Did I ever tell you how all this madness started?

It was a dark and stormy night. Well… actually, it was a bright and sunny afternoon, but it was the biggest storm of my career.

It was 2009. The market had thoroughly crashed, and with it my booming wedding photography business. The wedding industry was flooded with talented photographers and people suddenly stopped getting married. Literally. Average couples pushed their weddings off for two or three years to pinch and save for their fairytale day. They postponed dates and scaled back dreams. My bookings dried up practically overnight.

Then, one particularly salty bride crushed the last little bit of love for weddings I had left.

We didn’t even get to the wedding. She hated her engagement session. A few days after I sent her the gallery of images, she sent me a long email full of complaints about all the things she hated. In particular, she claimed she requested up front that we avoid shots of her profile and shots of the two of them kissing. To all of my recollection, she most definitely had NOT communicated a single word of this to me.

I couldn’t figure out how this happened. I’d been doing this long enough I thought I’d worked out all these kinds of kinks. Sadly, I had not.

I was devastated. (Of course.)

The photographs were beautiful! This was my work, my art, my livelihood. I poured blood, sweat, and tears into honing my craft to become a highly skilled and versatile photographer. Plus, my portfolio was full of couples kissing. If she didn’t like my work, why had she hired me?

In a moment of clarity, I realized: She didn’t hate my work; she hated her nose.

It was right there in black and white in the middle of the paragraph, “I hate my nose.”

All of her dissatisfaction hinged on this single detail.

I didn’t figure I could do much about that. I could try to reshoot the engagement session around her nose, but I didn’t think that was the kind of photographer I wanted to be, nor the type of photographer she deserved to have.

I didn’t know how to serve her further, so did what was best for us both at the time—dissolved the contract, wished her the best, and went our separate ways.

But my wedding business was in shambles. That was literally the only event I had on the books.

I was terrified. I sobbed for hours. Nasty, ugly, into-the-pillow sobs. I’d chosen photography because it was a more “sustainable” career than writing or acting. I thought I’d cracked the code!

NOPE.

I was just enjoying an artificial bubble along with the rest of my industry. In only a few short months, I found myself broke, embarrassed, defeated, and utterly directionless.

I would have wallowed in my grief and misery for days, but I didn’t have that luxury. I was halfway through a divorce and didn’t know how I was going to feed my kids. We were already tucked away in spare corners of my aunt’s house for a few months because I had been unable to keep up the rent on one dwindling income.

So, I did what every mama bear in that situation does: I splashed cold water on my face and had a stroke of genius.

In an instant, I made the decision to abandon the wedding business I had worked so hard to nurture and grow over the past eight years and pivot to a completely new market. I never really wanted to shoot weddings full time anyway. I’d been trying to put myself in the box of what I thought a “profitable” photographer looked like.

Deleting the last wedding off my books was a gift. That poor bride and her nose had freed me from my proverbial prison.

A new idea was hatched.

During the years I’d built a wedding business, I’d also built quality relationships with high-end vendors. I’d done a handful of custom branded shoots for a few industry leaders in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex. Even though the vendors who cater high-end events regularly have their work photographed by quality photographers, they rarely even see the photographs, never mind receive copies with rights to use them. I worked with established vendors who produced some of the most luxurious events across the metroprolex, but had virtually zero professional images in their portfolios to show for it. Even though they’d worked hundreds—sometimes thousands—of professional events, the photographers working the same events were hoarding their beautiful images just out of reach. They weren’t necessarily meaning to, they just didn’t realize this untapped market was sitting right under their noses.

In that void, I developed a knack for working directly with chefs, florists, planners, venues, and all the moving people parts it takes to produce beautiful events.

It was just the spark of an idea, but it was DIRECTION!

As soon as I decided, I went back to my computer to find a Facebook message waiting for me from a past client needing updated shots. Well. Duh. Of course that’s how the Universe works.

In the course of a single afternoon, I pivoted my entire photography practice to focus on what I love more than anything: Helping other entrepreneurs grow their businesses.

Surprised? I am, too. I am surprised and grateful for the fork in the road.

I’ve also been incredibly grateful to the woman who hated my work because she hated her nose. I’ve thought of her many, many times, silently wished her well, and genuinely hoped she’d finally found peace with her own image in the mirror. (Y’all, it was a beautiful nose. It was long and exotic, perfectly symmetrical — the kind of slope that drove pharaohs crazy.)

Thank you for reading this long and rambling story about how I started in brand photography.

Leave a comment and tell me about your big moment of truth?

Xoxo,
Breonny

P.S. This is a favorite of me just a few months before that fateful day: