Why We Started A Photography Business Together

Best Friend Files, Personal

February 15, 2019

The start of our photography journey is attributed to two things. Our fashion blog that lead to our love for photography, and Chelsea for being brave enough to start her own photography business in 2016.

While we still had our fashion blog up and running, Chelsea began to take pictures for her family and their friends. This was around the time that JP and I were planning our wedding. I asked Chelsea to be my photographer for many reasons, but most importantly, it was because I couldn’t imagine anyone else capturing my wedding day. There was no one I trusted more to take my photos than Chelsea. Being her first wedding, she did an amazing job!

Shortly after my wedding, Chelsea received more inquires for weddings. One inquiry was from one of our high school friends, and one was from my sister-in-law. With the new inquiries coming in, Chelsea asked me to join her, and we haven’t looked back since.

Letting our fashion blog go was the best decision we made for our photography business.

We made the decision to completely stop blogging about fashion. You can read more here about why we started a fashion blog in the first place, but we felt that we couldn’t keep up with two businesses. It wasn’t realistic, and we no longer felt like being a fashion blogger was for us. Right before we changed to photography, the fashion blog left us unfulfilled and uninspired. We always felt like we needed more. New clothes with fresh content. We didn’t like the pressure that we felt to buy more material items, and in all honesty, we weren’t making any money to pay for our expenses.

In life you have moments were you know your gut is telling you that something isn’t right. Well, we began to feel that way about Music City Mavens. It didn’t feel like us anymore. 

Despite the fact that we gave up the fashion blog, we are so thankful to everything we learned in those early years. Aside from photography, it taught us more about who we really are and about the importance to staying true to ourselves. Have you heard of the saying, “By being everything to everyone, you’re nothing to no one”? We tried to wear too many hats with our fashion blog. We had tabs on our site for travel, cooking, fashion, beauty. We wore clothes that didn’t really fit our style. We didn’t hone in on a niche or brand. I don’t think we even had an idea of what a brand really was back then. Looking back on those years, we realize how little we actually knew.

Focusing on photography felt so natural to us.

We loved that we no longer had to be in front of the camera; we had so much fun photographing other people. The time spent after my wedding and before our first wedding was used for learning as much as humanly possible. I believe that is when we took our first shooting and editing course too. We tried to prepare as much as we could. If you want to know more about how to prepare for shooting your first wedding, then you can learn more here.

We knew instantly that we wanted to specialize in wedding photography.

We love the idea of shooting weddings and engagement sessions. It is such an honor to capture one of the biggest milestone moments of people’s lives, and we don’t take it lightly. We love the elegance of a wedding day. It is such a fun time when you can get dressed up and celebrate with your loved ones. Plus, we loved being able to beautifully curate and capture images that people would treasure for a lifetime. Knowing that our images become a family heirloom is such a huge honor!

Photography as a whole allowed us help people document different stages of life. From maternity sessions to anniversary sessions to senior sessions, we love knowing that our images will be kept for years to come. We know that life is short and time is fleeting, so photography is a way to capture life.

We Love Being Business Partners

There is no doubt in my mind that God meant for me and Chelsea to be best friends. I can remember back to my Sophomore year of high school when I really needed a friend. I had people I spent time with at school, but I didn’t have a TRUE friend. You know, the kind you can talk to about anything? I prayed at the beginning of 10th grade for God to send me a best friend. One that was similar to me, and you know what? He answered my prayers. It is so crazy how much God works in your life. You never know how much he does until you really pay attention. I’ve never met someone who is more like me than Chelsea. You would think that we are sisters, and we’ve been mistaken for sisters, even twins on multiple occasions.

One of our biggest similarities is our creativeness.

Looking back to our high school years, I just know that we were always meant to start a creative business together. In high school, Chelsea had the idea to put a style guide together for upcoming freshman. We had to wear polos while we were in school, so she thought it would be fun to put an inspirational guide together to help other girls dress for school. She saw a need and she wanted to create something to fill the need, which was the first sign that she is a true entrepreneur; she just didn’t know it at the time.

So when I started reading my first blog in College, Gal Meets Glam, we jumped at the chance to start a business together.

Because we were best friends and so extremely similar, we knew we would make great business partners, and we love every minute of it!

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