Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Amii and Andy Kauth. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Amii and Andy, thanks for joining us today. Have you been able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen? Was it like that from day one? If not, what were some of the major steps and milestones and do you think you could have sped up the process somehow knowing what you know now?

We have been working as full-time photographers since 2014 (coming up on 10 years). Prior to 2014, while we worked in other careers, we would photograph portrait sessions for friends and also volunteered for a local group that would put together weddings for couples who had no budget (lower income couples who didn’t have spare funds for a wedding celebration). In 2014, we went full-time after booking over 20 weddings from a large wedding expo. We now run a full-time photography business (and have been operating a brick-and-mortar portrait studio since 2019). Overall, our best business advice in getting a photography business off the ground is to grind, network, and photograph whatever you can! You have to find your niche for sure, but you won’t do that if you’re sitting around thinking about it. Take on whatever work comes your way, and use the gear you have (upgrade later).

Amii and Andy, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

We’ve been all over the place with our photography work, from photographing weddings in other countries to teaching workshops in Puerto Rico and Las Vegas. We’ve been featured on well-known websites and in popular print magazines. But what we love the most is taking that 10-minute drive to the beach and photographing the rad families of California’s Central Coast at sunset. We love to help them select the photographs they love the most from their sessions and designing beautiful wall art for their homes. You just can’t beat it!

Are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

People ask us about mentoring, education, etc. all the time. But we always point them to one source: slrlounge.com. We worked with them years ago and still point people their way. They offer university-level photography education for such an economical price. If we knew about them from day one? We would have been light years ahead of where we were.

What’s been the best source of new clients for you?

We love this question! Social media has it’s place, but if you don’t want to spend money on adds and aren’t the best at regularly posting content (we get busy and forget to update our social media more often than we like to admit), then you need to get in front of people. Join your local Chamber of Commerce, attend networking events, and set up a booth at an expo. We find around 75 percent of our clients at expos and outdoor festivals … and the rest are from referrals and the everyday hustle of networking, networking, and more networking!

Contact Info:

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

Image Credits
Personal photograph by Shutter Go Click Photography (https://shuttergoclick.co.uk/). All other photographs by Sunshine & Reign Photography (https://www.sunshineandreign.com/)