A LOVE story....

A little less than a year ago I decided to get away for a much needed retreat....I headed out to my cousins house out in the country and spent a couple days out there.

While out there I was laying in the grass one day near their pond looking up at the beautiful sky and just started dreaming....thinking of everything that God wanted me to do! All of a sudden after praying a little bit I had an idea!! A MUCH needed photographer's personality workshop!! No no no! I swore I would NEVER do a workshop...(I thought they were overrated...)

I then went inside and was reading in one of my absolute favorite books about how the author was considering not writing it because he thought there was an over abundance of books! So this one would just be another duplicate! NO! God had given HIM something specific that would help tons of people out and he had to share it and not back down! I decided then that I probably should run with it! I didn't quite know where to start though!

A couple months later my incredible friend Mary Marantz emailed me saying she had been thinking ALLL morning how we should do a workshop together! I emailed her back wondering what her thoughts were about it...like what we would want to cover and such...she emailed back and to my amazement covered the same things that had been put on my heart months ago plus some more! I knew her and her husband Justin were the perfect fit for this especially because of their incredible and infectious personalities!

SOOO we are doing it!! YAY!! Basically we are going to be covering a TON of areas...how to really show your love to your clients through: how to interact with them at the shoot, how to bring out their real beauty, to them becoming your friends, and how to fall more in LOVE with what you do...AND so much more!!
I think it was absolutely perfect too that 2 months ago right when we started planning this my friend DJ ran survey on the importance of YOUR personality on his forum and the statistics were incredible!! Check it out **HERE**
Also.....duh duh duh.....the BRAND NEW....SPREAD THE LOVE WEBSITE!!! www.spreadtheloveworkshop.com
....and HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!! I love you all!

So Blessed!!

I’m sorry I’ve gotten in the habit of being a blog slacker lately…I just added up today..I’m officially blog slacking 5 blogs! Yikes! Haha! All for a good reason though! Well anyways…this weekend was one of the funnest(I’m making that a word for this post) weekends! After shooting the wedding on Friday we got up Saturday to do a training session/photoshoot! It was my first mini-workshop training up my interns for this year which I have a total of 5!! I’m soooo excited about this!

We started out with a 3 hour overview of photography, business, marketing, slideshows, blogging, and Pictage. I realized after that why most other photographers have a couple day workshops! Everyone was pretty much trying to pack all the info in! Afterwards we headed to Oak Park in a 6 car caravan(YIKES)…now one of my favorite places to shoot, we had a couple models: my friend Sarah Chellappa, her brother Steve, my brother Andrew, and sister Natalie. They were excellent models and definitely knew how to work the camera!

We didn’t want to stop…we finally ended the night with Panera after getting kicked(by a very nice security guard) out of the parking garage we were shooting at…It was such a blast! I think I’m going to do this more often because I found out that I get more joy out of helping others start up their businesses and get into photography than even being in photography myself! Haha! Who knew!

All the photographers at the photoshoot were: My wonderful interns(minus a couple who weren't able to make it): Beth Laurren, Kristen Leigh, and Morgan Matters(Morgan is my newest one and she is AWESOME! More about her coming soon!); Bryant King(who I’m training up in photography), and Tricia Lee(A Wonderful photographer who just moved here from Atlanta and came to hang out for the day!) I am sooo incredibly blessed with all the amazing people God has put into my life! I laid in bed Saturday night just in awe of how blessed I am with these people! Enjoy the slideshow!