Glenwood photographer to pitch growing business at REV
Janna Selander of Glenwood, Iowa, will ask the judges at REV Pitch 2026 for help buying equipment for her fast-growing photography business. Selander, owner of J Selander Media, is one of five finalists who will present Thursday, Nov. 5, at PACE’s Hoff Family Arts & Culture Center. More than $21,000 in prize money is at stake. Tickets are $15 and are available at tsbank.com/rev.
The business does portrait and real estate photography, and most of its work comes from real estate. When a home goes on the market, the company photographs and films it. It also produces Zillow tours, floor plans, headshots and branding videos for real estate agents. A typical home shoot takes about an hour, depending on the size of the house, and longer when video is added.
Selander and her husband have been photographers since 2005. They began shooting homes in 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic kept people apart while the housing market boomed. Selander’s father was a real estate agent for more than 40 years, and her sister is an agent with NP Dodge, so the move came easily. “Everybody knew who we were,” Selander said. “They recognized our name with photos, and then with my dad and my sister being in the industry, I have a lot of connections.”
The company hired its first employee in March 2025 and now has 10, four of them full time. The staff includes photographers, a full-time and a part-time assistant, a video editor and photo editors. Selander said she started hiring because she could not stand turning customers away. “I’m a people pleaser,” she said. “If someone calls me and says, ‘Will you take my photos?’ and I can’t take their photos, it was stressing me out.” The company’s studio is in Omaha, and its photographers travel as far as Lincoln. Selander said she sometimes puts 1,000 miles a week on her car.
Selander said the business has trained more people than it can equip. “We need more drones. We need more cameras. We need more gimbals,” she said. More equipment would let her station photographers closer to their work, and she would like to add staff near Lincoln and in Shenandoah. “Right now we’re running all over the place,” she said. “If I could designate territories, that would make it a lot easier.”
REV is the first contest Selander has entered. She has never applied for a grant, and she said all the money in the business has been her own. Being named a finalist, she said, “felt validating.” Her assistant designed the presentation slides while Selander worked through the numbers. The presentation will include a video the company made for a local real estate agent. Selander is scheduled to pitch third, two days before her daughter’s wedding on Nov. 7. “I think it’s just a matter of me not falling off the stage,” she said, “and then we’re good.”
