We recently connected with Whitney Bilbao and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Whitney thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to start by getting your thoughts on what you are seeing as some the biggest trends emerging in your industry.
Lately, there has been a preference with more of a candid type of photography in weddings and elopements. This style of photography adds a more unique and meaningful touch to your wedding day.
Instead of the posed and perfect image that you may not have any emotion towards, weddings are shifting to brilliantly raw and organic ways of telling stories. Sure, there are still images where you tell the family members to line up and say ‘cheese’, but brides and grooms are wanting to see the parts of their days that they missed or a guest’s point of view.
I was in Castelladral, Barcelona, Spain at a wedding. It was going from 12 pm in the afternoon until 6 am the next morning. The Brides wanted to capture the set-up of their wedding to every laugh that was across their guests face. Yaiza, one of the brides, said, “After we say I do and take photos of just us, I don’t even want to see you point that camera at me unless I am with a guest and we are laughing or crying.”
Documentary style photography adds a personal touch to people’s wedding days that don’t just show an image, but it has a nostalgic feeling to it.
Whitney, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I don’t have one of those sappy stories – just funny ones with how life lead me to this awesome career. I majored in journalism at the University of Nevada, Reno. There I studied social media marketing while taking random Iphone photo classes on the side. When I graduated, I was gifted a point & shoot camera. About a month later, my friend’s brother asked me to take his wedding photos in a few months, yet I had never taken a picture of a person in my entire life, only landscape photos. But I decided to take on the challenge and I said yes!
Well, about a week before the wedding, my point & shoot puttered out and I had to come up with quick solution. With practice over those few months, I had created a small following and decided to take out a loan (with an insanely high interest might I add) and start a business.
Fast forward 5 years later & I have traveled to Mexico, Spain, and 5 different states because people love the way that I capture memories. The part that I am most proud of is ultimately having photography be my full-time job and knowing that I do everything behind it – my websites, coordinating weddings and even my own accounting. One thing that I do struggle with, and I think other creators do to is that it’s so intimidating to see other people’s work and think, “I should have done that.” But we have to remember that all circumstances are different and we create what we are capable of in that moment.
Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.
I find a lot of inspiration within the personality of people, but when they’re expecting me to “just take some photos” I struggle with the work that I create. It’s really fun to be able to work with clients who understand or appreciate the planning that I do to make sure that we have good light, weather, landscaping, framing, and not just some weird photos where adult-siblings are awkwardly holding hands.
I’m in this for the creativity first and foremost and second because it’s how I make my money.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
My first year of doing photography full-time, I had 5 couples cancel their weddings. It really put me in the hole for a little while. Sure, people paid their deposits, but that was still about $10,000 that I wouldn’t be collecting for the year. It messed up the budgeting that I had to do for my off-season and just ultimately ruined my confidence in love and clients. After that I felt like all I would read about were these other photographers talk about how in love their clients were, and how the days were full of so much emotion.. I became a little bitter and thought maybe it had something to do with my work. But I had to come to the realization that ultimately it was better for some of my clients to not make it to the altar, and it had no reflection on me.
The year after that, I decided to raise my prices to put myself into a little more of a desirable category with clients that would appreciate my art and not because I was inexpensive and low and behold, I got to travel the world for my job.
Contact Info:
- Website: whitneybilbaophoto.com
- Instagram: @bilbaowhitneyphoto
Image Credits
Whitney Bilbao Photography