With the arrival of our 3-year anniversary, I’m taking some time to reflect back on how this business started and to give thanks to those who helped it become what it is today.
In the spring of 2017, after nearly a decade of humming and hawing over buying a DSLR, I finally did it. I decided it would be my graduation gift to myself. Just a few months prior, on Christmas, I had come closer than ever to making that purchase. “What will you use it for?” my dad asked, thoughtfully. I want to take pictures, I thought, but didn’t reply, knowing it wasn’t a real answer.
I have never been one to do something before I know what I’m doing, so before I made the purchase, I learned all that I could. I knew about ISO and shutter speed and aperture and how they all worked together the moment I hit “order” (in practice, though, it took some getting used to). Composition and framing weren’t new to me – my high school years were mainly spent in the art room, taking as many classes as I could with one of my best supporters, Mr. John Larsen. Many of my childhood memories revolve around making art with my parents. Visual art, I can confidently say, has been my longest-lasting and most genuine interest.
I spent that summer taking pictures of Joe and my siblings and family events with a $100 50mm lens. The next time Christmas rolled around, freshly graduated and still broke, all I wanted was money to upgrade that tiny little 50mm. This time, when my dad asked why, I had an answer. I was going to open a business, I decided. That was my original plan when I started college, anyway – not to open a photography business, but to become an independent wedding dress designer (or work for a magazine, but as Dr. Neidermyer quickly informed our class, that was not an ambitious career goal for someone with an apparel design degree). Despite changing my major out of apparel design, my love of weddings was still strong, and I realized it wasn’t actually the dresses I was so in love with. It was the pictures.
In true Miranda-fashion, I was convinced I needed to learn all there is to know about running a business before opening a business. It wasn’t practical, but I tried. I read and practiced, but ultimately, to become a wedding photographer, I was going to have to get some wedding pictures into my portfolio. For someone as chronically shy as myself, I had no idea how I was going to make that happen.
At that point, Joe and I had been dating for 5 years, and while low-key dreaming about our own wedding, I stumbled upon Hart and Fig. Audrey’s work was beautiful – it was everything I wanted in my own wedding pictures and everything I wanted to be as a photographer. So I gathered up the courage and sent a very wordy and nervous email about how I’d love to shadow her and assist in any way possible, fully prepared to be told no.
Audrey is as kind as she is skilled. We planned for me to come along with her to weddings that summer – and, while I wasn’t feeling ready to handle a wedding on my own at the time, I knew that people usually planned weddings a year in advance. If I was going to photograph any on my own in 2019, I had to make business official. On January 1st, 2018, Simply Finn, LLC came into existence. I knew I’d be taking things slow for a bit, but thanks to Audrey, I was able to build a portfolio while I tried to get business in order.
I’m forever grateful for the experience Audrey gave me in my first year of business and forever thankful for the couples who trusted me with their wedding when I had just a summer’s worth of weddings to show. There is so much more to this story – like how Joe began to help and how we started getting into video, but those are for a different day. This is just the beginning.
