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

Alright, Laura thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear your thoughts about family businesses.

Both my husband and I grew up with parents that owned their own businesses, and we both helped them throughout the years. The ability to be present everyday, not work for others and their timeframes and have our kids involved with building our legacy is invaluable.

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

Laura Jennings Photography, Inc., is a full time, full service natural light photography business. The artist, Laura Jennings, is a highly regarded destination wedding and portrait photographer and serves the Northwest Florida Panhandle as well as points unknown around the world!

Laura specializes in beach weddings and family sunset photography, regularly photographing over 300 families a year and in her free time is a volunteer photographer for both the Magic Hour Organization and All Things PCB Outreach offering free photography services to terminal cancer patients and their families.

Laura was a 1st place winner in The 2016 Shoot & Share photography contest with over 225,000 entries from 120 countries and over 30 million votes. Locally, she is an extremely busy wedding and family photographer and was voted Best of Bay for the last 7 years. Laura is periodically a guest blogger for The Perfect Pose, The Rising Tide, Sixth Bloom, and numerous other photography blogs. She has been published in newspapers and magazines such as The Circuit and Florida Today, is a professional contributor to Getty Images, and has even collaborated with a major television network on a new reality show concept!

Examples of her nature, sunset, landscape and resin work are hanging in many local beach homes and even a fine art glass gallery in St Augustine, FL. In early 2017, Laura wrote a short book on How to Start a Photography Business which is available through her website or on Amazon. She is a member of PPA, APA and sits on the board of All Things Panama City Beach Outreach– a locally based non-profit whose mission is helping families and children with terminal illnesses make memories with bucket list beach vacation experiences.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

Social media can be tricky, scary and overwhelming, but I think it’s best to be yourself and show up as you are. Perfection is not they key and I find myself avoiding social media because I don’t have the perfect shot, or story to post. But in reality, your target client isn’t looking for perfection, they are looking for you, to show up and share and show that you, too, are a person that they can relate to, which ultimately makes them relate to you on a personal level and feel like they know you and trust you.

Can you talk to us about how your side-hustle turned into something more.

Photography started out as a hobby for me, like most other mothers. I had my second child and wanted to capture memories from his childhood. The more practice I had with him, the more people saw my photos and wanted photos of their own families captured. I was a part-time photographer for about 6 years before I finally took the leap, quit my day job and went full-time. I haven’t looked back once and wish I had done it sooner! It’s been a huge catalyst into many other great things in our journey including additional business ventures, acquiring 5 vacation rental properties, traveling the world and creating incredible tangible memories for not only my family but thousands of others.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.LJenningsPhotography.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/laurajenningsphotog/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LJenningsPhotography