This Is Me....the long version

I started my photography business because I enjoyed taking photos and people starting asking if they could pay me for it. At first I was resistant because I had little education and experience in photography, and my degree was in graphic design. I slowly came to realize that this was it. That photography was what I wanted to do, and I just figured it out a little late. Sometimes, you just have to stop thinking about what you should do and start doing what fits.

My life runs on Jesus and my kids. There is nothing I love more.

Personally I want to always be changing and growing. I struggle with so many things and i never what to give up on creating a better person, wife, mom, daughter, sister and friend. :) I want to be able to support my family with this business. Now that I have had my kids I feel like it is time to take my self and my business off the back burner and really focus on making a living doing what I love.

I want to move this business into a more professional field. I love shooting young kids because my kids are in that stage as well, but I also need my professional space and time. I love food photography and retail photography. I want to expand my knowledge and business in that way.

Creativity and entrepreneurship were a huge part of my childhood. My dad's side of the family was riddled with entrepreneurs and my mom's side of the family was in to any creative process. My paternal granddad started a sun-glass company that sold for millions. If you talk with him about his business you can't help but come away with the entrepreneurial spirit. My great maternal grandmother was a photographer, and my granddad enjoyed shooting as a hobbyist. My grandmother was an amazing seamstress and my mother was constantly doing crafts with me and my sisters. So it's no wonder where my creative business bloomed from. When i was a kid me and my sisters made a catalog as a Christmas gift for my parents. Like complete with photos where we convinced friends so pose for us and and put it all together in a book with descriptions and pricing for our used clothes. I know what your thinking...."that is the exact present my parents were always dreaming of" 🤣

In the past five years I have become a wife, mother to 3 amazing kids, I have stopped shooting weddings, started shooting newborns, dabbled in food photography, bought two homes, grieved the loss of my Mother's ability to walk and care for me and my kids, moved out of a beloved studio space, and built a dream studio. That is so much change is so little time and it has been the most difficult years of my life. I have learned that I can do hard things. That I have so much power inside me and that with God I can do all things. I have learned to change directions if I need to and rely on God to make everything fall into place. I will continue to shift and change and learn as I go. I have learned I will always have something to learn.

I took some film photography classes in high school which started my journey toward the love of photography. I even tried to create a dark room at home, lol. That didn't pan out but the love of photography stuck with me.

I took a few more photography classes in college but there was not a degree at that time for photography so I went with graphic design. I graduated in 2009 and set out to work with my mom and sister doing wedding invitations. While we started planning our business me and my sister worked together in a call center doing utility billing. If there is ever a job that propelled entrepreneurship, this was it. Telling people that in fact they do have to pay for the water that comes out of their faucet was fun, but we had bigger plans. We could not wait to get our business going so we could put in that two weeks notice. All the work paid of in the spring of 2011 when we both quit. In 2012 My sister had her first baby and I met my future husband. We had to get rid of invitations and focus on Photography because it was hard to keep a balance and we could not compete with big box companies. We were struggling to make enough money for 3 people and that caused a lot of tension and stress for us all. In 2014 my sister had her second baby and decided that stepping away from the business was what was best. My mom also decided this at the same time. I purchased the company form them and moved forward on my own. 2015 I got married, bought a house and it was my first full year as a sole business owner. I did many things wrong and have learned a lot in these past 5 years. 2016 I had my first baby, in 2018 I had my second and the third came in 2019. After my first was born I knew that weddings were not going to be in my plan going forward. My sister was right, children take first priority and a business that once was my baby got pushed aside. I shot the weddings that were already planned and prayed that God had a solution for me. That next year 2017 I shot 75 newborn sessions alone. Plus about 200 family sessions. This gave me the confidence that I was doing the right thing. The next few years are kinda a blur. I added two kids and went through a stroke with my mom that left her unable to help me with childcare. This stroke happened in the middle of the busiest month of my entire year. I was scrambling to still work and deal with the emotional pain of the stroke. In 2018 I was asked to move on from my studio that we began in. It was a 500 sq foot little house on my grandparents 11 acre estate and it was incredibly hard to imagine my business functioning without it. I had two and a half babies and was forced to pivot my business plan significantly. I was able to move to a new home in 2018 that allowed for a little studio to be built in the backyard. The process was long and hard. It is still in progress, but I am starting to reap the benefits. I am still trying to recover and pivot right now, 2020 has been a disaster for everyone and managing a business during this time has been more than I can handle at times. I am so grateful my sister is always willing to listen to me and help in whatever way she can. I am grateful for a husband who work tirelessly so that I can care for my kids and work part time as a photographer. I am ready to push this forward to a place where he can enjoy the family we have built and stop missing out because of work.

I am so many things, but mostly I am just human and I feel like that is something that we are need to remember about one another. Work hard, love hard, and give grace.