Miss Gunner's Ashley Schuberg on the Instagram life

She may have a Bachelor of Science at Macquarie University and a Bachelor of Oral Health at Sydney University, but these days you’re much more likely to find Miss Gunner’s Ashley Schuberg twirling the streets of London as she turns Instagram posts for companies such as Microsoft, Shopbop and the Four Seasons into visual pieces of art.

So how did the beakers and dental chairs of her university days give way to the world of blogging, Instablogging, and YouTube? Well, with a passion for fashion, travel and lifestyle – Ashley created the ‘Miss Gunner’ platform in 2015 as a way of embracing this intrinsic side to herself.

Swiftly gaining an engaged audience (so swift in fact she was awarded by Cleo Magazine in 2015 for being one of Australia’s fastest growing influencers in the fashion space), Miss Gunner soon became Ashley’s full-time gig – ditching the dental chair at the beginning of 2016.

With Ashley recently touching back down in Australia for Mercedes Benz Fashion Week Australia, we grabbed her aside for a quick chat about what a typical day in her life looks like – plus the ins and outs of the influencer life.

What does a typical day in your life look like?
On a normal day in London, I would wake up around 6am and go into my basement (which is my workspace). I’ll work there until about 10am. If I have a meeting, I’ll catch the Tube out. I try not to get too many ubers – but if I’m shooting, I’ll catch an uber and try and scout out really beautiful locations. I’ll then catch up with some friends, PR people, and then come home and try to go to the gym. The week is usually pretty full-on with things happening all the time. I also travel about once every fortnight and go somewhere which is fun – but can get tiring!

Does your partner go with you?
Not always, so he gets a little bit whingey after a little while! He’s like “I miss you, I never get to see you anymore!” but that’s part of blogging. You just do what you have to do.

How often do you shoot?
I shoot probably about twice a week. Winter is really hard – it’s tough when it’s snowing conditions and I have to go out and look pretty! And you can’t wear onesies and your pyjamas out – you have to look cute and it doesn’t look cute when you’re wearing three layers and puffer jackets! So I tend to be freezing to death in winter, but I’m looking forward to summer in London and just shooting some sunshine there for a few months. I try to shoot a different area of London every week just because it’s so big and I want the feed to be super pretty and floral. It’s fun scouting new locations in London!

Are you planning to stay there?
For now. I think I’ll be there for a little while. It’s good fun! I love it there.

Do you ever get downtime, and if so – what do you do?!
Very rarely! But I do try and switch off on the weekend now. Before I use to post over the weekends and just keep working, working – but now on the weekend I try and take some time off. My husband was like “Ash, you need to treat it like a job – like 9-5, you can’t just keep working continuously”.

I’ll easily go back home and edit until like 1am every night – it’s like the Lightroom and Photoshop life. And now with YouTube, it takes so long for me to edit a video – so it pretty much consumes all my free time. But I do try on the weekend to hang out with Scott and just go for a drive.

We also have a rule that one day a week we don’t take our phones out with us. I think initially I was having anxiety attacks, I was like “No, but I need my phone” – but now I’m like: “Wow, this is really nice”. We’ll actually sit down and connect with each other properly. I’m normally constantly working and looking down at my phone – so when I’m having dinner with someone, sometimes I don’t even look at that person because inside my head I’m thinking about all the other stuff! I do think it’s important to keep that work/life balance.