Approach to Photography

We believe that photography offers priceless gifts to you, your community, and future generations to come. We care very deeply about our clients and are invested in every single story we have the privilege of learning, capturing, and telling. We want you to see YOU represented in our work. Above all, we believe that photography has the potential to empower and liberate those with marginalized identities by telling their stories. 

Client Commitment

Xiaopan Xue photography welcomes all races, genders, loves, faiths, and abilities. We are especially passionate about working with women-identified humans, folks of color, and LGBTQ identified humans.

Core Values

Authenticity, Connectivity, and Social Justice. 

These three values are infused holistically into Xiaopan Xue Photography’s business structure, operations, and ethics. 

The relationships that we build with our clients is one of our most valuable assets. Having the privilege of hearing someone’s story, their ambitions, and their dreams isn’t something we take lightly. We will always seek to learn about our client’s identities, backgrounds, and goals so that the photography experience from start to finish gives our clients a significant and meaningful return on investment. (We also just love expanding our friendship circle and network too. More people to change the world with!).

Equity and Inclusivity are our two main pillars of social justice.

We operate on these core principles: 

We must learn how and why we and others are oppressed in order to dismantle the systems that do the oppressing.

We are lifelong students, always learning and growing. We do not believe in the ‘woke olympics’.

We always seek to understand others and their stories. We believe that this makes us better human beings, armed with the powers of storytelling to create social change.

AUTHENTICITY

CONNECTIVITY

We firmly believe that there is no place for racism, discrimination, and prejudice. Police brutality, tokenization of folks of color, and rampant racism is real. Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) are disproportionately affected by racism and racist acts. It is our mission to use photography, our privilege, and our voice to advocate for social change and to create change itself.

SOCIAL JUSTICE

We value organic and authentic moments. We seek to help our clients capture their genuine selves and moments on camera. We will never ask you to be someone else or to hide your true identities. Every human being is beautiful, unique, and worthy of being captured. We seek to amplify your vibrations visually so you can accomplish your goals.

Xiaopan Xue photography is committed to putting money into just causes and supporting women, POC, and LGBTQ folks. 

Our bookkeeper and tax preparer are both women of color.
All of our second shooters are women of color-identified humans.
We believe in addressing humans by their pronouns and the name they would like to go by.
The humans that designed all of the amazingly aligned branding, web design, and edited this paragraph you’re reading are both women-identified humans.

We do all of this not for accolades or public recognition, but to show that we know money talks and we put it where it matters. We believe that small businesses are the lifeblood of our community and make the world a better place (when they are inclusive, ethical, and equitable).

Xiaopan Xue photography compensates any contractors and team members the amount that they should be paid. Transparency is always offered — we don't believe in being shady. Above all, we believe in community over competition. If historical events like the Civil Rights Movement and the events that have transpired in 2020 during the pandemic can show anything, they show that standing together in solidarity and actively working together is the best way to dismantle unjust systems. We believe in working with our fellow BIPOC/POC humans in every single way imaginable both in our business and outside of it.

How Xiaopan Xue Photography is using it’s platform to create change...

Our Why

We are big believers that everyone's story matters and we don't have enough representation for marginalized communities. Xiaopan’s passion for social justice, equity, and inclusion comes from her training as a higher education administrator and educator. She spent 2 years in graduate school with about 30 other amazing humans learning about what social justice is and what it looks like for each human. This experience was truly life changing and eye opening for her. In her day to day, Xiaopan seeks to use concepts like Community Cultural Wealth (Yosso 2005) and Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Freire 1968) to critically inform our business model.