Maggie Dallas: Artist, Combat Photographer and Realtor

Everyday lives of extraordinary people - an interview with Maggie Dallas by Ellie M. Blake 

“What a time to be alive!” Maggie Dallas says, as she starts off our interview by telling me the college world series, an annual baseball tournament held in June in Nebraska, is on and it’s busy everywhere. “Plus everyone is freaking out about market rates,” she adds.  

I love her energy. You never know what someone will be like, and meeting them for the first time, those first impressions speak volumes. 

In our 40-minute zoom interview, Maggie Dallas and I discussed combat photography in the military, explored creativity, talked about real estate and our experiences of social media. We also spoke about connecting with people and the pressure to be successful. 

The Military

It’s hard to imagine what it must have been like for her, just out of high school, in the military as a combat photographer, spending time in a little studio attached to the navy, but also in a foreign country on the other side of the world, far away from family and friends.

“I definitely look back fondly at that time in my life,” she says. 

Maggie starts off by telling me about how photography tells a story. As I write this blog post, I think about how playing with my camera stimulates my creativity and how as a writer, stories matter. In fact, the importance of story comes up several times in our interview. 

Mostly in Asia, from 2007 – 2012, Maggie describes her military experience as “shaking hands and kissing babies,” in that she was involved in both internal and external public affairs.

Her work involved sweating all day and being out at different events, including training exercises, ceremonies, medical units and humanitarian efforts involving vaccinations. For example, she might photograph the annual Mass Casualty Drill in Japan, an exercise designed to validate and refine incident response procedures and train personnel in the event of a natural disaster. Or there was the U.S. Navy Corpsman and Cambodian doctors providing care during the medical and dental Civil Actions Project in Pursat Province in Cambodia where over one-thousand patients were treated per day during the ten-day Interoperability Program.

Maggie viewed herself as a fly on the wall. It often struck her while traveling that “people can have next to nothing, live a simple life and be incredibly happy and fulfilled, which brings me comfort and makes me examine my own life.”

Fine Arts and Writing

After the US Marine Corps, Maggie moved into graphic design and fine arts. This led to a few years of freelancing with her own website, developing a style she describes as abstract and graffiti.  

She says:

“painting comes and goes, but will always be a part of my life. I think it’s stuck with me because I truly enjoy that process of laying it down on canvas, the movement of the brush and watching it change and morph, and color! I love color! My favorite color combos for a while were CMYK. Also, side note my ex-husband is color-blind and I always joke that’s why we didn’t work out!”

These days, Maggie will make something someone wants to buy and enjoys painting with her daughter. She no longer has an art website, but you can check her art out on Instagram @mgzdallas. 

Maggie loves to write too. 


In 2014, she wrote a piece for Insight Magazine under her maiden name. It is an account of when she was sent to Okinawa for a memorial service for Corporal Christian Rivera. 


She wrote: 
“A few men had their arms around each other’s shoulders, clutching each other and crying. This was the part I always found most difficult – remaining calm while watching grown men weep. I rarely left with dry eyes.”

A quote that has always resonated with her and is one of her favourites, is by Maya Angelou: “I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” 

Real Estate

Currently, Maggie practices real estate in Nebraska and Iowa. 


She loves hearing people’s stories and discovering exactly what they need. Her business is about trust and guiding people. 
“It’s an important time in their life, when they are making one of the biggest financial decisions, maybe ever. I aim to educate and bring a sense of reason."
It sounds like the last couple of years of running her own business have been demanding. “I’m always learning and growing, that’s important to me. When there is a deal on, my phone is attached to my hip.” 


She has a work hard play hard mentality in which she is passionate about human relations, health, providing value and making a positive impact. “Adrenalin junkie” and “hectic life” were also mentioned. 

“I feel like there’s no excuse to not be successful today,” she says. 


Trips to Costa Rica, Mexico and the Bahamas came up in our conversation, but like many of us, she’s doing less trips abroad. Instead, everything is online now. 

Social Media
Our conversation turns to social media, where we met. Maggie notes that it’s good way to connect, letting others into your inner world. “It’s like taking intimate photographs of someone.”


Photography, design and writing are all part of her social media. 

“I’m getting better at it. I’ll post when I’m doing an open house or have sold a house, where there’s new market statistics, or I have anything real estate related to share.”

Her blog posts are tools for clients and one of the benefits of being a part of the Berkshire franchise.

These are consumer-focused real estate and lifestyle content to engage with people. You might read about time management, home accents to make your home more fun, lowering your home insurance or financial moves as a new parent. 


As mentioned earlier, after the military, Maggie moved into graphic design. This included completing a Graphic Design Bachelor of Science degree at Union College and interning in marketing communications. It's no surprise then that she loves Canva, the free-to-use online tool for creating social media graphics, presentations, posters, documents, and other visual content. 


I resist the temptation to stray into the joys of Canva, which I find addictive and incredibly useful. We instead discuss scheduling posts and how consistency in posting is a challenge. 


Maggie realises the importance of being offline too, spending quality time with loved ones, pursuing hobbies and interests, as well as going to the gym.  

In many ways, she's just like you and me, but when you take the time to get to know someone, you find that there is always something extraordinary to discover. 


We end the interview by saying maybe we'll do a follow-up interview in the future. 

Maggie kindly shared some of her photographs from her time in the Marines, some of which I have included in this post, while other images, I have taken from her social media. 

If you enjoyed Maggie Dallas' incredible story, you can connect with her on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Tiktok. 


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10 reasons I connected with Maggie Dallas
  1. Her background in photography in the combat marines intrigued me. 
  2. Maggie is open to new opportunities.
  3. She creates fine art and has her own real estate business. 
  4. I wondered about her career choices and how she came to be a part of the Berkshire Real Estate franchise.
  5. Her blog posts caught my attention – ‘5 financial moves new parents should make’ and ‘How much screen time is right for your child?’
  6. She responded to me on Twitter when I asked if she’d be interested in an interview for my blog, we connected and met up on zoom. 
  7. Maggie Dallas is a cool name. 
  8. I love meeting new people. 
  9. Getting to know people makes social media fun. 
  10. Collaboration is an important way to grow and can help us in ways we did not imagine. 


Notes 
  • The appearance of U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) visual information does not imply or constitute DoD endorsement.
  • Quote from Insight Magazine - 'Remembering Corporal Christian' by Maggie Dorn, June 2014. 


E.M. Blake is the author of Dilly Dally Sally, a picture book about a duckling who is lost and won't give up. She also contributes to Write On! magazine and she's developing affordable support to make DIY marketing easy for small businesses. 

Connect with her for more stories. She especially loves nature, creativity, writing, photography and travel. 

Instagram: @mycreativeveryday
Twitter: @EllieMBlake1
Tiktok: @mycreativeeveryday
Facebook:  m.facebook.com/DillyDallySally/ 
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