Although at times the process seems like it has been slow going, in reality, the business has taken off! The first 2 weeks of August 2007 I enjoyed being unemployeed. :) I did NOTHING and loved every second of it! By the time the third week rolled around, I was really itching to get my photography business started.
I worked for a portrait studio in Louisville, KY and Jacksonville, FL for a year and a half, and in that time, I had 1000+ photo sessions under my belt. Due to copyright laws, I had to leave all those pictures behind and start over. Because of this, the only sample pictures I could legally show were ones that I had taken in photography school from 2003 to 2005. My style (and skill) had changed quite a bit since then, so I had to start from scratch building a new portfolio of work.
I've said before that my favorite subjects to shoot are high school seniors, and that's who I would love to have as the bulk of my clientele. (Don't worry kids & families, I love ya'll too, but I can only pick one favorite!) :)
I decided that if I wanted to shoot high school seniors, I had to have sample high school senior portraits to show. So, I called up a cousin of mine, Brooke, who was a junior at that time and I asked her if she would model for me. We shot for 2 hours, 2 days in a row because I had so many ideas that I wanted to try. I spent the next 4,287 days sorting and retouching the 19,8263 pictures that we took. (Ok, so maybe I exaggerated just a bit, but that's what it seemed like at the time!) I picked my favorite 10 images or so and had business cards made. I kept half and gave the other half to Brooke and her mother, Gina.
That's it. That's how it started. It took no time before calls started coming in scheduling appointments. I stayed booked the whole fall season! I owe a huge "thank you" to Brooke, Gina, & Tyler! Thanks guys!
Just for fun, I'm going to post a few of those shots from my first photo shoot as Jessica Edwards Photography.
**Oh, and you can view Brooke's Senior Book 2 blog posts below**
No comments:
Post a Comment