We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jordan Voth a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Jordan, thanks for joining us today. Can you share a customer success story with us?

As a photographer, you quickly learn how important light is to a photograph and how good and bad light effect the quality and outcome of a photograph. Throughout a wedding day, I mostly have control to an extent with where I choose to shoot various portraits, details, etc. However, ceremony locations are generally a fixed place that cannot be changed to potentially accommodate better light. One of my clients, Lauren, was having a wedding at a beautiful venue in California that would offer a pretty backdrop with a small mountain behind the venue. However, generally by the time the ceremony happens, the sun has set in a way that leaves the couple partially in the sun, the guests in the shade and the backdrop in full sun. This is probably the worst lighting ceremony as it’s hard to balance the various types of exposures on different aspects of the scene (couple, background and guests). I had explained some lighting tips to Lauren throughout the planning process so when we began to get closer to the wedding date, she made a point to talk to the wedding planner about potentially shifting the ceremony in a way that would be more ascetically pleasing. We ended up turning the ceremony 90 degrees which helped so much and kept the couple, backdrop and guests all in the same type of light which allowed for a super even exposure across the board and made for some incredible photos!

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

I’ve always had an interest in photography, as most do, growing up. Every trip to my grandparents house would entail some time spent looking through photo albums to see what new photos my grandma had scrapbooked. Throughout high school I would borrow the family point & shoot camera to take photos of various stuff, usually just landscape photos. My senior year of high school is when it really started to become a more prominent interest of mine. I took yearbook which allowed me to begin messing around with dSLR cameras. Throughout college I began shooting very consistently, anything from concerts to senior photos to sports. I definitely fell in love with portraits and that’s where I began to focus more heavily. The photo sharing website, Flickr, was pretty popular back then (2008-2013ish) so that’s where the bulk of my work was shared in the beginning.

For the first 5 years or so I pretty much just shot portraits of friends and then began connecting with local modeling agencies to work with models who needed more work in their portfolio; something we both could benefit from. I never really had an interest in weddings; the thought was too stressful that you couldn’t mess up or miss a moment since this day wasn’t something you could recreate later on. At that point, I also hadn’t been to any weddings at all really so I didn’t even know what a wedding necessarily entailed. Nonetheless, I eventually gave in and shot a couple for friends/family in the early 2010’s. They were actually more fun than I had anticipated and so couple photo shoots became the next focus of mine.

Fast forward 10+ years and here I am, a full-time traveling wedding photographer who shoots primarily weddings with the occasional commercial job thrown into the mix. I love incorporating the beautiful scenery this world has to offer into my photos. I’m extremely lucky to have turned what was once just a fun little hobby into a full-blown career that has taken me all around the world. My favorite places I’ve been able to shoot in include Iceland (I’ve now been 5 times), New Zealand (the place where I saw orcas in the wild for the first time) & of course all over the United States. Always looking forward to the next adventure that awaits!

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

I believe the three main factors are consistent, high-quality work, treating clients & other vendors with kindness, losing the ego. I’m sure every industry has an ego issue but I truly believe photographers can sometimes have ego problems and feel they are the most important vendor at the wedding which is not an attractive quality to want to work around. In the end, everyone just wants their clients to have the best wedding experience possible and working with other vendors instead of against should always be your biggest priority. There are bound to be misunderstandings but it’s how you handle those that will leave a lasting impact on others.

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

My wonderful clients! Sure, social media has helped a ton over the years but some of my best weddings now have come from past wedding clients either via referral or they actually attended a wedding I shot and got to see me work firsthand a bit. It’s always great getting to work with new clients this way as a fun perk is usually getting to see my old clients again. I try my best to be the most easy-going and helpful guy on wedding days when there can usually be more stress involved for couples. If I can nail that and deliver great photos to them, I know I can rely on them to refer me to future friends who are getting married.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.jordanvoth.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/jordanvoth
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/jordanvothphotography