of art i want to be known for that in this area and so this painting behind me for me that's what i want to do um i do wall portraits now but not all of them are paintings and so i want to be known for that and that's all i want to focus on is paintings but you know it'll take a while to get there because people purchase what they see and so the more they see paintings of families or dogs or high school seniors in my clients home they're gonna go oh who did that and they're gonna be like oh kim ortiz you know put your art over at the hill country galleria and she's amazing or you know whatever yes yes because they are amazing well and i guess my last question uh are there any anything else that says dogs portrait art that you're passionate about yes okay so uh before i go into the fun facts i have a lot of passion in regard to that but i turn 54 this year and in the window i have a self-portrait i did on my 54th birthday in march with leilani i did it by myself and um i decided that being 54 and all the things i've gone through like i came here from vietnamese of refugee when i was eight in 1975 so that's a long time ago and i was the first to be graduated from high school and college with my family and then i did my career in accounting and finance for so many years but then i thought i found my passion which is you know doing portraits and creating something for people that will last forever but this year when i turned 54 i realized i've gone through a lot in my life and changed careers multiple times and finally found what my calling was what my why is right and so i just launched a really cool project called 50 over 50 and the goal is to help to give women who are 50 and over i could be 100 i would i did a portion of a woman who's 100 once it was amazing but this project it's only for 15 women and it's going to be done in my studio they can hold transformational experience they get hair makeup they get styling i have three boutiques that i partner with here at the galleria and then they get the whole portrait session in the studio we have lots of fun i discover what they're passionate about how i want to make them feel empowered what they love and then by the time they leave they will feel so amazing about themselves and get to share their life story with me that will be in a magazine that i create so it'll have their portrait and then their story and then we'll have a great exhibit party like a champagne party after i do all 50 women so it may take a while um so the information is on my website kenmorecheese.com 50 over 50 and i really would love to get that to be more people to participate in it and it's like an amazing value it's 390 dollars with a 1290 value because they do get all of that plus an 8x10 but they do have the option to buy a portrait box if they want to there's no obligation so that's my new passion another passion of mine that i want to um my studio to be known for also this is you know being 50 you know nowadays it's so hard to turn open a magazine and not see you know anyone over a certain age so we as women 50 and over like i don't feel 54 at all i get often asked yeah you don't look like you're i think age is just a number right um i think it's just a mindset of how you feel and you know i feel i don't feel my age at all i want to help women feel empowered beautiful and we sometimes have negative self-talk and we want to lift other women up too so that women should lift other women up and i think that's really important to find that true friendship authentic friendship with other women i'm searching for that too of course it is hard um so i am very excited about this 50 over 50 project other things fun fact that i want to share is i live onto acreage at faces like travis with these amazing sunsets and because i'm so passionate about hawaii um i am 15 polynesian but i didn't know that so i did my dna because i'm vietnamese and every night i would watch this beautiful sunset like two months ago we had the most amazing sunset so i have this blog page on facebook called aloha hacienda i named my property aloha so every night there would be a photo or a video of a sunset and i just love just staring at it and just pretend i'm in hawaii i turn on hawaiian music and i'll drink the glass of wine and just hang out with leilani and the dogs but i just love it and then i also love fireworks i'm crazy about fireworks and i love maui and i love food i love food and of course i love dogs and um one day i want to retire in maui so that's the goal on the beach one day we'll find you one day yes so i made a rule that all my future dogs have to have hawaiian names so that's why we have malia makai and leilani so who knows what the next name would be i would i would name my dog maui or kona or um you know this is just i always put a lot of thought into the name that i pick so leilani means um heavenly flower because she is she brought heaven she came to me because i needed her and so she is rightly named heavenly flower leilani princess leila so those are all the things i'm very passionate about and i'm passionate about being involved in the community in lake travis where i live i'm very active in the chamber i'm on the leadership like travis as a leader and we just went through a whole day last week called retail day and it was so much fun to help my team do this we launched it here at the studio and then we spent the whole day going around all the local businesses it was super fun so now we can just relax and enjoy the best of the days that we do a different day every month um so i'm very active in the community i belong oh i just got inducted into the rotary this morning so the rotary if you don't know is an organization that's international and they do support local and international projects like they stopped polio did you know that the rotary and here in lake travis our local rotary we're selling raffles um for 100 and you get to a chance to win a brand new cadillac sedan and the money goes to support different projects like there's a school down in south america that they use the money for to wait to build school for the children down there and then here like travis we give away scholarships to like travis high school so that's those are the things i'm very passionate about i love having money to give away so my goal is to become independently wealthy so that i can give and give and give freely and that's my passion that's my why thank you so much from the community and of course the dogs yes and she's got used to you now so she's very comfortable now not scared anymore thank you

2021-11-27 04:10

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