Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Debra and Zach Christensen. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Debra and Zach, appreciate you joining us today. So, naming is such a challenge. How did you come up with the name of your brand?
When I (Zach) was in college, when I’d get a bit overwhelmed with school or with life, I would drive to a pretty location at sunrise or sunset and take it all in. Could be right off the road or a quick hike somewhere by myself and spend a good 30 minutes to breathe and ground myself. When we started dating, those little outings continued, and we would find ourselves in gorgeous locations and take selfies, haha feels like forever ago. We loved going to those “sights” (still do obviously ha).
Its pretty common in our Adventure wedding niche for photographers to go off their names or maybe a nature term common to the area the photographer is based in: Desert Bloom Photography, Jane and John Photo, etc.
While those names are beautiful, we wanted to showcase a little more “epicness” to our brand.
When we decided to start our business up, we were randomly watching Beauty and the Beast, and the teapot lady said the phrase “Sakes Alive” reacting to something, I thought she had said Sights Alive, and that made me think about the sights we go to and how they make us feel alive, and so Sights Alive Photography was born!
While Sights Alive will always hold a special place in our heart, we have since changed our name to Sights Photography to add even a bit more epicality to our brand. Having our name stick as SIGHTS just sounds so groovy to us.
Debra and Zach, 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?
Debra and I have always loved photography. We both started taking photos and getting accustomed to camera work when we were both teenagers. I remember getting a flip phone for Christmas one year and seeing that it had a camera, I remember filling the storage space on that phone by the end of the day. Not like I was getting epic shots haha it was just another fun way for me to annoy my brother and sister.
We slowly graduated to cameras that would allow us to see the world through a different lens, and it remained an enjoyable hobby until we started dating.
When I asked Debra to marry me, we planned out our honeymoon on the island of Kauai in Hawaii. She mentioned in passing one night that she dreamed of taking photos in her wedding dress in Kauai. I had a friend from high school going to school on Oahu at the time who is an incredible wedding photographer. The dots connected and I booked a sunset photo session one day during our trip.
On our wedding night I surprised here with the news, and she was so excited to pack her beautiful dress in our travel bags.
That experience proved to be one we’d never forget, it combined an incredible jungle/beachside adventure with the excitement of our new life together, all captured on photo! That experience impressed us so much that 3 years afterward, we decided to start our own wedding photography business specializing in the more adventurous side of love.
It is such a sweet experience for us to be with our wedding couples and getting to watch their “wow” moments of being in those epic locations at the perfect time. It’s truly the best to hear from them how much they loved the experience, and it makes our work so worthwhile and meaningful.
Alright – let’s talk about marketing or sales – do you have any fun stories about a risk you’ve taken or something else exciting on the sales and marketing side?
During the early phase of our business, we were booking weddings and engagement sessions, but we had yet to snag an elopement, which is one of our most sought after events to photograph!
Rather than spend money on marketing for more weddings (and hopefully an elopement) We decided to schedule a styled shoot on our own dime. We wanted this to be big and eye catching, something that was going to turn heads.
We also planned on having the shoot at an epic location that is used routinely for elopements. We scrolled through a few instagram posts and Pinterest boards and we firmly landed on Horseshoe Bend near Page, Arizona.
We contacted a recently married couple and pitched our idea and they were game!
The date finally approached and we drove up 5 hours to Lake Powell and started shooting. We took some shots around the lake, and then made our way to the cliffs of Horseshoe Bend just before sunset.
The “groom” wore a deep blue suit with a western bolo tie and the “bride” had a bright white dress with a dainty flower crown; and both of them had long, curly, sandy brown hair. It was western, it was boho, they were so natural.
Unfortunately, come sunset it was a bit overcast at the bend and had those clouds not been there, we would have seen the most epic desert sunset. The interesting thing though, the lack of sunset added to the mood… The white sky slowly faded to the most lovely grey blue, which gave such incredible lighting and contrast to the warm tones of the couple. We brought out our lights and improv’d a unique lighting technique on the spot, and we still use it today.
It was incredible, and we could tell the couple was having a ton of fun being there kissing and loving on each other at this stunning sight. It eventually got too dark, and made our back to our cars. We edited the shots soon after getting home and posted them to our social media platforms.
The photos ended up turning quite a few heads. It was our most liked photoset we had posted, shared many times over. We were contacted by a few very large Adventure wedding brands who wanted to showcase our work on their platforms, and garnered quite a few new followers on our socials.
One of those new followers reached out to us, and told us they’d been dreaming of a cliffside Horseshoe Bend Elopement for their wedding. They told us they loved our work we had just posted and they ended up booking with us!
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
That’s a good question… what makes this work so meaningful to us is being able to create art out of the clients who book with us. Most clients see our work and know they want a similar vibe captured for themselves, but usually need some consulting on when, where and how to pull it all off, and man do we love to consult on exactly that!
Being able to put our personal style and aesthetic over a beatiful couple (in an epic location no less) is all we ever want to do. We are forever grateful to our clients and publications like this here that are excited to work with us! It makes this the best job we’ve ever had, and the best is yet to come.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @sights.photography