We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Lauren Halvorson-Nobis. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Lauren below.

Lauren, appreciate you joining us today. One of the most important things we can do as business owners is ensure that our customers feel appreciated. What’s something you’ve done or seen a business owner do to help a customer feel valued?

I have always lead with relationship in my business. My first clients were dear friends of mine, I loved how it felt working with friends so I committed myself to treating every couple I worked with like dear friends. Naturally, that led to the best service possible, the forming of trust and true genuine relationships which then led to them wanting to share about my business with all of their friends and family.

While I have several experiences along my client journey from when we meet for the first time (ideally at my home over coffee or dinner) to when I deliver their final gallery and print products in person sprinkled with a few extra gifts, my very favorite way to share my appreciate for my couples is through celebrations that I host and invite them to.

The first is one for the brides only, and it’s called “My favorite things” party…. I invite all of my brides to be in a given calendar year to come and throw them a shower like celebration where each bride brings one of their favorite things and I make a gift basket for them of all of my favorite things and they each get a basket then they get to exchange their favorite things with one another white elephant style. They go home with a gift bag of all my favorite goodies and get to know one another as well by seeing what each gal chose to present as their favorite thing. I shower them with love and cocktails and food and we celebrate their upcoming wedding while connecting them with each other and forming a really special connection with all of my brides.

The second is something I hope to start soon: an “anniversary party” for all of my past couples (brides + grooms). This will be held sort-of reception style, where all my past couples are invited to come for food + drinks and dancing, and we will celebrate all of their marriages (or “anniversaries) together in one place as well as our anniversary as friends!

I stay in touch with as many couples as possible, inviting them for dinner or a meet up for lunch in town whenever we can and love watching their families grow.

I love a good in-person appreciation celebration whenever possible.

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?

Hi! I’m Lauren: photographer, educator, airbnb host, dark chocolate lover and Owner of Wildly Photography: a company that captures soul-stirring images for the wildly in love.

My current photography model is an associate team model with 4 incredible lead photographers and 4 wonderful second shooters that travel and shoot weddings for our company all over the country. Personally, I handle all of the client relations, editing, product production and also the education branch of our company offering 1:1 mentoring as well as group programs and a soon to be self-led online course for aspiring photographers who want to take their passion and turn it into a profitable business!

While my associate team handles all of the in person stuff for weddings, I also offer Branding sessions for those who are wildly in love with their business, boudoir images for those who are wildly in love with themselves, family sessions for those who are wildly in love with their families, and senior sessions for those who are wildly in love with their graduates! I love capturing whatever season of wild love people are in and allowing those memories to be turned into something tangible that will allow them to come back to this moment, and feeling, in time whenever they wish.

I believe what sets our company apart is our relational focus when it comes to our clients. We don’t just show up, shoot and leave. We take time through in-person meetings, celebrations and questionnaires to get to know our clients, serve them to the best of our ability, make them feel like true friends and leave knowing they are always seen, known and loved by us.

I am really excited for the newer educational opportunities that we are offering and continuing to add so that more people can experience the joy and blessings that a career in photography has brought to me, my team and many of our mentees.

We’d love to hear the story of how you turned a side-hustle into a something much bigger.

I attended college at a small christian college in Quincy, MA called Eastern Nazarene college. I was studying to become a pharmacist and had planned out my whole future to work helping people in the medical field. During that time, I had a love for photography and was always the one with a camera in her hands snapping photos of all of the fun things we did/saw/experienced throughout my years in Boston. It’s very common within the christian community for people to get married very young. This led to many of my friends becoming engaged in their late teens/early twenties and planing weddings during our years together in college. As you can imagine, at 19-22 years old, still in college, their funds were limited to put it kindly. Boston wedding photographers were running at around $3,000-$5,000 for an 8 hour wedding at that time and my friends simply just could not afford it. One day, a friend offered to pay me $500 to take photos at their wedding. I had never been PAID to take photos before. I loved taking pictures, realized this would mean I got to spend their entire day with them and could not see a downfall….. other than potentially ruining their day if I sucked and they were left with zero wedding photos. I told them I would do it as their wedding gift and made them sign a contract that said they would love me even if every single photo was terrible and they didn’t like a single one. They assured me they were not going to be able to afford any other alternative, so it was either me or disposable cameras on the tables and hoping for the best, so I told them to get the disposables and that I’d do it for free and it’d be a win-win. Long story short, they LOVED their photos and I LOVED the front row seat I got to their big day and the trust they put in me to capture this life-changing day for them in photos that would last forever. Word spread quickly on a college campus filled with newly engaged young adults on a budget and couple after couple was asking me to photograph their wedding. I quickly built up to be able to charge $2500/wedding (still under the bottom price for what the “going rate” at the time was) and went above and beyond to serve each couple so that they would be thrilled beyond belief and want to share their images, and my business, with their friends. Within a year I had built a 6-figure wedding photography company in my spare time. I graduated college and chose not to go on to med school, as I had fallen in love with wedding photography and was so grateful for the career that had found me, almost accidentally, and continued to bless me beyond measure with feelings of purpose, joy and financial stability. Over the years my business has grown completely thanks to word of mouth and relationship marketing. I always under promise and over deliver (I give my couples their photos much sooner than they’re promised, send them printed products as a surprise, add extra pages to their wedding albums and host parties from time to time just to invite all my couples to come together and experience my gratitude for them). I believe fully in the power of service and relationship to build a flourishing and lasting business.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

Fifteen years into my career as a wedding photographer, I developed a very severe illness that severely limited my mobility and threatened the survival of my business. While fighting through testing, procedures and severely debilitating symptoms I realized it was time for a major pivot. I could no longer travel to weddings and be on my feet for 8-10 hours per day three days a week. It just wasn’t possible. After a lot of tears, grief and ancxiety, I decided it was time to put all those things aside and make some changes. I pivoted my one woman show into an associate company model, adding some incredible photographer to my team who would shoot weddings under my company’s name and deliver the images to me to be edited and perfected for my couples. Letting go of control was incredibly difficult for me, personally, but I truly trusted each and every person that I added to my team, many of whom had worked with me as a 2nd shooter for years and years and understood the culture of my company and the love for our couples that was the number one priority to me. I changed the company name, as I found my name being a part of the company title was confusing couples who wanted to hire “Lauren Halvorson Photography” But then weren’t getting “Lauren Halvorson” at their wedding, so WILDLY photography was born. Soul-Stirring images for the wildly in love. The rebrand was a lot to take on, but relaunching also felt like a bit of a fresh start, a rebirth to something new and beautiful. I was sad to lose the in-person connection that I thrived on with my couples, no longer being in person at their weddings, so I also began offering 1:1 coaching for up and coming photographers who wanted to turn their passions into a profitable career. This gave me person to person interaction that I’d been missing, all from the comfort of my own home (Thank you, Zoom!). I’ve really enjoyed teaching other photographers what I know, and am looking to go even further into the education realm by creating an online course and several educational resources to come that are in the works as we speak. While the initial catalyst for the pivot (severe illness) felt like a major loss, and in many ways has been just that, it also allowed for a beautiful rebirth and pushed me out of what was comfortable back into creativity of what could be. It’s been a difficult but also inspiring journey as I continue to explore that and allow my company to evolve into bigger and better things.  

Contact Info:

• Website: www.wildly-photography.com
• Instagram: @wildlyphotography

Image Credits
All photos by Wildly Photography