Interview by Rachel Stewart, Content Director and Co-Founder
Some photographers capture what’s in front of them. Ashley King captures what people have been afraid to see in themselves. An Alberta–based photographer with 16 years of experience across boudoir, branding, weddings, and lifestyle, Ashley has built a photography practice rooted in something far rarer than technical skill: the ability to make people feel safe enough to let their guard down. In this inaugural interview as ROSE Magazine’s official photography partner, Ashley shares how growing up as the perpetual new kid shaped her lens on belonging, why vulnerability is the beginning of healing, and what it truly means to see someone, not just photograph them.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
For anyone who hasn’t encountered you and your work yet, who is Ashley King?
Oh, there’s so many things that make up who I am. I am a wife and mom to two boys. At my core, I’m an empath. I grew up moving around constantly, from Ontario to Alberta, Florida, Saskatchewan, Colombia for a while… and I never really felt like I fit in anywhere. Being the new kid meant getting bullied until people got to know you, and it meant always feeling like you didn’t quite belong. That stayed with me.
Photography became the medium that changed things for me. It gave me a way to truly see people for who they really are, not just how they present themselves, and it gave me something meaningful to give back to them in the form of images. When I share someone’s session, others get to see a little piece of that person, too. It’s my way of making sure people feel genuinely seen and heard. That’s at the heart of everything I do.
How did Alberta become home?
Honestly, it happened a little sideways. When I finished college in Ontario, I moved to Alberta for work and then I just… stayed. I’ve fluttered around central Alberta ever since, with a detour to Saskatchewan for about a year and a half for work, but I kept coming back.
Before all of that, I’d lived in Florida, spent second grade in Colombia — my mom’s family is Colombian, so I’m fluent in Spanish — and then Ontario, Alberta, Saskatchewan. I was a little bit nomadic my whole life, and when you move that much, it’s genuinely hard to feel at home anywhere.
But I’ve been here since 2009. By a longshot, this is the longest I’ve ever been anywhere. Alberta is home, as close to home as I think I’m going to get, and I’ve made my peace with that.
I wouldn’t change the way I grew up. I’m genuinely proud of who I am and I think all of it — every move, every fresh start, every time I had to figure out how to belong somewhere new — shaped me into who I am today. I’m proud of that person. But I also knew I didn’t want my kids to feel the way I felt. My son is so much like me and he doesn’t thrive in chaos. He needs routine, stability, the same school, the same friends… so I gave him that. We all just do our best for our kids, and that was my best.
What I didn’t want was for them to miss out on the curiosity that all that moving actually gave me… this genuine openness to the world, so we travel. We took them to Mexico and they were completely lit up by it. That’s the balance, I think — roots and wings. They have a home base, and we show them there’s a whole world beyond it.
There’s something very intentional in that — like you were constantly reading them, asking yourself whether this was working, whether they felt safe and happy
Those are the two biggest things, full stop. You brought a person into this world and they didn’t ask to be here, so the least you can do as their mom is make sure they get to be the happiest version of themselves that they can be. I can’t control everything. There are always going to be things I can’t protect them from. But I can control what I can control, and I’m going to show up for that every single time
You’ve built your practice across boudoir, branding, weddings, and lifestyle photography, all deeply human in their own way. What’s the through line of your work for someone encountering it for the first time?
Authenticity. I want to capture people and moments as they truly are.
There’s always some posing involved, but I also use prompting, like giving someone a direction and then layering in something that pulls out a real reaction, like an inside joke, a moment of movement, something that sparks genuine laughter or connection. I’m always waiting for the moment when someone lets their guard down, because that’s when the real photos happen.
The first few minutes of any session are intimidating for almost everyone. My job is to show up as myself — warm, present, not performative — so people feel like this is a safe place. You just be who you are, and I’ll guide you for as long as you need me to. Once things start rolling, I largely let them take the lead. I want people to feel like they can let go and have fun with it, and trust that I’ll catch the rest.
What about someone who genuinely hates having their photo taken? I’m guilty of that!
It’s harder, and I hold that honestly because the resistance usually comes from somewhere real. A body image struggle, a past experience, a deeply held belief that they’re not photogenic or not worth being seen. That’s not nothing. That’s a whole internal world I’m being invited into.
What helps most is connection before the camera ever comes out. I carve out time before every session just to talk, not about logistics, but about them. That way, by the time we actually start, I’m not a stranger, I’m closer to a friend who happens to have a camera.
With boudoir especially, I don’t take last-minute bookings for exactly this reason. I need time to build the relationship. We have a consultation first, exploring what do you want from this session? What parts of yourself do you want to highlight? What parts would you rather not focus on? I’ll go shopping with clients so we can find pieces that genuinely flatter their body and make them feel confident walking in. By the time they’re in the studio, we’ve already been through something together.
For weddings it’s the same principle. There’s the first consultation, then ongoing contact, and then a second sit-down where I build them a custom timeline for the day, which is also just another chance to check in. How are you feeling? What can I take off your plate? What do you need from me today? Most people have never planned a wedding before. I’m not just their photographer; I’m someone who has done this hundreds of times and genuinely wants their day to go well.
Everything I do, I do with purpose. It’s taken 16 years to build it this way, but I’ve set it up so that relationship-building happens from the very beginning because showing up on the day and meeting someone cold isn’t good enough – not for the kind of work and art I want to make.
That reminds me of something an Indigenous elder at my workplace often says: “relationships before tasks.” It sounds like that’s not just a philosophy for you, it’s the actual structure of how you work.
Completely. Yes, I’m running a business and I need to pay my bills, but the majority of my focus is on the person in front of me. I want clients who understand that what they’re investing in isn’t just an hour of my time on the day of their session. It’s every conversation leading up to it, every touchpoint, every bit of relationship-building along the way. I value that in them, and I want them to value it in me.
I want people to feel heard, seen, and safe. That’s the whole thing. There are photographers who charge $150 for a 20-minute session and book ten people in a day and that works for them, genuinely. But what are they actually remembering about each of those people? At a certain volume, it stops being about the client and starts being about the transaction. I’m not interested in that. What I’m after is something more like a sacred relationship with the people I photograph. That’s what makes the work matter — to them, and to me.
Every photographer — every artist, really — has a moment that redefines why they do what they do. Was there a specific session, a client, or an image that shifted your approach to your work?
Every single session has shifted something in me, honestly. But there’s one I keep coming back to.
About ten years ago, a boudoir client emailed me and wrote that she couldn’t even believe she was reaching out. When we met for our consultation, I could immediately feel that she was carrying something heavy. As an empath, I picked up on sadness especially, and she was sitting across from me full of it. I asked her, directly: are you okay? I told her she didn’t have to share anything she wasn’t comfortable with, but that something was telling me to ask. She immediately started sobbing.
She had just finalized her divorce after leaving an emotionally abusive relationship, and doing a boudoir session was her way of reclaiming something for herself. I told her I was proud of her — that I didn’t need the details, but that getting out of a situation like that is one of the hardest things a person can do and that whatever happened next, I was in her corner.
The morning of her session, she texted me saying she was a wreck and didn’t know if she could go through with it. I told her we could postpone, no questions asked. But I also said: don’t let someone else’s voice in your head tell you this isn’t for you. If you want to come, come. She came.
After her hair and makeup, she asked the makeup artist to stay a little longer, just in case. And then she turned to me and started crying again but this time, not from nerves. She said I had given her her voice back. That for years she had been told she wasn’t beautiful, wasn’t enough, wasn’t strong… and that even just our shopping trip, someone saying “that looks incredible on you,” had started to crack something open. She said she already knew she was going to love her photos, and she hadn’t even seen them yet.
We both cried. The makeup artist cried. It was one of the most beautiful moments I’ve ever been part of.
At her image reveal, she cried again and then she said she was going to do this every single year, because she always wanted to feel this way. She still does. We go for lunch when she’s in town. Watching her journey from the outside, now as a friend, is something I get to carry with me too.
That session made me understand that what I do isn’t really about photography. It’s about helping people see themselves the way everyone else already sees them.
And it sounds like it’s not just about empowerment. It sounds like there’s something genuinely healing in it, too.
There is. And I share my own vulnerabilities during sessions because of that. If someone mentions a part of themselves they’re self-conscious about, I’ll say, look, I don’t love my stomach, so I don’t do poses that put it front and centre. You’re standing here being vulnerable with me, so the least I can do is be vulnerable with you. That’s when real connection happens. And I truly believe that’s when healing starts — when we stop performing and just let ourselves be seen.
Everybody who hires me is a human being with real feelings and real history, and so am I. I want people to know this is an even playing field. I grew up with self-doubt, body image issues, body dysmorphia — all of it. So when someone walks through my door, I’m not standing apart from their experience. I’ve lived a version of it. I just hope that when they leave, they feel a little more worthy than when they came in.
I imagine there are hard days too, even times you’ve questioned yourself.
Of course. Every entrepreneur has them. The quiet stretches where the bookings dry up and you start wondering if you’re still good at this, if people still care, how you’re going to pay the bills. I try not to play the comparison game. I keep my blinders on and compete only with myself from last year but it’s hard when you see photographers charging $200 and staying completely booked, and you’re sitting there in the silence wondering what you’re missing.
But then I remind myself: those aren’t my people. The people who value what I do find me. And what I do isn’t just an hour of my time — it’s every conversation, every consultation, every shopping trip, every moment of relationship-building that happens before anyone ever steps in front of my camera. That is what I’m selling, and I am not willing to cheapen it.
I am the table. I don’t question that. I just have to trust that the right people will find their way to me.
What do you get out of it — what keeps you coming back?
The client who says I gave her her voice back. The couple who tells me I captured the last photo ever taken with someone they’ve since lost. The family who hasn’t had photos taken in five years, two kids in, who say they’re so glad they finally did it because now they have something to hold onto forever.
That is worth more to me than any volume of $200 sessions ever could be. That’s the whole thing, right there.
Is boudoir the largest part of your portfolio?
I think so, yeah. Branding is growing and I actually think entrepreneurship is its own kind of vulnerability, just as exposed as a boudoir session in a different way. Your story, your why, how you got here… that’s intimate. But boudoir is what I’ve done the longest, what I’ve fine-tuned the most, and where those deeper, more genuine connections tend to happen. It asks more of people, and because of that, it gives more back.
You mentioned branding photography. What does that look like?
It goes so much beyond headshots. I want to be in your space, watching you do what you’re actually good at. I photographed a massage therapist recently in her studio. We did everything – headshots in a couple of different looks, action shots of her working with a client, product photos for a custom oil she makes, photos of the space itself so people can picture themselves relaxing there before they ever book… It was a 360 degree view of who she is and what she offers.
People want to trust you before they walk through your door. They want to see your space, your process, your energy. A client of mine is a tattoo artist who only ever books headshots, and I keep gently nudging her: imagine how cool it would be to have photos of you actually doing tattoos? That’s where you come alive. The headshots are great, but they’re only one facet of who you are as an entrepreneur and artist.
What would you tell someone who’s ready to think outside the headshot box?
Ask yourself what you look for when you’re searching for someone to trust. Do you want to know what their office looks like? Whether it feels like a place you could relax? Whether the person behind the business seems like someone you’d actually want to work with?
Whatever you’re looking for in others is exactly what your potential clients are looking for in you. If I don’t show my studio, people don’t know I have one, so when it rains, they assume we just reschedule and maybe decide not to bother booking in the first place. The things you don’t show, people fill in with uncertainty. So show all of it: the space, the work in progress, the behind-the-scenes, the hats you wear that nobody sees. Even the ones you’re still getting used to.
Why do you think branding photography feels so vulnerable for entrepreneurs?
Because the “why” behind the business is usually where a personal soft spot is.
We’re told to build a business on our “why” but some people’s “why” is deeply personal. Mine is rooted in never feeling like I belonged anywhere growing up. That’s not easy to say out loud. I’ve worked with a financial manager whose “why” came from her own bankruptcy at 22 years old. She became the person she needed back then, but sharing that with the world? That takes courage.
But the more you open up, the more people lean in. People don’t connect with polished in the same way they connect with real. And branding photography, at its best, is how you show people the real version of entrepreneurship, not just the logo and the headshot, but the human behind it all. That inner kid who decided to build something. That’s who people are actually hiring.
What are you most excited about when it comes to contributing to ROSE?
Everything, honestly. ROSE Magazine is so intentional and so genuinely empowering, and that is completely aligned with everything I stand for. My hope is that what I contribute elevates that — that the photos people see in ROSE make them feel deeply recognized. That they see themselves somewhere in the work.
I want to do it justice. I want to make ROSE proud. And I’m just so glad to be a small part of something being built with this much care.
Ashley King is a photographer based in Red Deer, Alberta. She specializes in Boudoir, Branding, Destination Weddings and Elopements, and lifestyle photo sessions.