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

Hi Geneva, thanks for joining us today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

How did you learn to do what you do?

I started learning photography in general when my daughter was born 8 years ago. I was in the hospital and they came by to take the newborn photos. I wasn’t impressed with the photos and knew I could do better so I expressed this to my daughter’s father who is also a creative (@1poppito) . For my birthday, he bought me my first camera and I started learning as much as I could about my camera by watching Jessica Whitaker on YouTube. I was literally taking photos of everything and documenting our lives through photo.

After shooting my daughter and her Dad for about a year, I was approach with an opportunity from my girl Ariel ( @Arielviewsphotos) about shooting her cousins wedding with her. It was both our first wedding and I was pretty nervous but after that day, I fell in love with documenting love and Wedding Photography so I began my journey in learning as much as I possibly could about Wedding Photography. Thanks to my mentor Michelle Harris (@MHarris_Studios) , I was ready to shoot Weddings with confidence.

Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process?

My learning process was pretty fast. I’ve always had a great eye for photos thanks to my Dad. I’ve been taking photos since I was a little girl but it was with the standard point and shoot and not a DSLR. So it was a little learning curve but YouTube University really helped me out.

What skills do you think were most essential?

In Wedding Photography, the most essential skill you can have is making your couples feel comfortable in front of the camera because this is most peoples first photoshoot.

What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?

Money was a factor because as you know, you have to pay for everything. I wish when I started, I had more money to invest in myself so that I could do more styled shoots and really build my portfolio faster.

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?

My name is Geneva and I’m a HBCU Graduate from The Virginia State University.

I got into Wedding Photography after shooting my first wedding with my girl Ariel and falling in love with capturing couples. I’ve always been a hopeless romantic so documenting love is on brand for me!!

Right now, my most proud moment is being able to shoot Corey Kispert from the Washington Wizards Engagement session last year!! It was an amazing experience and let me know my work is on the radar of NBA players. I’m hoping to shoot more NBA players and their wives in the future.

The main thing I like for potential clients to know is that I love LOVE and I’m great at what I do. I’m great at turning any couple into a models for the day and really getting those romantic, magazine worthy photos for all of my couples. I’ve studied a lot on the art of posing and I bring my A game to every engagement shoot and wedding!!

Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?

I wish I knew about Style Shoots Across America sooner. This is a great way to build your wedding photography portfolio and to shoot luxury weddings. It’s a great way to attract your ideal client!!

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

I built my audience organically on Instagram and I’m still trying to get to the 5K followers milestone. Over the pandemic, I did a lot of reels to attract followers which really helped.

I also make sure to post two times a day and to do an engagement giveaway which twice a year to bring in those followers as well,

Contact Info:

• Website: www.imagesbygeneva.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/imagesbygeneva
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/imagesbygeneva

Image Credits
Photos taken by Images By Geneva