We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Bobby & Emily Oberports. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Bobby & Emily below.
Bobby & Emily, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to go back in time and hear the story of how you came up with the name of your brand?
Given that it’s the name of our business, everyone thinks that our last name is “Oberport.” This is not our last name, it’s actually a portmanteau of our real last names: Oberlander and Porter. When we began our professional photography journey many years ago, the business was then known as Emily Porter Photography, as Emily was the sole person in the company. We became a couple shortly after the formation of Emily’s photography business, so friends and acquaintances had taken to calling us “the Oberports”. Some folks tried to make Portlanders happen, but we didn’t care for that name since neither of us are from Portland. Then a few years after Bobby joined the business, “The Oberports” just made perfect sense. Both of us still retain our identities through our work, and the name is indicative of the collaborative spirit that makes our services unique.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
We’re professional wedding and portrait photographers primarily serving West Virginia, but we frequently find ourselves traveling all over the United States to document special memories for folks. Emily fell in love with film photography as a teenager and decided to make a go of it with a career in weddings and portraits. Bobby is a self-described “art school kid with a business degree,” who Emily brought on to help with the day-to-day business management and then trained as a photographer. We actually met while working together in an office job, and then quickly realized we were excellent collaborators, and it turns out also best friends and romantically compatible. Our enduring friendship and ability to solve problems as a team is a cornerstone of what makes our business work. Both of us have competitive streaks, and we love to push each other to make the best photos possible at every job. As a business, we’re most proud of our long track record of happy clients. We strive to provide excellent customer service and high level photography.
How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?
We hope that the biggest driving force behind our reputation is simple: just doing great work. Getting in front of a camera is often difficult for people, so we also try to approach all clients/photo subjects with understanding so we can meet people where they are and document them authentically; it’s never “one size fits all” for us. It’s easy for a lot of artistic service providers to forget that they’re still running a business and clients want to be taken care of. So while the final end product is always the photos, it’s just as important for us to make sure the entire experience is smooth from the very beginning, starting with our first email response.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
Our absolute favorite part of doing this job is the people we get to spend our time with. Whether it’s a wedding, senior portrait session, or a branding experience, documenting special moments in time for kind people is really special, and we never lose sight of how cool it is that we get to bottle up memories and give them to people for a living. And we love positive reinforcement, so nothing hits quite like an email from a client raving about their experience working with us – or better yet, a new Google review notification!! And then a few times a year, a former client will let us know that one of their loved ones passed away and how much they cherish the photos we captured of that person. We’re always so sad to hear about their loss, but messages like that really underscore how important our job is, because we’re often taking the last, best photos of some wedding guests/family members.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://theoberports.com
- Instagram: theoberports
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/theoberports
Image Credits
The Oberports