Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Koryn Bennett. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Koryn, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Are you able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen?

As of 2022, I have been working full time as a travel wedding photographer. I started my business as a school project in 2016 as a capstone to my senior year. From there, people that knew me would ask if I could take their portraits- which I was flattered by! At the time I was going to college for Early Childhood Education, and around halfway through, as I still continued photography, I realized that I had fallen in love with the creative process and wanted to continue pursuing my photography. I graduated with a degree in Journalism, Advertising and Media Relations from University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and took off with a full -time photography career.

I realized that photography was the best career choice for me when I was at a wedding, surrounded by people on the happiest day of their lives and noted “this is a day in the office for me.”

The milestones of traveling to Sint. Maarten; Portland, OR, and Baltimore all in one year brought so much creativity and joy into my work process. On a smaller scale, each time a couple reaches out to me and says “we’ve been following your artwork for as long as we can remember and need you to be our photographer,” its a smaller milestone that only makes me feel more grateful for the creative opportunities that are presented to me.
It’s been a beautiful process that I have been endlessly grateful for.

Being one of the creative persuasion, Canva has especially been a driving force in my success. I created my website, pricing guides, timelines, branding and more using canva.

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 got into the photography industry on accident. I went to a smaller, college-preparatory school in Hartland, Wisconsin called University Lake School, where instead of second-semester finals for seniors being tests, they allow their seniors to explore in an independent study of their choosing. I took my project a step further, and extended it through 6 months, rather than three weeks.

For this project, I designed a blog and would take a photograph a day and blog a short blurb about my thoughts, what I did that day, something new I might have tried, etc. I set a goal for myself to reach 2,000 page views, but had realized about halfway through that I had already exceeded that amount. Capitalizing on my success, I decided to expand the blog into more, some of that being portraits of people. By the end of the semester, at my presentation date, I had more than 10,000 page views on my blog. BUT, the most important thing that came out of that project were the people who had seen the portraits I had taken and had asked me to professionally take their portraits. I didn’t know at the time, but I had started my career at sixteen.

Today, I offer Milwaukee based + travel based wedding services and wedding plan + create content for the Midwestern bride. I am most proud of the connections I make. The majority of my clientele remain friends to me, and follow along with my work long after I capture their weddings, family portraits, senior portraits and more.

Being my own business owner is the most satisfying and gratifying thing I have completed- absolutely the hardest as well, but I am living the artists dream.

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?

Rebranding. Going full time. Dropping a 9-5 out of college to pursue my creative passion.

All of the things I listed involved me sticking my neck out, taking a leap and trusting where I would land. It’s always scary taking chances, especially when your employee count is 1.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

Making people feel beautiful. It’s an easy answer for me. It’s the joy you get to share with your clients where you feel as though you have created something great and they appreciate, treasure and trust the art you curate. It’s also the satisfaction of looking deeper than the big picture. The ability to almost slow time, to take a moment, pause, look around and create art from real-life opportunity. To capture the small moments of love that not everyone sees; to acknowledge the kindness between a couple that has been together for years, to children playing in a fountain and to being shown beautiful places you clients invite me to explore.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.ivylanephotocompany.com
• Instagram: ivylanephotocompany

Image Credits

n/a