We were lucky to catch up with Andi Bennett recently and have shared our conversation below.

Andi, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to start by getting your thoughts on what you are seeing as some the biggest trends emerging in your industry.

As a wedding photographer, new trends pop up each year and it is both exciting and challenging to make the decision to include these trends into your creative style, or stick to your true and unique creative style. Finding a mix of maintaining your own identity, not being afraid to try new trends, and providing clients with the option of both has been a key to success for my business. For example, when I first launched my business in 2017 I took so much pride in making sure the final images I delivered with clean and sharp. Meaning they were perfectly in focus and any image could be blown up on a large print without a single fuzzy grain or pixelated issue. In two shorts years of consistently showcasing sharp images, a new trend appeared – the blur effect. The “candid, imperfect, blurry photo” as my potential new clients would start to request. This felt bizarre to me, surely anyone could take a blurry, out of focus shot, right? Why would you want to hire a professional photographer to take a blurry photo of you? I was not into it, for almost a year I denied and I lost great potential clients and work because I did not want to sacrifice my work to look less than professional. In 2020, as COVID took over and we were left with more time on our hands than we’d like to admit, I was bored and decided to step outside my comfort zone and try some new things during an outdoor shoot. It was the first time I tried the “blurry photo” on my couple, I asked them to hold hands and run away down the shoreline, with my shutter speed set so low they only shots I could get were blurry. And to my surprise, I loved them. They looked so real, in the moment, like you could feel them running in the photo. Rather than capturing a split second in time, like an athlete jumping in the air mid-shot, these photos made me feel the entire moment, not just the blurred moment I caught. It was hard to explain the shift my brain made that day, but ever since, I’ve welcome new creative trends I don’t necessarily “agree” with and will always be open to trying new creative ideas – while also maintaining my sharp images in the majority of my shots!

Andi, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

My name is Andi, I graduated from Michigan State University with a degree in Advertising. I started my career at a marketing agency and quickly learned the department I was in did not suit me well. I was managing accounts and budgets, and the only part I really liked was talking to my clients and building relationships with them. One day I got to join my creative department for a commercial they were making for my client. I watched the photographer and videographer shoot still shots and b-roll for an ad campaign behind the scenes and was enamored by it all. A few months later my now husband surprised me with my first digital camera to take on an upcoming vacation, and I spent the entire vacation watching YouTube videos learning how to use it. From that moment on I started shooting anyone and everything. I couldn’t put my camera down and with my communication skills I had developed at the agency with my clients, I just knew I had a niche for photographing people. My agency taught me so much over the next two years until I eventually separated in 2019 to run my photography business full time. I truly think my ability to form great relationships with all of my clients sets me apart. I want to be your friend, I want to know your story, how you two met, how the proposal went down. I want to meet your pets and hear stories about your families. It helps me tell their story better, and helps me connect so well with my clients so by the time their wedding day roles around I genuinely feel like I’m an exclusive part of their day and they trust that I am invested in capturing every detail instead of feeling like a stranger showing up and clocking my hours for the day. It’s definitely what I am most proud of with my business and what I want potential clients to know about me. Anyone can look at my work and fall in love with it, but I want them to know the person behind the work genuinely cares so much about them and the importance of their wedding day, too.

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

Working full time at the marketing agency while starting to grow my photography business gave me so much more confidence and support financially to make big purchases (cameras and lenses are not cheap!) and still maintain a safe boundary with my budget and spending. Having my main income + a secondary side business income also gave me the ability to save quicker, although I knew I was in no rush to quit my full time job at the agency until I felt I had confidently put enough into my savings to support myself for almost a year in case the worst would ever happen. *spoiler alert – the world shut down due to covid a mere 4 months after I quit my full time job to pursue photography full time. Having such a big savings account truly saved my business in 2020! I tell everyone to hold onto their full time job as long as possible and SAVE for this exact reason.

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

A CRM system. At the time it just felt like another monthly investment and seemed unnecessary. I did everything manually, from booking shoots, to writing up contracts, to managing my email communication, invoices, payments, etc. It became super hectic and some days I’d worry if I had received payment, if I cashed that check, etc. and my brain couldn’t handle it all (maybe that’s just how creative brains work? haha) but as soon as I got the CRM system, everything became streamlined and I no longer had to think or worry about the things I didn’t enjoy – aka admin and billing! If I would have known how much the CRM would be a solution provider instead of an “unnecessary monthly investment” I would have invested in it from the very beginning.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.andibphoto.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/andibphoto
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/andibphoto
• Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/andibphoto

Image Credits
All images shot and owned by Andi B Photography