How we became a husband & wife photography team

We get asked a lot about how Matt ended up being a part of my photography business and how we came to be a husband & wife team. Understandably at weddings people who don't know us often ask who was the photographer first, do we always work together and if we're just business partners or whether we're husband & wife. It comes as a surprise to many that Matt is in fact a mechanic. During the summer months he works a couple of days a week in our business and reduced hours at his other job (thanks to his incredibly flexible boss!). 

I've only shot one wedding (out of fifty odd now) without Matt. When I started into wedding photography I realised having an assistant & second shooter helping me affected the style and pace of work for me. It meant I could spend all morning with the girls rather than having to rush between the bride & groom prep. It meant we had more angles covered and a more diverse portfolio in less time. It meant having a friend for company during the long hours of a wedding day.

I asked Matt if he would help me with the handful of weddings I initially booked. He seemed like the perfect person to have by my side. He knows me best. He makes friends wherever he goes. And he'd never done photography before which meant when I taught him how to shoot he naturally learnt to shoot much the same as me which makes him a very consistent second-shooter.

Matt is better at telling the story of how I taught him to shoot in manual mode, but essentially I put him on a semi-auto mode to begin with and he quickly became frustrated with his results. So I wrote out notes with my explanation of how manual exposure works, showed him how to adjust each setting on his camera and totally threw him in the deep end! After one wedding he was shooting fully manual!!! Now I realise that sounds fairly incredible given all the other factors thrown at you on a wedding day, but what you have to know about this story is that Matt is one of those annoying people who is naturally good at just about everything he tries. So I fully knew he'd pick it up just like that & start running.

After our first small season of weddings, I asked if Matt had enjoyed himself. Was he willing to continue, because we were quickly becoming know as a husband & wife team. Although photography isn't his passion like it is mine, Matt enjoyed the work, the people and could see the potential for this business to change our lives. Becoming a husband and wife wedding photography team meant changes in his work structure and changes to our work/life balance. But it has also given us the ability to build this business together, to meet amazing people and travel to beautiful places.

Being a husband and wife photography team has been a constant learning curve. We're lucky that we work together really well and we have a lot of fun working together. And while running our own business seems to be a constant work in progress with the whole work/life balance thing, I think we're doing pretty well. I couldn't imagine having anyone else as my business partner & workmate.