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

Jasmine, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Almost every entrepreneur we know has considered donating a portion of their sales to an organization or cause – how did you make the decision of whether to donate? We’d love to hear the backstory if you’re open to sharing the details.

I’m no stranger to giving back, especially with sustainability and environmental causes.  I have been an avid environmental and animal rights supporter for decades.  When I started Jasmine Norris Photography, I knew I wanted to carry that passion over into my business and made the commitment to donate at least 5% of all profits to environmental causes each year. The causes that are donated to change each year depending on the circumstances that may have happened that year.

Jasmine Norris Photography is committed to sustainability and operating with as low of an environmental footprint as possible.  In 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023 I was able to be neutralize over 480,000 pounds of carbon emissions by partnering with CarbonFund.org and are on track to neutralize 80,000 carbon emissions in 2024. Which puts Jasmine Norris Photography on track to be a carbon neutral company.  

Weddings naturally have quite an environmental footprint on our Earth and I also help wedding couples reduce the carbon footprint of their wedding with practical tips and suggestions.  My blog, How To Have A Waste Free Wedding, explains some quick tips and items for wedding couples to look out for while they are planning their wedding to make sure it will have a low environmental footprint and has been widely referenced within the wedding industry.  Some of the tips mentioned are making sure your venue recycles, using reusable tableware vs single use items, and renting items that would otherwise only be used once.

This year, I’ve also partnered with the City of Lafayette’s Rain Garden program and have sponsored a rain garden in the downtown area. Rain gardens are designed to soak in rain water runoff from roofs and sidewalks and are effective in removing up to 90% of nutrients and chemicals and up to 80% of sediments from rain water run off.

When couples book Jasmine Norris Photography for their wedding, they are helping support some amazing causes and help to make our Earth cleaner and brighter.

Jasmine, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Hi there! I’m Jasmine and I own and run Jasmine Norris Photography. I’m an award winning and published wedding photographer based in Indiana but I photograph weddings worldwide.

For over a decade, Jasmine Norris Photography has been proving wedding couples with romantic and joyful images that they will love and treasure for generations all while helping them have a stress free wedding photography experience.  Averaging around twenty-five wedding couples each year, Jasmine Norris Photography is able to consistently meet deadlines while providing an amazing client experience and accumulating five star reviews from all of my couples.

I’m a photographer for the romantic and joyful couples who want their wedding day to be authentic. I also understand how stressful planning a wedding can be and to alleviate that stress, I arm my couples with lots of help and guidance from family formals to wedding day timelines to posing and a lot more.  I strive to makes sure the experience is as fun and as stress free as possible.

Can you talk to us about how your funded your business?

Jasmine Norris Photography is 100% self funded. I used savings I had to start the business and started with purchasing the must have stuff first- website, camera, and a few lenses. I then kept re-investing my profits into the business until I was able to build my business up to where it is today. It was really important to me to not go into debt with the business so I started small and scaled when I was able to.

What else should we know about how you took your side hustle and scaled it up into what it is today?

Jasmine Norris Photography did start out as a side hustle and at first it was something I fell into! I always loved taking photos as a child with disposable cameras my parents would get me. As I got older, I got digital cameras and continued to take photos I love. In college, I started working in the music industry and took photos while I was working different events. Those images started getting noticed and I even had a big spread with MTV back when they were a music network. I went on to do some concert photography for a while after that.

Fast forward a few years and one of my friends was getting married and the wedding photographer she booked had stopped responding. She asked me if I would photograph her wedding and I fell in love! I officially started my business and started taking family portraits, couple portraits, weddings, and more. I did this as a side hustle for many years and worked for a newspaper and as a merchandiser as my full time job.

A few years into my business, I realized that I really just loved photographing weddings so I switched over my branding to just be a wedding photographer and after awhile I started getting consistent bookings and knew it was time to dedicate all of my time to the business so I quit my other jobs and became a full time wedding photographer!

I’ve been a full time wedding photographer for over eight years now and I love getting to own and run my own business and document love stories for a living!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.jasminenorris.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jasmine.norris
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jasminenorrisphotography

Image Credits

Jasmine Norris Photography