We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Gabrielle Van Wyck a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Gabrielle, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you walk us through some of the key steps that allowed you move beyond an idea and actually launch?

It’s a very long story from when I first started to where I am now. Right now I consider myself an adventure elopement photographer in Shenandoah National Park, and have been for the last 5 years. But when I was a teenager, I mostly took self portraits and photos while traveling. I took high school senior portraits for my friends, family photos for my siblings’ friends, and some couple photos – and then I photographed my first traditional wedding in 2011. After that, I kept photographing weddings, couples, families, high school seniors, and anything else that popped up. I worked other jobs and photographed on the side – by 2015 I was making enough money from photography to legalize my business. I had built a website, watched a lot of videos on Youtube and met up with a lot of other photographers. I often rented gear until I saved up enough money to buy the cameras, harnesses, lights, and laptop I needed. In 2016 I got married and moved to an area near Shenandoah National Park where I went full-time as a wedding photographer. I started taking engagement photos for my wedding clients and we would go on adventures in Shenandoah National Park for their photos. Then I started asking my couples to pose in their wedding clothes up on Shenandoah National Park. Then one day in 2018 one of my couples decided to do a hiking elopement on the West Coast, so I flew out there and woke up at 3am to hike with them and their friends and family. It was one of the most amazing experiences of my life, and I wanted to offer that same experience to couples on the East Coast. At this point, hiking and adventure elopements were gaining popularity in National Parks out West, but not in the Blue Ridge Mountains. So I started asking more people if I could photograph them in Shenandoah National Park wearing their wedding clothes and going for hikes. Then I started writing blogs with ideas for ceremonies in the mountains, coming up with fun ideas that they could do, looking for locations they could hike, or easy locations they could walk up to. By the start of 2020, I had completely switched my website and portfolio to only show elopements, and no more traditional weddings. Now, in 2023, I almost only photograph couples, families, and elopements in Shenandoah National Park and it is 100% my dream job. It took a lot of portfolio building, asking people to pose for photos to show the possibility for real elopements, research into the logistics and legalities surrounding photos and ceremonies in the National Park, helping people plan their elopements so that it suited their needs (pets, family members, wheelchairs, bad knees, children, etc.) and now my website is full of real hiking elopements. 98% of my work is in Shenandoah National Park, but the other 2% are on other fun adventures in other states, other National Parks, on sail boats, and more. It took a long time, but showing people on social media and my website what was possible for their wedding day, and what I was up for as far as adventuring, got the attention of couples and families who wanted the adventure too.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I am an adventure photographer based near Shenandoah National Park in Virginia. I mostly specialize in elopements, but I also photograph couples and families – like family vacation, vow renewals, engagement sessions, anniversary photos, fun couple portraits, etc. I help my clients with finding accessible spots for their photos. Some prefer a longer hike to a summit or waterfall, while some may need or want something easier to access like an overlook. The elopements I photograph range from including just the couple, an officiant, their dog, or up to 30 guests. Most of my clients are traveling in from out of town and are staying nearby, so I also offer guides with local things to do while they’re in the area, places to eat, drink, or stay the night. I also offer lists of local vendors for their elopement, and ideas of things they can do during their ceremony or their time taking photos in the mountains.

I love traveling, going on adventures, and hiking – but I also love visiting small towns and supporting small businesses, so having these guides combines so many things that I’m passionate about. It feels like I connect more with my clients because they love very similar things.

What’s been the best source of new clients for you?

SEO + Google is my top source for clients. I took a simple approach to SEO, and I am not a pro with it at all, but it has worked so well for me. Because my work is with photos, I had plenty to share on my site. I saved all of my photos’ file names with keywords that revolved around my business. Basically taking things I thought my clients would search for on Google, and making those the file names. I also had a lot of stories and resources and photos to share on my blog, so I filled that up for 2 reasons : SEO so I could make it high up on Google’s list, but also to help my clients. My blog is part of my website and it is full of inspiration and information for clients. Anything they would potentially search for on Google, I made sure I had a blog post about it. I would say 90% of my clients find me on Google, and it’s all for free (except the time I spent saving photos/writing blog posts).

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

I am currently going through a lesson that I need to unlearn – and it is that running a business is hard. I have found over the last couple of years that I am the one who is making my business harder than it needs to be. After over 10 years of getting my business to where it is now, I feel as if I need to continue hustling and continue growing. But to what end? This year I keep telling myself “let it be easy” because I DID work hard to get it where it is, and it is wonderful now. But I do not need to continue to work hard to make it MORE. It takes constant reminding myself of what I define as success. It takes constant reminding myself that I am where I always wanted to be. It takes constant reminding myself that I do not need to keep hustling. While there is the current background work that will always be there, and obviously going out to photograph clients, keeping up with emails, social media, blog posts, and editing – I find myself trying to add more to my plate that truly does not need to be there. I’ve found recently a lot of other business owners and entrepreneurs who are in the same boat, and that is what made my realize that it’s okay to just let it be easy, because we worked hard to get here.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.whitesailscreative.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/whitesailscreative

Image Credits
White Sails Creative