Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Maggie Bradshaw Says. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Maggie , thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today One of the things we most admire about small businesses is their ability to diverge from the corporate/industry standard. Is there something that you or your brand do that differs from the industry standard? We’d love to hear about it as well as any stories you might have that illustrate how or why this difference matters.
As a photographer from the Southern Louisiana, I believe it is natural to flow into photographing larger weddings. That became the industry standard. To capture as many big and beautiful weddings as you could. I stepped away from this standard and began to specialize in elopements. Specifically elopements for Southern couples looking to break tradition to create a wedding day experience that feels genuine to them. Now I look at the wedding industry as a whole, even outside of the South, and I see elopements slowly becoming more popular. I though, continue to keep my niche small by focusing on how I can serve clients from Southern states who may be unfamiliar with the concept of eloping.
My couples come to me and I help them navigate how to get married in remote landscapes all across the country. Since the idea of eloping or having an intimate destination wedding isn’t common in Southern states, I stand alongside them through the entire process. From the first moments of figuring out where to go and to finally capturing it all on their wedding day.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I got into photography at a young age and kept up with it through high school/college as a hobby. After getting my degree in something not photography related, I couldn’t ignore the pull the craft had on me. I decided to change my trajectory and pursued photography as a full time business about a year out of college. After a little bit of time with a business and exploring different options of what I could photograph, I landed in the wedding photography industry. My personality type is to care for others, meet needs when they arise, and keep everyone happy. Which are three traits that pair very well with photographing weddings. I loved that I could not only capture lifelong memories for my couples, but also care for them throughout one of the most significant days of their lives. After a few years of photographing big Southern weddings, I was noticing clients that were searching for something more non-traditional.
I saw a need arise for a wedding day that looked different from the industry norm. Couples were craving more intimacy, vulnerability, and adventure for their special day. I saw this play out in 2018 when I photographed my first intimate wedding in Colorado for a couple from my hometown. I shifted my business model almost immediately after that wedding, and decided to merge my experience of traveling with my love of wedding photography in order to serve the couples that didn’t see themselves when they saw a traditional wedding. Where do you start though when you know no one who has picked the same route as you for such a monumental day? That is where I step in for my clients. I help couples find the perfect location, suggest ideal vendors, permit assistance, create custom timelines, and then I’m there on the wedding day caring for them. My goal is to always make the process of eloping as stress free as possible and to truly help them craft a day that feels authentic to them.
To niche down so small and aim to serve Southern couples wanting to elope is special. I am proud of myself for making the tough decision to narrow in on that. My passion though is why I do it. I have always been incredibly passionate about helping others experience new and beautiful places. From road tripping across the country with friends piled into my car, or figuring out how to fly my buddies to Seattle when I lived there… I have always strived to help those in my life experience a new environment in anyway that I could. I want everyone to have access to the outdoors in the way that I have. I have stood alongside many couples as they experienced a landscape for the first time, and there is nothing quite like that. Add that experience to your wedding day, and I can’t even describe the feeling it must bring these couples. I feel so incredibly blessed that I have been able to merge that passion and my photography business together.
Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?
Since discovering the art behind wedding/elopement photography and merging it with now traveling for work I have discovered a new mission that drives me. The goal has always been to capture beautiful images that tell a story for my clients, but now my mission in that is to educate them throughout their wedding experience. I hope that my clients step away from their time with me with not only a new appreciation for a landscape they had never seen, but also feel like they know more about the outdoors. I educate my clients on the seven leave no trace principles, I try to spark appreciation in them for the small mountain towns, and help foster a love for the land that maybe they didn’t know they had. Once you truly fall in love with a landscape, you begin to better care for it. My couples begin to appreciate the landscape and learn more about it during their time with me. Then I believe they absolute fall in love with it once they see my imagery of the land with them included. I had a bride once tell me she never felt welcome in the outdoors because she just wasn’t “that type of person”. Then she saw her wedding images and her perspective changed. She saw herself hiking, admiring it all, and loving the land. Which sparked something more in her. My images made her feel welcome in the great outdoors. Which meant the world to me. I want everyone to be able to enjoy the beautiful places our world is filled with, but I want them to enjoy it properly. That way we can all have that experience for years to come.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
Like everyone else, 2020 wasn’t good to me. It especially wasn’t good to my business. I had come out of 2018 ready to rebrand and change the path of my business. I was transitioning from large scale weddings to more elopement work. The year of 2019 was me laying the groundwork for that. Then the world shut down. That wasn’t where the resilience came in though. In August of 202o my hometown was hit by Hurricane Laura. It was absolute devastation for so many people. Following Laura I had lost my studio, my clients had lost their homes, my family was forced to move from the damage of their home, and we were weeks without power. Just as the world was shifting to maybe opening back up again and business picking back up, it all halted. The world seemed to stop in Lake Charles, Louisiana. There were no avenues to work so I decided to put all of my energy into recovery efforts. After much time focusing on recovery for others and completely abandoning my business, I struggled to step back into work life. My bookings were slow because so many weren’t even in the mindset of planning weddings or elopements. We were all just trying to survive down here. My photography work didn’t feel like it mattered during the chaos of hurricane recovery. My art and my desire to capture love stories was irrelevant. It had to be put on the back burner. My time, care, and energy had to go into helping others in the community. Which now looking back at it all, I am so blessed that I had a business that could be halted. It gave me the opportunity to put my complete focus on hurricane recovery for the weeks following the storm.
I started to see my community step up though. Business owners were slowly cleaning up their shops, rebuilding, and helping one another. Even though I didn’t have a physical business to care for, it encouraged me greatly. So, I did the same. I didn’t let the world shutting down, hurricane devastation, or the other hurdles of 2020 keep me down. Pushing towards such a small niche during a time like that was difficult, but I am so thankful to have made it out the other side despite the hurdles.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.maggiebradshawphoto.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/maggiebradshawphoto/
- Other: https://www.pinterest.com/maggiebradshawphoto/
Image Credits
Images taken by Maggie Bradshaw Photo