I grew up in Muskegon Michigan and had a pretty fantastic childhood. My parents are incredibly loving and always took great care of me and my brother. My parents own a car business so my lifestyle was a little different than most. My dad shut the car lot down every fall to go hunting and took my brother hunting a lot as well. I spent a lot of time with my mom who is rather crafty so she taught me a lot of artsy things early on in life. My personality it much more like my dad. He has an incredible sense of humor and is pretty witty. I always had a lot of fun with him joking around. He is the most easy going guy I had ever met until I met Ryan.
I have had lots of hair styles and colors and different looks along the way. Some of them are far too embaressing to even post. I have just always kinda seen myself as a creative outlet. There is so much you can do with hair, makeup, clothes and style. I figure hair grows back so why not let it grow then hack it all off super short for a big reveal! Then in the growing process again I get to try a bunch of new things because some cuts don’t grow out very well, haha…but style has been something pretty important to me. I really encourage people to really think about who they are and what their style is before photos. Personality shines through in pictures so strong but so does a lack of personality as well. It is far more fun to be who you are than to try to fake being something you think you “should” be. I developed most of my personality at college. I attended Baker College for my Associates degree for my first two years because it was close to home but in 2005 transferred to Cedarville University in Ohio to get my Bachelors in Graphic Design. It was the first time I way away from home and really the first time since I was really young since I had friends so it was a pretty great experience even though the actual classes were fairly hard on me. I have always had a pretty strong work ethic but college really tested that for me. If anything, it made it strong which has helped a lot in being self employed now.
After graduating from college I went back to Muskegon and realized that I had changed so much in college and really figured out who I was only to come home to a place that was filled with the old me. I couldn’t get a graphic design job because muskegon has a terrible economy and I wasn’t about to work that hard for the extremely low pay that graphic design in not-so-thriving cities have.
So, I thought photography might be a great thing to shift into. I certainly had a good eye for creative things and already had an interest in editing pictures. I wasn’t about to go to more college so I went online and just started looking through other peoples work for inspiration. I found this guy whose work was pretty decent and decided to email him to see how he started. Turns out, he was just starting out, was self-taught and was looking for a logo and website to help start his business. We decided to do a trade, I would make him a logo and website and he would teach me the technical side of photography.
Naturally, we fell madly in love and got married 11 months later. This is when I moved to kalamazoo and when the business really started taking off. Ryan is the best thing to ever happen to me. He was the missing piece to the direction my life was supposed to have. Photography has proved to be what I was meant to do, not graphic design. Having the design skills that I do have now come it handy for this business so everything kinda worked out in that respect. So we are moving out of kalamazoo this year and going…well…we are not sure yet. We are going somewhere else. :) We live life kinda spontaneously and love traveling so hopefully we get a few traveling weddings for 2010! :)
As far as the future is concerned, I guess I’m not really sure of much. I know that Ryan and I will still be having great times together and I know we will be doing photography. What kind, i’m not even sure of that. We would really like to have a taste of every part of this industry but for right now, weddings are our speciality. We probably won’t do it forever juts to mix things up, but we have become really good at it since we have done so many so we defnitly have a few good years left of this. :)
by Holly
no comments