Life is unpredictable. Surround yourself with good people… people you can rely on when life throws curve balls. People you can laugh with, when crying is the only other option. Surround yourself with goodness and light. That is what we’ve done, and now more than ever we are so grateful for being right where we are.
We hesitated to make this announcement today in the wake of the serious and scary circumstances we find ourselves in. However, we realized that perhaps, there’s no better time to share this news. Right now is exactly the time when all of us, especially couples planning their weddings in the midst of a pandemic, need some extra help.
So! With gratitude and hope, and with a realization that we need to keep business as usual as much as we can during this time… we would love to introduce you to our NEW interns! We are so pleased to announce that this year, 2020, we have brought on a pair of photography interns to assist us!
If you remember, we spent two years working with assistants several years back. This was such a wonderful experience for us! We adore all of our former assistants, and we’re so thrilled to see them growing in their careers now! The last time we brought assistants onto our team, we specifically formatted their duties to be that of an assistant. We were not interested at the time, in training a budding photographer. So we sought out aspiring wedding coordinators, and during their time assisting us at weddings, these ladies grew and learned so much! Now, they are full time wedding coordinators!
This time around, we wanted to do something different. Something more beneficial to our couples, to us, and to the interns we bring on. Over the years, we’ve been approached by numerous aspiring and young photographers, asking us to begin a mentorship program or offer a seminar for new photographers. Jumping into the realm of education was never something that interested us. In fact, the mentorship programs, education courses, and seminar/workshops we attended for our own education left us with mixed opinions on the whole thing. In a small number of instances, we felt that the education we received was worth the investment and very useful to us. In many instances though, we felt that we had invested in education that was not valuable to us, feeling more like rephrased and redesigned information that was all the same. The education world felt very artificial to us, and we didn’t want that. We left every event saying to one another “you know… the best way to learn how to photograph weddings would be to just follow a photographer around all day. That would be the best thing ever!”
Last fall, we photographed a wedding in DC and the Groom’s niece approached us to ask for our cards. She was entering college as a photography major next year, and wanted to know if we offered mentoring sessions. She emailed us the next day, and we thought it would be fun to break our rule and sit down to a coffee with her to just give her some advice for fun. The next week, we ran into an aspiring photographer at a popular photo shoot location. After introducing ourselves and chatting for a bit, we invited her to shoot us an email so we could grab coffee one day.
Then it hit us. Like all other good things we’ve done for our business, the idea for this came out of nowhere. It was just handed to us. In fact, it doesn’t feel like we thought of this at all. The idea was planted and it was immediately clear. We should ask these young photographers if they wanted to just come and intern with us. They said yes right away, and we got to work immediately. We adore these ladies and we can’t wait to introduce them to you!
Here’s what’s different about these interns:
This time, our interns are photographers. Their goal is to become a professional photographer, and with that passion, we know they will serve our couples so well. Will they be photographing weddings with us? Not right now. Right now, our interns are there to assist us with the task of photographing a wedding in other ways.
Will they be interested in learning the photography aspect of weddings, rather than the coordination/planning? Absolutely. That will make this set of interns more than assistants. They will be training. Training to find the light the way we do. Training to pose couples like we do, organize bridal parties like we do, choose the right lenses, stage details, choose backdrops, edit and photograph weddings the way we do. We want our couples to have the best wedding day experience we can give them. With a 3rd set of hands, we can be better photographers when we aren’t running to find a bobby pin. Our interns will do all of the little things necessary to keep photography running smoothly. They’ll assist our couples, their bridal parties and families in anyway possible to help make the day amazing! We’re thrilled to grow our team, and it feels so good to welcome these young women to the flock!
Meet Amber and Hayley, the newest members of the Birds of a Feather team!
This is Amber…
This is Hayley…
This is all of us, super excited for what’s to come!
2020 WILL be an amazing year. We WILL get to photograph lots of joyful, laughing, dancing, toasting, couples on their wedding day, and we’ll do it together. We’ll figure out rescheduled weddings, we’ll make it happen, and we’ll get through this scary time. This, we know is true. And we know that these ladies will be with us the whole way.
Find your people. Surrounded yourself with the good ones. Hang on tight, and put one foot in front of the other.
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