Wendy Laurel is a hippy child at heart :) I love her for that. Wendy is a photographer based in Maui and when we posted our travel schedule saying we would be in Maui to shoot a wedding, Wendy reached out about doing a mentor session with us while we were on the island. We had an awesome day with Wendy! What an incredible person with endless potential. 

Chris and I were so excited to dig into Wendy's business with her for an all day mentor session. When we asked Wendy what makes her stand out from other photographers she answered with "my photos are not timid." I am so in love with that answer. Wendy knows who she is and her photos are honest and interesting. So much of this business is not about knowing all the right "rules," (because the truth is that there aren't any), but rather about knowing yourself, trusting your vision and putting it into the world un-apoligetically. 

During our time together we talked about marketing/branding, shooting for yourself, harnessing your vision, getting published, processing, workflow among a gamut of other things. It is so cool to see people get so excited about the new levels that they can take their shooting and business to. After our time together, we went to Wendy's site and blog only to discover she had applied many of the pieces of advice that Chris and I gave her during our critique. I would encourage you to read through Wendy's recent post on why she is a photographer... I found it to be a beautiful peek into her heart as a person and artist. 

We are stepping into a very busy season with lots of coming and going for a variety of different commissions. It's a good thing we love to travel because we will traveling all over  this year. We just got ourselves an ipad so that we can watch endless movies on the plane rides of all of our international trips :). So for those who might be interested in booking shoots/mentor sessions etc. while we are in your back yard hit us up via e mail. And for our clients, keep in mind while we are traveling we may be slower to respond to e mails/calls but will of course get back with you upon our return home.