How this all started

A few times a year I'm asked how I got into photography. My pat answer is that I started out in a photo lab and gradually shifted to my first love, photography. But there's a bit more to the story than that. I am involved in a wonderful on line forum of professional wedding photographers, many of whom I have known for 10 years or more. These are my colleagues, my co-workers, my water cooler buddies...they just happen to live all over the country. While I love my job, it can be very isolating. The on line community has been wonderful because if I have a concern, or a problem or a question about technique my answer is just a post or an IM session away. Today as we got in a few newer members someone suggested posting an "about me". Oh here we go again, I thought. How many times have I done this? And most of the people on there know me as well as my family members (and to be truthful, maybe even more than my family in some ways) so I was kind of at a loss as to what to write that everyone wouldn't already know. Someone then asked; "How many weddings have you photographed". Huh. I had no real clue. I know I shot my first wedding in 1997, that I only shot a handful year and I went full time in 2000 with 25-30 per year. So I pulled some old paperwork and did some ciphering (not my greatest skill, believe me. It's a freaking wonder that I understand apertures and shutter speeds).

Imagine my utter shock? Fascination? Horror? To discover that barring any additional bookings this year on December 31 when I shoot Jennifer and Colin's New Years wedding that will be wedding #300. How in the world did this happen? How is it that by the end of 2008 300 couples will have entrusted me to photograph one of the important days of their lives?! How damn lucky am I?!

So, how this all started. Back in the day, in a land known as 1980 when most of you were not even born, I was a high school photography geek. I had it all; the stonewashed jeans, the feathered hair, The Cure blasting on my walkman and the mighty Pentax around my neck because I was on the yearbook staff. I loved taking pictures and I loved working in the darkroom especially since the chemicals irritated my asthma and got me out of A LOT of PE classes. I hated PE almost as much as I hated math. After high school, I went on to UW-Stevens Point where I majored in English Literature and Theater, totally unrelated to photography, except that the Theater minor has proven useful when dealing with an especially bitchy bridesmaid once in awhile :)

After college, I married and we moved to Cocoa Beach Florida where I had my first son, Caleb who will be 15 this summer. Since clearly Caleb was the most amazing baby EVER born, I took on average two to three rolls of film of him per week to send photos back to Wisconsin to the grandparents. This was well before Al Gore's internet and we used regular mail to send real photos. Oh yeah, it was old skool. Because I was always in the one hour photo lab, I got to know the girls in the lab who worked there. One day as I was dropping off film one of the girls noticed that I had on like real clothes, make up, and no baby puke on my shoulder. I glumly told her I had to get a part time job, we needed a bit of extra income and I was on my way to a job interview at......McDonalds. So it ain't no joke when I say if I didn't know how to do this I'd to this day be saying "Do you want fries with that?" They hired me instead, and thusly my photography career was born. If you are ever in Cocoa Beach and are at the famous Ron Jon's Surf Shop, look across the street and wave to the Eckerd Drugs where I got my humble beginnings. At the photo lab I learned to print on machines and took every course they offered on photographic color theory, negative densities and film emulsions. In 1996 we moved back to Wisconsin, by this time I was pregnant with Joey, my second kid. After Joey was born, I got a job in a little photo lab in Menomonee Falls called "Photo Depot". Caleb thought I took pictures at the Home Depot and remained confused for years as to why I would do that for a job. After I started shooting weddings he would tell people that "I chased the girls in the big white dress at the Home Depot". To this day when I leave for a wedding he says to me "Time to chase the big white dress?"

At Photo Depot we had a small portrait studio and I became more and more interested in the photo sessions. The lead photographer showed me what she did for a few sessions. "Put this light here, put this light here, set the camera on this". That was the extent of my lesson. One day the photographer called in sick, and my boss said "You can do the sessions, right?" Uhhhhhhh. But I did. I had NO idea what I was doing, but I loved it. After doing that for a year I thought maybe I should actually go to school so I understood what those settings on the camera actually meant. I enrolled at MATC and did their two year photo program. During that time I worked part time at the lab, went to school part time and had two toddlers. One day someone asked me "Do you photograph weddings?" Uhhhh. Sure. I reasoned "How hard can it be? I shoot two year olds all day, it's got to be easier than that". Foolishly, I showed up to my first wedding with ONE camera, ONE lens and ONE flash. For my photography buds who read my blog, if you want a good chuckle, this was my gear bag; a Canon AE-1, a Tamron 28-200 5.6 and a Canon 380 flash. Oh, and a bitchin' star filter for the ceremony that turned the candles into like ACTUAL STARS. I had no insurance, no back up equipment and no clue. The wedding was at St Mary's in Menomonee Falls, and the reception was at The Kettle Moraine Bowl in Slinger. Yeah, baby. The dinner buffet had lime jello and raw beef on it. I was so clueless as to not even be scared to shoot the wedding.

And shoot the wedding I did. Which lead to more weddings. Which lead to me then deciding that I should maybe learn more about shooting weddings. When I joined my first online wedding forum in 1999 I began voraciously reading about how to actually have a business doing it. When I found out how horribly irresponsible I was being shooting weddings without a clue it was then that I got scared. Holy cow...sales tax, marketing, insurance, errors and omission liability,estimated tax, self employment tax....I just wanted to shoot pretty pictures. But by then I was hooked. I bucked up, called the photo supply store and ordered back up equipment to the tune of 2K and promptly burst into tears, sure that I would fail within the year and would have camera gear that cost more than my first car. I took marketing classes, I took photoshop classes, I went to every seminar and joined every club I could find in Wisconsin related to photography and weddings. In 2002 my accountant called me and said "Is this right? You spent 12K on professional development this year?" Yep, I had. And yep, I lost a heck of a lot of money that year. But every single seminar, ever single photo critique I sat through feeling my soul ripped out was was worth it. I had found my calling, and I got damn lucky finding it. And, no one was hurt in the production of those early weddings, but there ain't no way I am showing you my star filter pictures from back then.