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

Alright, Rachel thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Innovation comes in all shapes, sizes and across all industries, so we’d love to hear about something you’ve done that you feel was particularly innovative.

Over the past year, we’ve all seen a boom in the use of Ai. It’s touched every industry, but in photography and retouching, the touch has felt more like a shove! I know a lot of photographers and artists who are worried, scared, and are actively resisting the use of Ai in the arts.

I don’t think that’s the correct approach. Instead, I’ve fully embraced the use of this new tech, and my business has grown exponentially in response.

While I’m still shooting, a majority of my clients are now fashion and product photography clients that are looking for Ai generated content images.

It’s also allowed me to bring new and imaginative imagery to my photography clients. From using Midjourney to create surreal compositions to using Magnific for photorealistic upscales, the possibilities are pretty much endless.

Rachel, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I’m a professional photographer here in the valley who specializes in luxury wedding and portraits. I actually learned photography as a forensic science student. I worked as a Crime Scene Investigator for the Phoenix and Mess Police Departments before making the drastic shift into the creative artistry world.

My style is pretty different when compared to many other photographers here in Arizona. My images are dramatic, “fashiony” and more saturated and true to life than most wedding photographers.

With my adaption of all the new creative Ai tools, my surreal, unbelievable composite scenes are reaching new heights. I’m finding new revenue paths in the industry and my retouching and editing skills are on a complete new level now.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

Shifting from working homicide investigations to wedding photography was a pretty big shift! But not really as big as the shift I’m getting ready to make.

During Covid, when the world shut down and no one was shooting events, I had time to focus on a new business idea. One of my best friends, and fellow wedding professional, Karen Podrasky, is a wedding planner. For the past three plus years, we’ve been collaborating on the creation of a new wedding planning website and CMS called “Wed&Done.” This new innovative system allows us to plan an entire wedding for our clients, and book and pay all of their vendors and venue. The UI/UX is crazy fun too! Our clients meet Madge, their fairy godmother, all her magical little friends, and get to work their way along a candy land like path as the system helps them customize their wedding.

We’re in the last phases of testing, so Wed&Done will be live soon and I think, is going to rock the wedding industry here in Arizona. It’s a very scalable model, so the plan is to expand to other states in the next few years.

Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?

My new cofounder for Wed&Done, Karen Podrasky, from KDP Events, and I, met when I was just starting out in the wedding industry.

I was really trying to get my name out there as a new photographer, so I mass blasted every wedding planner I could find who was established and in the marketing space I wanted to be in.

Karen was one of the only planners who responded to my outreach. We met for coffee and have been close friends and working weddings together ever since.

Karen had been noodling on the idea of automating wedding planning at scale for years. When we met, I was able to bring in a tech-savvy lens for the “how” element of the business model. We make a pretty impressive duo. Wed&Done is the product of our creative collaboration.

Contact Info:

• Website: Rleintzphotography.com and wedanddone.com
• Instagram: Rleintzphotography
• Facebook: Rachel Leintz Photography
• Linkedin: Rachel Leintz

Image Credits
Rachel Leintz Photography