We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jennifer and Joe Mackey. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jennifer and Joe below.

Jennifer and Joe, appreciate you joining us today. Can you open up about a risk you’ve taken – what it was like taking that risk, why you took the risk and how it turned out?

Life is all about taking risks right? I remember back when we were taking more of a traditional path through life. We had both graduated from college, sought out a career with benefits, and purchased our first home. At the time Jenny was an art/photography teacher and I was a counselor at a non-profit. As you can imagine it was the typical wake up, hop in traffic, do your best, hop in traffic again on the way home, repeat. During this part of our lives, photography was just a side hustle. As a young married couple we found ourselves drawn towards traveling and we soon discovered we both had a love for the mountains. Quite the stark contrast from growing up in the flatlands of Florida. We used to talk about retiring in the mountains some day and just living a simple small town life. We had no idea that vision would become a reality a lot sooner than either of us thought. Even though Jenny had earned her Master’s Degree from the University of Florida and had amounted 6 years of experience teaching, she was laid off in the early part of 2015. Like any normal young couple we were terrified about what we were going to do next. We were still going to be able to pay the bills but things were definitely going to be tight for a while. Over the next couple of months Jenny picked up part time work teaching painting classes and while I moved up in the agency I was working for, we found ourselves in that early part of adulthood wondering if there was more to life than this repetitive routine. By this time, Jenny still had a few more pay checks coming in from teaching since she was laid off early from a contract teaching job. Our photography business was still part time, but it was steadily growing and providing us with opportunities to branch out. At the same time, I was just starting to get into the process of what a lot of folks call personal development. I was reading every book I could get my hands on about thriving, and building a life that you want. After a lot of late night talks and some soul searching, we decided to take the first of many big risks in our life and that was to leave everything we knew back in Tampa, FL, move to the mountains of Western North Carolina which we had grown to love over the last few years, and simultaneously figure out a way to keep a roof over our heads all the while building a full time wedding photography business that could eventually sustain both of us on a full time salary. What could go wrong?

Well, as you can imagine, we faced a ton of challenges those first couple of years in business. Neither of us had run a business before and there were a lot of growing pains along the way, but we looked at each challenge as an opportunity to grow and get better at the entire process be it running a business, or coming to our own as creatives. The lessons we learned, especially in that first year of business were instrumental in helping to pave the way for our eventual success. We thought we had a pretty lofty goal of shooting 25 weddings our 2nd year in business. Much to our surprise we crushed that goal and ended up with over 50 weddings our second year in business. We found a formula that worked well for us and thankfully everything was coming together as smooth as possible when it came to growing our business. By this time, Jenny had gone full time in the business and I was inching ever closer to being able to join her. We had some financial goals we wanted to accomplish before I left the comfort of a full time job with a salary and benefits so we made the decision to wait until we had accomplished those goals. Fast forward to our 3rd year and business and eventually that decision was made for us. We had the opportunity to shoot our first destination wedding out of the country. This is something that not every wedding photographer gets to experience and we were beyond excited about this opportunity as it was only our 3rd year in business and we were already getting to do an all inclusive wedding out of the country with an amazing couple who wanted us to document every moment. This would ultimately lead to the 2nd major risk we were going to take. When time had arrived to put in for PTO (paid time off) from my day job, I knew I would need 6 days off to make time for travel and capturing the wedding as well as having time to travel back. At the time, I only had 5 days worth of PTO. No big deal I thought, I would just take the 5 days paid, and one day unpaid. I found out quick my boss was not okay with that and it became a big point of contention. Did I forego doing the wedding which was the opportunity of a life time for the careers we wanted? Or do I play it safe, skip the wedding? After some soul searching and talking everything over, we made the decision that I would put in my notice and say good bye to the counseling world for good. Funny story, when my boss found out I wasn’t leaving for a better paying position at another agency but to pursue wedding photography full time, I’ll never forget her saying condescendingly, “Oh, bless your heart.” It was almost as if she felt sorry for the naive young man in front of her chasing the dream. Well that turned out to be one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.

Fast forward to today, and we now own 3 wedding photography business. 2 based out of Asheville, NC and one based out of Jackson, Wyoming. As of the beginning of 2023 we have shot 572 weddings over 7 years which is mind blowing when you consider most full time pros average 25-30 weddings year and we’ve essentially tripled that. We’ve traveled all over the nation serving couples so many different background and areas. We’ve been able to take advantage of so many opportunities that have come our way like being apart of Married at First Sight Season 9 which was on Lifetime Television and Netflix. We’ve even been blessed to work with celebrity clients like country Mega star Luke Bryan. We now own two homes in two different states, one of which we air bnb about half of the year and we’re continuing to focus on how we can grow as well as better serve our amazing couples. All this to say, life is a series of making decisions to take measured risks. We credit a part of our success to being willing to take those risks and give it our all in the pursuit of making our dreams become a reality. We have failed so many more time than we’ve been successful but you can look at those setbacks as failure, or as a lesson to learn to get better. We choose the latter.

Jennifer and Joe, 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?

(I guess some of this will repeat from the last question…feel free to modify as needed).

Jenny has had a camera in her hand since she was young and has been shooting seriously since college. While I (like many others) had an appreciation for photography, I honestly never had an interest in pursuing it professionally, let alone a full time career. While in the middle of her teaching career, Jenny also started shooting portraits and weddings on the side. As her business grew, she eventually had the need for an assistant and sometimes what we call a “second shooter.” This is where I slowly started to come into the picture. At first I just wanted to help her so she could focus on what she needed to do instead of fidgeting with equipment and lights, etc. After helping with this process more and more, I picked up on a lot of little things and soon I was small part of every photo shoot she scheduled. It wasn’t until she put a camera in my hands that I found my newfound love for photography. Since then we have been a husband and wife team focusing primarily on couples and families. Most of the year we are on the east coast capturing larger traditional weddings and about 1/3 of the year we’re out west serving mostly couples who decide on eloping/adventure elopements. Over the years we’ve developed our own style and most of our couples rave about our creative lighting and our ability to incorporate the environment into their images vs the traditional approach of just lining up and smiling at the camera. Most of our couples travel to these areas because they love the amazing scenery and we always do our best to make sure that it’s prominent in their images. The other large part of what we do that really separates us from a lot of other companies is developing a great connection with our clients. A lot of people in our industry look at the amount of couples we serve (averaging 80+ weddings per year) and they say we can’t possibly be connecting with them and providing amazing service. We say, the service we’re providing and the connections we establish are two of the main reasons we’re able to serve so many couples. Lastly, and probably the most important thing about what we do is preservation. The age old joke about what we do as photographer is ‘just hitting a button.’ What we actually do is pretty serious, preserving memories for future generations. We just happen to have a lot of fun doing it!

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

There a lot of amazing resources out there for entrepreneurs but there have been 2 that stick out as being the most impactful for us. The first would be No Excuses: The Power of Self Discipline by Brian Tracy. I believe within each of us lies a motivation for change, a motivation for accomplishment, and a motivation to succeed at something important to us. Most of us just might not know where to start. This book was instrumental in helping to give our motivation structure. It essentially acted as a road map for our first year or two in business. I found it so helpful, I’ve actually re-read it twice throughout the course of our careers. If I could recommend one non-religous book to anyone looking to take their career or lives in general to the next level, this would be it.

Another platform I give a lot of credit for to this day is SLR Lounge. This is essentially an online platform for photography education and probably the most in depth collection of information in one singular spot you can find anywhere if you are a photographer looking to level up. Whether you’re looking to learn more about shooting, editing, or business practices, I am confident SLR Lounge provides something for everybody no matter what stage of your career you are in.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

For us the most re-warding thing is when we receive that email from a couple or family after their wedding or session and they tell us they are in tears looking back over their images. As we alluded to earlier. Doing what we do is so much more than just capturing a picture. We are documenting moments in time that these folks will be able to look back on and cherish for years to come.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.yourjcmphotography.com
• Instagram: @jcmphotographyasheville & @jcmphotographyjacksonhole
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/yourJCMphotography/

Image Credits
These are our images through JCM Photography Asheville and JCM Photography Jackson Hole