Welcome Back, and we apologize for such the long break from the blog.
With the state of the world, we had to take some time away to really figure out what our next moves would be or if the dream of being able to eventually be full time wedding photographers had just gone out the window right as we started to gain speed and traction.
That being said, we are here, we are back, and we are stronger than ever and moving forward in the “post corona” world. Now, I put post corona in quotes, because lets be honest, we are very much still in it, and probably will be for a long time, but at some point we have to get out of our houses and move on with our lives, even if that doesn’t look exactly the way it did before.
The world looks different, travel abilities looks different, and even the wedding industry as a whole is starting to take a very different shape, but that doesn’t scare me or my husband, if I’m going to be completely honest. We will continue to follow the guidelines, and respect the wishes of our couples and their other vendors, but at the end of the day, we are still photographers and plan to continue as such. Sometimes, Change can be Good, and we’ve seen that a lot over the last three or so months of quarantine. All we ask is that our couples and their guests have the same respect for us that we do for them in this trying time.
Next week, we’ll be back with your regularly scheduled Photography nonsense blogs, but I just wanted to make a small post about the times, and say that we are back and looking for new clients to go on this new wedding industry adventure with! Look forward to all the content we have coming up, oh and ALSO, we are now advertising with the Wedding Pro Group (The Knot and Wedding Wire) so you can find us over there, we would appreciate if any past clients went to our homepage and clicked the “Review Us on the Knot” button and left us a review there 🙂
First client shoot of the new year, something that can be totally nerve racking or something that you can let shape how the year is going to go. I prefer to let it shape a good thing for the new year ahead of us, and that was the mentality we went into this weekends shoot with.
This weekend, we drove up to Tampa to have an engagement shoot with Jacqueline and Aaron at the beautiful and historic University of Tampa campus.
Being Daytona based, and Orlando/Brevard County Frequenters, locations in Tampa were a new thing to us, and this magical old architecture and piece of history made us wish we lived closer, but the couple that showed up to shoot with us was even better.
Full of life, love, and absolute dorkyness this couple was a breeze to work with. Having been together for 6 years, but known each other for much longer, these two knew each other inside and out and it showed in the final product…even if it was windy and cold the entire shoot.
In 2020, I made a personal goal to focus more on the business and try and get us to a place where maybe in the next 3-5 years I could go full time with the business and not have to juggle what is essentially two full time jobs at points in the year.
So this year is a year of firsts for us. We did our first wedding expo, we started the year off with our first (true) destination wedding, and now in the month of January we add on not only new clients, but our ( and by our, I mean my) first Styled Shoot.
I’ve always been one to believe that nothing is more genuine or a bigger portfolio builder than actual weddings or engagement shoots, and I still believe that, however, I had some new gear I wanted to play with and felt that there couldn’t have been a better opportunity to do so.
On the plus side, I also got to meet some other really awesome photographers and models that are here locally. I got to see how other people handle their couples and detail work, plus had a bit more control over the situation than I would on a typical wedding day.
Just like the Expo, I believe that Styled Shoots are something that I will and have already planned to participate in again. As we get deeper into the wedding world, we’re finding that the more vendors and venues you can connect with the better.
Check below for some of the work from the Citrus Themed Styled Shoot:
Back around Thanksgiving, I wrote a small blurb about the logo and what it means to me, but I thought for this weeks blog, I’d dig a little deeper into that.
Way back, before I even met Josh, I had this dream of starting a photography business. Something completely outside of my realm as a degreed engineer, but a passion I’d had since my days in high school.
Photography was always preached in my family as nothing more than a hobby. Something that could never sustain me like a good STEM degree could. Which is why, despite my love, and from what I’ve been told natural talent for it, it wasn’t something I continued to pursue.
That was until, I had hit rock bottom and coming back behind the camera saved me. I wasn’t sure I wanted to go back to engineering after the way it treated me coming out of college, but I knew I had a few other passions left to explore.
Queue the research into what it would take to start a business and what I needed to start doing in order to get somewhere with it. I was completely lost, and to be honest probably in over my head, but I already had a name for my business.
Just a Girl
This came out of my time in rock bottom where I felt completely lost and out of control. Barely 21, a year out of college, jobless, and feeling like I was nothing more than just a girl, I wasn’t special, or at least I didn’t feel like I was. I was Just a Girl, just a girl trying to make it day to day, just a girl trying to navigate her first stab at adulthood, just a girl who didn’t know how to be on her own, and Just a Girl with a hell of a lot of fight left for a dream that seemed impossible.
But I needed to find a logo to go with it. I didn’t want something everybody else had, I didn’t want cursive lettering, or flowers, or a rustic look that was popular at the time. I wanted something with just as much story as my name had.
Thats when it came to me, sitting at my desk with my feet up, I looked at my ankle. It was perfect, how could I have missed it.
I had a bow tattooed on my ankle, a bow that represents the biggest fight, the stubbornness that runs through my veins, the uphill battle with terrible statistics, a bow that represented defying the odds. A bow that represented probably the strongest, most stubborn, fighter I know. It represents my cousin, Ashlynn.
Ashlynn was diagnosed with a rare disorder from birth, we as the family were told she’d always be a vegetable, that she’d never make it past certain stages in her life, that she’d never be able to hold her head up, let alone walk. Nonetheless, she continued to fight. We continued to fight as a family, when she couldn’t fight for herself. And Now?
Ashylnn is 16, was the flower girl in the last wedding we shot, where she with some assistance from some family walked down the isle. She has outlived every expectancy, and out performed every metric we’ve ever been given. This supposed vegetable, has the biggest personality of us all, and 100% has the Goodliffe stubbornness coursing through her veins.
When I want to quit, when I want to rely on my degree and the cushion it provides me, I remember what this company name and logo stands for. The bow was created to represent the fight in a little girl whose sheer will power beats us all. The bow was created to represent the family mantra “Strength to Start, Courage to Finish” in my own way. The bow was meant as a daily reminder, that I’m related to living proof of defying the odds, if she could do it I can to.
The bow also remind me, that I’m not Just a Girl anymore, but I was. My attachment to this story is why we’ve never changed the name, even though Josh and I shoot together now. I was Just a Girl, now I’m Just a Girl, who Found the Love of her Life. With him, I’ve found my strength to do anything no matter how impossible the odds may seem.
I’m Just a Girl with her Bow and her Bo, ready to take on the crazy world of Wedding Photography one wedding at a time.
Destination Weddings, to ultimate blessing and a curse. Traveling with lights, and lens, and cameras, is not an easy task by any means, but nothing about this past wedding really was. Being both a photographer and a part of the wedding party, my second shooter aka my husband, also being in the wedding party, and oh yeah! Did I mention it was my slightly controlling slightly crazy, and just the slightest bit bossy mom’s wedding?
It was a bit different, I’m not going to lie, but how could I turn down the chance at a destination wedding in Jamaica? I definitely couldn’t. Even if I only have half a weddings worth of photos 🙂
Just a Girl Photography 