My full-time photographer era
A couple weeks ago, photography went from being my beloved side hustle to my full-time career.
I’ve been a photographer since 2012. While much of that was spent in the (very) amateur capacity and with a focus on portraits, in the early days of the pandemic I really leaned in to building a legitimate business that focused on wedding photography. Having recently left my client base in Ohio upon moving to Chicago and knowing essentially no one in the city who was close to getting married, I had to build my client base from scratch while simultaneously convincing people to hire someone who had attended maybe 4 weddings in her lifetime to photograph one of the most important days of their lives. I invested countless hours and money in education, workshops, styled shoots, free sessions, second shooting and networking to learns the ins and outs of wedding and couples photography, as well as small business ownership. For the first 10 weddings I booked, I made an Oscar speech-eqsue announcement to my family & friends simply because I could not believe that I had convinced another pair of strangers to hire me to photograph their wedding.
My love for photography started when I was a freshman in high school when I picked up my mom’s “nice” camera one day after I’d hit my TV limit; I started taking photos of every blade of grass, flower petal, and rock in our backyard. Once I exhausted every square inch of nature around the house, I turned my focus to photographing people.
Summer 2013 - The summer after my sophomore year of high school, I spent two weeks at the SOCAPA arts camp in Burlington, Vermont. This experience was pivotal, as it was the first place I learned how to shoot manual, my first time learning from a professional photographer, my first time in a real photo studio, and my first time smelling Mary J in public.
I was *that* girl in high school who would take photos of her friends in fields and upload the 700 photos to Facebook. Cringey as they were, it was a springboard to realizing I loved taking photos of humans. I became so energized by being able to capture people and their beauty as I saw them, turn my camera around, and make them stop and say, “....Damn, I look GOOD;” especially at the age I was at the time when everyone, especially teenage girls are sadly questioning everything about their appearance. I spent my high school and college years learning from professional photographers and graduated from casual friends-in-fields photoshoots to formal senior portraits and dabbled in families, newborns, headshots, college grads and couples. I quickly became known as ‘the friend who takes photos,’ and I loved it. When I created my first photography Instagram account, I named it “photogretchy,” with the intention of it being pronounced like phot-ahhg-retchy (clever, right), yet instead everyone started calling me Photo Gretchy. Gross. But now I laugh.
During my senior year of college, I had the opportunity to second shoot my first wedding alongside an incredible photographer who grew up in my neighborhood, and ever since I graduated college in 2019, my focus has been on weddings and couples. When I moved to Chicago in the summer of 2019, I started reaching out to local wedding photographers I found on Instagram, asking if I could second shoot for them. At the time, my wedding portfolio was beyond minimal. After a few encounters with generous local photographers, I had several more second shooting opportunities under my belt along with a few workshops, and I was ready to start taking on my own weddings as the lead photographer in 2020.
Photographing weddings has been such a joy, an adventure, and the most fulfilling photography I’ve experienced. Being allowed in to capture a couple’s first day of the rest of their life together surrounded by their closest loved ones is an experience I will never take for granted. Wedding days contain such a range of contagious emotions - joy, excitement, euphoria, energy, amusement, anticipation, nostalgia, gratitude, and above all, love - all types of it. I’m such a hopeless romantic; I love love. I love observing others’ love for each other, and being the one who gets to document all types of love on a wedding day for incredible people is the best job I could ask for.
Summer 2016 - The summer after my freshman year of college was spent photographing senior portraits for the rising seniors at my high school.
For much of the last four years of juggling both a full-time corporate job and running a wedding photography business on the side, I always swore I would never make the leap away from corporate America. I had grown up surrounded by people who entered the traditional 9-5 workforce at 22 years old and left it or had plans to at retirement age (with the exception of my 89-year-old grandpa, he’s still crushing that CPA life). When it came time for me to choose a college and a major that would be the precursor for my first job in the real world, after attending a two-week intensive photography sleepaway camp in high school, I toured SCAD to flirt with the idea of pursuing higher education in photography. However, it was a quick decision for me to choose the traditional route instead, thinking “it’s too risky to rely on earning a living in the arts.” So on to Ohio State I went with plans to become a physical therapist, which was also fairly quick to fade after two semesters of chemistry. I then pivoted to a degree in strategic communications and a minor in business, interning at advertising and marketing agencies in college.
I spent the first 4.5 years of my post-grad life working in marketing research at a public relations company and then at a tech company in Chicago. Working for five years in corporate client service with multiple Fortune 500 companies as clients taught me so much about client management, organization, accountability, project management, expectation setting and so much more. I enjoyed both 9-5 jobs, the corporate lifestyle and the security that came with it just enough to tolerate the abnormal stress levels that I experienced for months on end each year over the summer. For the last four years, most of my days days for about six months straight during the best time of year to live in Chicago have looked like this: wake up somewhere around 5-6am, workout, get ready for my 9-5, start my 9-5 (whether at the office or at home), some days enjoy the work and others struggle to convince myself I was enjoying the work, stare at the clock all day waiting for it to be 5pm to begin chiseling away at my miles long photo to-do list of tasks I consistently enjoyed, shovel down a sorry excuse for a dinner, start editing around 5:30pm until 9, 10, 11pm, repeat. Each year I have had maybe have five days on average in a six-month stretch where I did not do anything work-related, for either job. As I’ve gotten older, I noticed that even though my photography workload remained about the same each year, my energy levels at the end of the day after my 9-5 to dedicate to my business and the work I really loved began to wane. I used to be able to stay up until 11pm each night editing, though that has quickly changed over the last couple of years, as nowadays, 9pm hits and my body and mind says it’s time to go night-night.
Spring 2022 - My first double header weekend and first wedding(s) wearing a walking boot photographing a wedding while recovering from an injury, an unfortunately common occurrence as I’m the most clumsy athletic person I know. This wedding was in Galena, IL, and I was at O’Hare the next day at 8am flying to Cincinnati for wedding #2 of the weekend, followed by a 9am start time for my corporate job the day after that.
Spring 2022 - Aforementioned boot and part II of my first double-header weekend
Spring 2023 - In Charleston, SC at the famous Lowndes Grove for the Bespoke workshop
For the majority of my time juggling both jobs, it was a badge of honor for me to wear proudly that I somehow managed to show up and perform well at my 9-5 and maintain a growing business on the side. I would beam externally whenever someone said to me something along the lines of, “wow, I have no idea how you do it all.” I would often exude my best Elle Woods “what, like it’s hard?” energy, while the reality was that I was so busy and stressed all the time from working and juggling everything in my life that I never really had the time to stop and think about how it was really, really f*cking hard and definitely unhealthy in many ways. I was spread so thin that I was not able to give 100% of myself to anything - not to my 9-5, not to my art, not to my clients, not to my relationships, and definitely not to myself.
The problem for me was that while my 9-5 work-life balance was pretty good, my (9-5) work/(photography) work/ life balance was in the garbage. Every time prior to 2023 when I would daydream about “what if I went full-time with photography,” that daydream would end in a few seconds when I realized that at the rates I was charging in my earliest wedding days, I would have had to book 40+ weddings a year (probably more like 50+) which would mean having no time at all for a personal life. Work-life balance is important to me, even if I wasn’t practicing what I was preaching for the last few years, but I knew that if I ever made the leap to full-time photo, I wanted to maintain a healthy work-life balance and not give up every weekend each year to my job, no matter what it was. I love this job more than I’ve loved any job, and I still want to have the freedom and flexibility to have a fulfilling personal life outside of work. While working my 9-5 job, I could only reasonably take on 8-10 weddings per year, depending on the dates. This year was the first year I was saying no to new inquiries far more than I was saying yes and with substantially higher prices. It made me realize the demand for more than 10 higher priced weddings per year was actually there, and I could reasonably start allowing my daydream of “what if I went full-time with photography” to last more than a few seconds.
There were many reasons why I ultimately decided to make this leap, many of which are listed above. Above all, I have realized how short and precious life is. On my last day, I knew that if I looked back at my life and I never took this bet on myself to spend my weekdays doing the work I loved, I knew I would regret it. Sure, there was security in the corporate world and being a one-person DINK was nice, but at the end of the day, the extra money and stability was not worth the stress and lack of self-care I was putting myself through for months on end, year-over-year, and I definitely wasn’t going to give up on photography. Roughly two weeks since my last day in corporate America, I can’t begin to describe how different I’ve felt; I’m so much lighter, my mind is so much more clear, I’m not walking on turbo mom-walk mode everywhere I go anymore, and most of all, I’m excited to wake up and work for 8 hours straight every day because it’s work I love.
The list of people and things I’m excited to have time for that I haven’t had time for regularly over the last four years is longer than a CVS receipt. A few of the things I’m looking forward to having time for: my mental health, reading, cooking, cleaning, meditating, stretching, leisurely walks, day-time fitness classes, Duolingo, writing (journaling/comedy), TV watching without a laptop in front of me, and sooooo so much more.
Now to the Oscars speech thank you section for anyone who has (and probably the only ones who have) made it this far:
I would not have been able to do both for as long as I did without having two incredible managers and countless other supportive coworkers, and grand-managers (idk if that’s a thing, but that’s how I’ve always considered my manager’s manager). From speaking with friends, family, and coworkers, I know just how lucky I’ve been to have had fortune of two managers at my full-time corporate jobs who have cared way more about me as a human being than as an employee, and my other coworkers at both jobs were just the same. For the majority of what I’ll call my corporate career stint #1 (and maybe only one), I was thinking I’d be in it for the long haul with no interruptions to pursue photography as my career, so I was in it from 9-5 each day ready to put in the work and excel. Because of this, I was able to be open with my managers and coworkers about my side passion and not only did they acknowledge I had a life and other interests outside of the hours of 9-5, but they were some of my biggest cheerleaders and even occasional clients. Without these leaders creating an environment in the 9-5 workplace that fostered support for their employees as well-rounded humans and exploring our passions after 5pm, I probably would have given up my little side hustle years ago. I can only hope that there are so many more current and future managers and leaders out there like this to encourage and celebrate everyone on spending their off-hours on their budding side hustle, relationships, activism, hobbies and passions, which at the end of life we’ll look back on as the more fulfilling piece(s) of life than our 40ish hours a week making more money for giant, for-profit corporations.
August 2023 - My first wedding after making the decision that I would be leaving corporate America. There was something so different about the experience of photographing this wedding, knowing that I had this special little secret that this would soon become my full-time job. I walked a little taller and prouder that day.
For all of my current and past clients - thank you for trusting me to capture some of the most important moments of your lives. Thank you for welcoming me in to these precious and intimate moments with your person, your family and your closest loved ones and for treating me like I’m one of them. Thank you for following, for engaging, for leaving reviews, and for referring me to other people. I’m amazed every day that such incredible humans continue to find their way in front of my camera.
I’m also incredibly thankful to be surrounded by the most supportive friends and boyfriend. For every Chicago summer Saturday, Sunday Fundays and wine nights I’ve missed and will continue to miss on occasion for weddings and editing, they don’t hold it against me and continue to cheer me on. With this new flexibility and freedom of defining my own schedule, I’m so looking forward to being able to show up more frequently and more intentionally for them and all the important people in my life. The way they’ve received this new transition in my life with nothing but instant, genuine excitement without a shred of doubt, skepticism or questioning has been such important fuel for me.
Lastly and most importantly, I want to acknowledge the major role my parents have played in the evolution of discovery, education, and foundation of my business. I was fortunate enough to have my first “nice” camera gifted to me by my parents at a young age, as well as had parents who, once they learned I was not only talented but also very interested in this new (and expensive) passion, they encouraged me to attend an intensive arts camp across the country for two weeks to hone my skills. I was also fortunate to attend a school that had photography and art classes where I could continue practicing and learning. I like to say that learning about photography composition and how to shoot manual at such a young age like I did is likely akin to learning a new language or instrument at a young age; it comes easier than learning it later in life. Sometimes now looking back it feels so natural that I almost feel like I just woke up one day knowing everything I know now; that also has been a gift. Finally, I am so thankful to have parents who are supportive of and are excited for me in this transition away from the traditional career path.
I could not be more excited for what this next chapter holds. I’m going into it knowing that there’s always the option for me to return to corporate America if I want or need to, but for right now, I’m hoping to spend at least the last three years of my 20s navigating as a small business owner and photographer. I know being self-employed and running my own business as my full-time job is not going to be a walk in the park, but I’m so excited to see where this goes and to learn and grow along the way.
Only downside is that I hear my new boss is a real piece of work.
