About a year ago, I took an entrepreneurship class at BYU. I take a class every now and then with the intention of graduating one day. Working 60 hours a week on weddings doesn't leave a ton of time for homework. ;) In the class we got divided up into groups, and a large majority of our grade involved starting a brand new business and generating a specific amount of revenue by the end of the semester.
Given my existing business, I saw this as a wonderful way to kill two birds with one stone. We started up an advertising business for our first (and primary) client- Whitney Lewis Photography LLC. It was fun, successful, and we found some very effective ways to increase my market exposure at the time. Another happy side effect of this class was that several of the class members were able to find a superbly talented, creative, and outstandingly attractive photographer for their own weddings!
Erin and Cole booked me to shoot their wedding in Newport Beach, CA, which we did just a couple weeks ago. Katie and Chris were looking to book me for their wedding in October in Oakland, CA, but unfortunately I was already scheduled on their wedding day (headed back out to my hometown Austin, TX though! oh yeah!). So we ended up booking an engagement session, and might be doing a formal bride and groom session before the wedding. I love formals, and think that every bride and groom should do them. They frequently produce the best photos from the entire wedding package, they are low stress, and a great trial run before the wedding. Plus, we get to pick the perfect time of day to shoot and lots of fun locations. But I'm getting distracted.
We started Katie and Chris' engagements at the Tahitian Noni Gardens (officially the "Morinda Gardens"), and finished up at the Riverwoods Mall nearby. They were both so cute during the shoot; I loved how their personalities really came through and that how happy they were was able to just pop in every photo. It seems to jump out at you, sprinkling happiness all over your monitor screen. As an additional bonus, Katie used to be a dancer; I love working with dancers because they are often so easy to pose and natural in front of the camera. Katie was simultaneously elegantly graceful and stinking cute. It was great!
"Scooch on over closer, dear...." :)
But my favorite part of this shoot was how cute and colorful Katie's outfits were. I suggested that they bring a few different outfits with different colors, and she showed up to the shoot with this enormous duffel bag. I'm pretty sure it contained her whole closet. It kind of made me feel like I was ten years old again, playing dress up. So fun!
See Katie and Chris' complete engagement gallery here.
