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

Caitlin, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Before we get into specifics, let’s talk about success more generally. What do you think it takes to be successful?

Motivation and discipline. I’ve been doing photography for 14 years, and I think there’s still so much I could learn to be better both as a creative and as a business owner. The second you start to assume you know everything is the second you start to hit a slump.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I’m Caitlin Beaty of Beaty Creative Photo; an elopement & micro wedding photography business primarily running out of Arkansas and Alaska, but I travel anywhere and everywhere my clients want to go!
My role is the dream guide – a photographer, officiant, and planning assistant, and my clients are the dreamers – two people in love looking to celebrate their marriage experience in a memorable and personable way.

My ultimate goal as a business owner is to help couples create a marriage experience that feels like magic, because love is an amazing thing worthy of celebrating. My grandparents, who inspired most everything about my branding, always made my childhood feel magical and fun. They maintained a strong bond with each other until my grandfather’s passing in 2008. My grandmother followed him in death in 2020, which sent me down a rabbit hole of reminiscing on my childhood and learning more about my grandparents and the Beaty name. Their relationship had a great influence on how I perceive healthy relationships. I know they’d both be incredibly proud of where I’ve gotten myself today, and they would certainly brag about it to everyone just as they did when they were still here.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

I always knew I wanted to make a career out of something creative. Photography just kind of fell into my lap after a series of events during my senior year of high school in 2011, and I fell in love with it. By 2015 I had photographed my first wedding, and then modern day elopements sparked in 2016, and I realized that was the thing I was meant for. From that moment forward I worked towards the goal of being an elopement photographer, but it’s tough to go all in when you’ve got another job as your main source of income. Then 2020 happened. My job shut down for awhile, and it gave me the chance to go all in. But also right at the beginning of COVID, my grandmother, Honey, died. She had been battling lung cancer and her body just couldn’t do it anymore. I didn’t get to say goodbye because of the lockdowns on nursing homes. She was my biggest influence when it came to being a creative so it was very devastating that she didn’t get to see me take this leap into full-time photography.

After losing her, I re-branded my photography in memory of her and my grandpa, the Beaty name, and the crazy long story of our family legacy – from my grandparent’s working at NASA during the space race, their moonflower garden I loved so much as a kid, the luna moth caterpillars my grandpa would gift my sister and I to watch them morph into their winged version, and my very late ancestors that followed a saying that loosely translates to “May we follow celestial light.” and carried a moon and stars on their family crest – which I didn’t know any of this about my family history until halfway through my re-brand by the way, so it all felt very serendipitous and like a nod from the universe and my grandparents that I was on the right path.

My grandmother inspired me to dream big and creatively, and I pour that inspiration into my couples that want to celebrate a big milestone in their lives. My grandparents loved each other until the end, and that’s what I hope all of my couples will experience, too.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

There’s two things that mean the most to me:

1. Leaving behind a legacy that people will look at for a very long time. Means a lot to me since I want the influence of my grandparents to be remembered.

2. Knowing my couple’s are walking away with an experience they’ll remember for the rest of their life, and photos they’ll look back on countless times. Love is my favorite thing. It’s such an honor to be able to document it.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://beatycreativephoto.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beatycreativephoto
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/1C5TWXLqn5/
• Other: Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@beatycreativephoto?_t=ZP-8wcH3q5AR3u&_r=1