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

Ariza Photography, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with 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?

One of the biggest risks that ARIZA has taken is choosing to transform our passion that initially started as a hobby into a dynamic photography business in the Metro Atlanta area. We realized that our interests, passions, and yearning to capture the essence of unforgettable moments in a high quality, professional grade product became our motivation to officially establish our business. The risk of extending our photography services beyond our friends and family, was one that changed our lives forever! We discovered that our ability to creatively tell a story through portraits solved an issue for our clients, which was finding a photography team that delivers excellent customer service, engaging collaborative partnerships, and original digital products that transcends past the moment the photograph was captured. We realized that what ARIZA offers takes the anxiety, concerns, and doubts away from our clients, as we focus our attention on being totally immersed in the creative process. At ARIZA, we understand how important the craft of photography is and the emotions it evokes. We also believe that photography is a creative art expression that has the incredible ability to bring a person into remembrance of a moment that happened in his or her life. These moments are special because although we have experienced it, we can never get that particular moment in time back. We want our collective art to resonate with our clients for a lifetime to come! The ARIZA Experience encapsulates professional expertise, inspirational imagery, and a creative eye to transform our clients vision into a lifetime memory!

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.

Yes, of course! Thank you for extending this amazing opportunity to us. We are grateful to share our story with you and the Canvas Rebel community. My name is Therese Riza-Lawrence and I’m Kay Saleh, and together we are ARIZA Photography! We are a black owned, women photographer duo that specializes in portrait photography and event services in the Metro and the Greater Metro Atlanta Area. Our clients range from babies and children, to couples and families. We offer customizable portrait and wedding tiered packages to our clients, that vary with the amount of coverage hours and amount of deliverable images. Additionally, we offer coverage for special events such as birthdays, weddings, graduations, engagements, bridal showers, baby showers, baptisms, grand openings, corporate events, family events, and charity events!

Kay and I actually met nearly 14 years ago at our alma mater, the University of Georgia! Go Dawgs! We lived doors away from one another at our residence hall and became friends right away. I (Therese) obtained a Digital and Broadcast Journalism degree from the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communications, as I always had a deep interest in all things photography, video production, and communications. During my studies, I received intensive practicum training on photography and videography fundamentals, editing and post production processes, and how to use visuals to tell an intimate story that speaks to unforgettable experiences.

During our time at UGA, we did not yet know that our close friendship would grow to include our first joint business venture in the future. Fast forward to 2020, we began to apply our interests and love of photography to live photoshoots for friends and family. We knew that investing in our craft, while building relationships with people in our community, was paramount to the overall success of ARIZA. During this time, Kay and I were able to develop a seamless workflow, invest in professional tools and equipment, and delve deeper into additional resources (tutorials, seminars, etc) to sharpen our skills.

Currently in 2024, we have successfully expanded our portfolio, clientele, and overall reach in the Atlanta community. We continuously seek opportunities to provide phenomenal experiences to our local and state communities. We encourage the Canvas Rebel community to visit our website and/or Instagram page to learn more about the ARIZA experience.

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

At ARIZA Photography, we find value in the creative collaborative process. We want to assure our growing clientele that there is power in collaboration and partnership. We invite them to engage in the ARIZA collaborative process, as we organize, plan, and dream up what our clients envision. In order to successfully accomplish this, we encourage our clients to share 3-5 pictures that encapsulates the memory, mood, and overall essence of the moment that they seek to capture. Some of our clients create mood boards or vision boards that inspire them as well. Collecting a combination of images is essential to the creative design process because their sources of inspiration are typically the starting point for the photoshoot development.

Additionally, we understand that being the main subject of a photograph can be nerve wrecking and can cause people to feel more nervous, than excited about the experience. We want to assure our clients that they are in good hands, as we work together to focus on amplifying the creativity that will be expressed through their portraits! We encourage our clients to be open minded, interactive, and communicative in order to enhance their ARIZA experience.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

One of the greatest lessons of resiliency we have learned is not underestimating the power of preparation. Preparation for us includes considering the client’s age, the goal of the photoshoot, identifying potential hiccups that could arise and ways to problem solve it if they do! Our clients come to us because they expect high quality portraits, along with an enjoyable photoshoot experience. In order to surpass their expectations, we are prepared to troubleshoot any and all technical issues that arise. We also prepare ahead of time by considering who the client is for the particular photoshoot. In fact, we have learned so much about curating the ARIZA experience by photographing toddlers! Toddlers are energetic, fast, and march to the beat of their own drum! Our first few photoshoots of toddlers really impacted how we prepare ahead of time and how we respond to issues that arise on the set. We learned about the importance of moving quickly because toddlers’ attention spans are generally shorter. This realization helped us discover that the stakes and pressure were greater because we had a limited amount of time. Just like we would provide posing direction and guidance to our adult clients, we learned that toddlers and children benefit from direction as well. Providing lots of praise and encouragement is a great verbal incentive that toddlers respond well too. Arriving at a toddler photoshoot with toys that light up, sing, and make noises is helpful to elicit the joy and happiness we seek to capture on camera.

All in all, every set design and every client is different. We don’t use a one size fits all approach to our business. Through countless photoshoots, we have learned to be proactive, precise, and efficient so that the ARIZA experience becomes an easy and enjoyable experience for everyone. Without the minor hiccups that we have experienced on site in the past, we would not have been able to sharpen and perfect our photography skills to the level they are today.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.arizaphotography.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/arizaphotography.atl?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet&igsh=ZDNlZDc0MzIxNw==
• Other: [email protected]