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Kirstie McConnell of www.classicoportraits.com and www.classicoportraits.com.au will be well known amongst pet photographers and long-term listeners to the podcast.

Originally based in Adelaide, where she was South Australia's first specialist pet photographer before cofounding The Pet Photographers Club with equally talented photographer, Caitlin McColl.

She has appeared on the podcast multiple times, where she presented two separate Masterclasses on how to Set up for Success as a Pet Photographer and How to Successfully Move into Pet Photography.

Since then, she met, fell in love with and married a handsome Italian gentleman and moved to Italy, where she started a brand new business — Classico Portraits.

It hasn't been plain sailing, but she's built the photography business into something special, where she averages $5000 for her tourist portrait sessions.

Now... she’s relocating back to Australia and planning to hit the ground running as she starts over, again, with her new photography business as a Gippsland & Mornington Peninsula photographer where she'll be focusing on families, couples and pets on adventures.

In this interview, Kirstie shares exactly how she moved from pets to premium portraits and reinvented her photography business.



Here's some more of what we covered in the interview:



How a move to Italy reset Kirstie’s creativity and sharpened her positioning
Why she pivoted from pets to luxury family portraits—and what changed in her sales
The “start from zero” plan: building a client base in a new country without a network
Turning tourism partners into a pipeline: hotels and operators with €400+/night guests
SEO as the quiet workhorse: ranking in multiple Italian cities for high-spend enquiries
From pets to people: what transfers, what doesn’t, and how to price for the jump
Cold outreach that compounds: 380+ targeted emails, and why she doesn’t follow up
Same-day sales, poolside viewings, and the buyer experience that lifts average order value (AOV)
Marketing across cultures: what landed in Italy and how she’ll adapt for Australia
The relaunch plan back home: blending family and pet sessions under one brand
Scaling with help: when an associate photographer makes sense (and when it doesn’t)
The mindset that carried her through the messy middle—moves, marriage, and starting over








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I just reached out to, like, everybody and anybody that I thought would be a good business partner for me, which, you know, in Tuscany in the tourism industry, is like everybody. — Kirstie McConnell
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