We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Mikalynn Amos a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Mikalynn thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

Before I started Venturing Vows, I was a jack-of-all-trades photographer: weddings, maternity, senior photos, sports photos, you name it. I did photography as a side project while I taught high school science. I never pursued photography full-time because it didn’t feel right.

My approach to my photography entirely changed when I got married. My partner and I planned out an entire traditional wedding. It was two months prior that we came to terms with the fact we planned our wedding for everyone but ourselves. That somewhere along the way, the day was no longer about us and the relationship we’d built. I had seen epic adventure elopements online and I’ve always had a deep love for the ocean.

Within two days, we had turned our traditional wedding plans into a reception and booked our elopement on the Oregon Coast. It was a better experience than I could’ve dreamed. We brought along our immediate family and best friends. We got to spend so much time together, we got quality time with each guest, got married with the waves crashing behind us, and went on a hike to watch the sunset.

Our reception came along a few weeks after our elopement and it still had a traditional wedding structure. I barely saw my spouse, friends, or family. I just rushed from guest to guest trying to touch base with everyone. It felt like a performance and I saw very little of us in the experience. I didn’t feel connected with my partner with all the attention on us.

I couldn’t believe that traditional weddings were the standard after the incredible experience I had eloping on the Oregon Coast. It saddened me to know how many couples out there get forced into a wedding experience that was never meant for them because of family/societal pressures and simply not knowing there’s another way.

I realized photography never interested me as a career because I never found the right kind of photography. Adventure elopements connected my love for nature with my love of photography and all the pieces came together. My own wedding experience was the starting point for Venturing Vows.

I haven’t photographed a traditional wedding since that date.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

Venturing Vows is my elopement photography business specializing in Oregon Coast elopements. Most of the elopements I photograph have no guests, the couples hike in their wedding attire (usually getting covered in mud, sand, and salt water because really, you only wear the outfit one day), they have a picnic on the beach, and exchange vows with no one else to hear.

While my primary service is photography, I also function as an “elopement expert” to guide my couples. I recommend photo locations, create a custom timeline for each couple, recommend local vendors I’ve worked with, provide general eloping advice, and I’m ordained in case they want a more private ceremony.

In terms of the photos themselves, my style emphasizes the scenery as a co-subject. I started in landscape and nature photography which has shown in my elopement photography. Many couples come to me for the “small people, giant landscape” photo. It’s been amazing to see how many folks out there also love nature and want to see it accentuated in their wedding images.

A unique decision I’ve made in my business is to specialize in the Oregon Coast. Many photographers want to travel as far and wide as possible (which is awesome) but I would rather stick to my favorite place in the world. I feel as though I provide the best version of my work and service in the places I know like the back of my hand.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

Being someone’s elopement photographer is very personal. They’re inviting you, often as their only guest, to one of the most important days of their life. Because of this, my social media is very personal. I never keep things to “strictly business.” I’m a human at the end of the day, not a business, and I make sure to show that. This means showing my clients my interests: I regularly post reviews of books I’m reading, videos of the tide pools I visit, and photos from my bird feeder camera. Meeting my clients often feels like meeting a friend I should’ve made years ago. Because I showcase myself as a human on social media, I have a deeper connection with my clients. They pick me as their photographer because they see something of themselves in me. It makes the entire experience better for the client and helps me thrive as a business owner.

After focusing my marketing on my target audience, my next most important step was finding balance. It’s easy to sink a lot of time into social media and get discouraged by the numbers. I’ve learned to acknowledge which content is most successful in terms of numbers, while accepting that the numbers don’t define success. I’ve learned that having my clients booking is what actually matters, not my follower count. I’ve learned to put effort into my content while not investing so much time into it that I’m unable to stay consistent in the long term. Most of all, I’ve learned it takes a lot of grit to build a social media following. It’s tough and requires a lot of time and patience.

My favorite hack: save your captions in a document. I have a document I can access on my phone with every caption I’ve ever written. I have it organized by general category and I list when the caption was last used. After all these years, 90% of my captions are recycled from old posts. I update the document annually with any new captions and spruce up the old ones. This has taken so much stress out of social media for me.

For those starting, the content doesn’t have to be perfect. Keep things simple and consistent. I work in nature so sometimes, I’ll just post a view of the waves with trending Tik Tok or Instagram audio. Being present to your potential clients is going to take you further than posting less because you’re concerned with having perfect content.

Can you talk to us about how your side-hustle turned into something more.

I enjoyed photography for years before I chose to make it a career. I decided to switch gears to become a full-time photographer while I was teaching high school. Teaching jobs operate on 9 month contracts so there isn’t really an option to put in a two week notice, and I needed a job I could leave as soon as my business was ready to stand on its own. We started by setting aside money so that I could I resign from my teaching position at the end of the school year. We moved form Idaho to Oregon and I got a job as a receptionist. My business began to pick up, thanks to my efforts with social media and marketing, and I left my receptionist job when elopement season began in the spring, knowing that I could find another similar job if my income needed some support in the off season. Thankfully, providing my business my full attention resulted in me not having to get another temporary job. Saving extra money prior to the transition and stabilizing our life/finances beforehand was essential for the transition.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://venturingvows.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/venturingvows/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/VenturingVows

Image Credits
All my own images