We were lucky to catch up with Regina Hyman recently and have shared our conversation below.

Regina, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

I fell in love with photography as a child, running through 35mm film constantly. I always new I wanted to be a photographer. Something about being able to capture a moment in time and knowing you can save that memory forever has always been fascinating to me. I attended photography school at the Hallmark Institute of Photography in Turners Falls, MA. Immediately after graduating I packed my bags and moved to Orlando to follow my dreams of becoming a Wedding photographer for Disney Fairytale Weddings. I worked for the Disney Fine Art Photography team as a contract photographer for nearly seven years. In that time, I photographed over 1 thousand Disney weddings as well as special events.

During this time, I also was in pursuit of the ultimate dream, which was to have my own business. I gradually built up my own photography business while I was still working for Disney until the day came when I decided I was ready to go full time into business for myself. During this time, I also was blessed to marry my best friend and forever love of my life, Gary! He has always been my biggest supporter in life and he was also ready to leave his full-time job as a Hotel Manager and join me in business. We set out to create our own dream of being able to work together and enjoy every second of this life on earth together. We both love photography and have an extreme passion for weddings and telling love stories through the lens. We have been working full-time together in our business since 2012 and loving every second of it! Sure there have been some stressful times, as there is in any business. However we wouldn’t change a thing, we work hard at something we not only love but loving doing together.

We enjoy making other people happy and knowing that what we do each day has a lasting impact on their lives. We cherish the relationships we build with each of our clients and we are forever grateful they chose us to be their photographers. We have grown our business in different ways over the years and through trial and error, we continue to grow and learn. We also had a photo booth business for five years, which was a success in the beginning until the wedding trends changed, so we sold the photo booth and just continued to focus on photographing weddings. We have expanded to also offer cinema packages and we have an amazing team of cinematographers that work for us. We love being able to collaborate with our cinema team and be able to offer the client everything they need to capture their day perfectly through their photos and cinema.

We are thankful that we have brought on a wonderful team of Associate Photographers that are working for us on weddings as well. This way, Gary and I can be shooting a wedding and we can also have our Associate Photographers out shooting a different wedding at the same time along with our Cinema teams being able to cover multiple weddings as well. We have kept our team small for now as we are firm believers in quality over quantity. We want to be sure that each and every client will have a high-quality personalized experience with us and our team. We are so grateful for all that we have and that we both made the decision back in 2012 to take a leap of faith in leaving our full-time jobs to pursue this dream. It is worth all the hard work and we can truly say we love what we do.

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?

We love people and getting to know them. Building personal relationships with all of our clients is a high priority in our business. From the time a client books we are working on building that relationship all through their wedding planning process so that when it comes to the wedding day they can feel like we are their friends and part of the family. By doing this it not only leads to a better experience for the client but it is also enjoyable for us. We are able to capture the true essence of our clients and their relationship by the fact that they feel comfortable with us and can be their true selves in front of the camera. We make sure that our clients enjoy the process of having photos taken. We believe not only in providing beautiful photos that will last for generations to come but also in providing a fun experience that will last as a memory from their special day.

Prior to a wedding we make sure to memorize all of the wedding party and immediate family members names. This way we can refer to them by their names and it makes everyone feel so comfortable with us, which leads to great photos and a personalized experience for not just the bride and groom but also for their family and friends. Another thing that sets us apart from others is that we edit all the images ourselves. We do not out source the editing as many other photographers do. We feel that since we captured the photos and know the client, their personality and what they like, we we can provide the best quality of editing on their images. We do everything we can to make each interaction with our clients a personalized and memorable experience.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

The Pandemic was a very scary time when suddenly all of our spring/summer 2020 weddings had to be cancelled and half of our fall weddings as well. However, we remained determined throughout the entire pandemic that we would not let this destroy us, and not only would we survive but we were determined to thrive!

We can proudly say that we did survive and our business is continuing to grow. It has taken much creativity and a different approach in marketing as the world has changed so much over this past couple years. 2021 was a total rebound year with us capturing a record amount of weddings in 1 year than ever before! 2022 has also been a very strong year for our business and growth and we have faith that it will continue through the years. We realize that we are very blessed and incredibly grateful for the success of our business year to year.

Where do you think you get most of your clients from?

The best source of new clientele continually throughout the years is always referrals and reviews. Referrals are like Gold in our industry because people trust the word of others especially if they know them personally. Reviews have also been a great source of business as they tell the truth the clients are looking for. Referrals are always great for us because it usually means this new client is in some way similar to the client, they were referred from. Whether it be in personality or just morals and standards, it keeps our clientele consistent. We can honestly say we LOVE our clients! We have been so blessed with the best bride/grooms and families we could ever ask for!

Contact Info:

• Website: www.reginahymanphoto.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/reginahymanphoto/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/reginahymanphotography
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/ReginaHyman34

Image Credits
Regina Hyman Photography & Cinema