This past weekend, Meghan and I drove up to Island Park with a car literally STUFFED full of food, styled shoot details, computers, bags, and camera gear. Not only was the car full of those things, but it’s safe to say that any little space or crack of room in that car was filled with nerves. Nerves of excitement, nerves of being scared to fail, and nerves of knowing what to expect. We welcomed everyone to dinner at the cabin, thankfully before the crazy rain began. It rained for the entire night as we opened up our teaching and slides about branding. We turned off the slides around 10, but the rain continued into the wee hours of the morning. Branding is a really heavy topic to start off with, but JayCee, Michaela, Alicia, Tahni, and Sarah, handled it like champs. It was so fun to be able to chat with them about different aspects of branding. Day 2 started off with a little bit of stress as we looked over the forecast and saw that from 2pm on it was 100% chance of rain and we were supposed to be having a styled shoot that day. Yikes. After chatting and teaching for a bit in the morning, we switched gears and went to 1 on 1 mentoring! I loved this portion of the days because I was able to get to chat with these women about the topics and ideas that were really on their minds and what they felt they were needing help with. It was incredible to be able to help and learn from them!! After we finished up mentoring, we had lunch and our florals from The Rose Shop had arrived!! The clouds had started rolling in and we knew that as soon as could, we needed to get photographing the different setups (bridal details, invitation suite, dessert table, place setting table) to be able to beat the rain. We got everything set up outside by our cabin and walked them through how we shoot different aspects of wedding days. As we finished up those things, Taylor and Adam came to be our bride and groom for portraits. And guess what?! The rain NEVER came. It stayed dry all day long and it was SO beautiful!!!! After we wrapped up the shooting portion of the day, we headed back to the cabin were able to go over editing and got to look through some images of the day. After dinner, we went over shooting with flash and we finished up marketing (it’s a long topic!!). That night we were all so exhausted, but all of us (except Meghan- she’s on east coast time) stayed up past 1 in the morning, just laughing and swapping funny stories. The final day started off with the topic of workflow and was followed by the last mentoring sessions. Michaela wanted to have her mentoring session with me in the hot tub… I mean that sounded OK.. Just kidding, that was the best idea ever. It felt so good to soak in that hot tub while we chatted over everything! The best part about doing this alongside Meghan is that we are different people! We have different brands, ways we handle our businesses, and we have different strengths and weaknesses. Meghan is more of an introvert and I’m more of an extrovert. That means we bring different things to the table and that these women got to hear and gain insights from both of us and how we run our businesses. Our overall idea and theme was that each of us is enough. We are enough as photographers and as individuals. That means that with each topic, we discussed how where we are at and how we choose to handle our pricing, branding, marketing, workflow, etc, is enough! That it’s OK to do things your way!!

We brought everyone back together for lunch, some final thoughts, and our Ellen moments. We were able to do giveaways because we had the most incredible and giving set of sponsors that helped make this retreat possible. We cannot thank you enough PASS, Agree, 17hats, CG Pro Prints, Mile IQ, and Shoot and Share.

My favorite memories from the retreat have to be first, watching these women have a-ha moments where something just clicked. During my mentoring session with JayCee, we chatted about her branding and it all just came together! As we worked through different ideas, it all just started making sense and it came together perfectly. The second best one was definitely Meghan embracing all of her extrovert power and having a little Ellen moment at the end with our final gift to everyone. “You get a tile, and you get a tile…” That wiped out all of her “extrovertness” for about a week. And the last memory that I will never get over are the hugs and moments we all were able to share together. We encouraged everyone to come and be comfortable. We let them know that we wanted them to feel “safe” here and that it’s OK to be exactly who you are. That meant that I never put on makeup and we hung out in sweatpants a lot. Instead of being embarrassed or worried about what people thought, I was able to get to know these women on a greater level and I’m so grateful for that opportunity! Plus, they also all jumped all over my random lunging and by the end, we were all lunging! 🙂

I’m seriously so grateful for the change that JayCee, Michaela, Alicia, Tahni, and Sarah, gave to Meghan and I. I know that I left that retreat feeling so renewed and filled with new ideas and inspiration. I cannot wait to see where their businesses take them!!! Great things are in store for them! Meghan and I both spaced shooting any BTS images during the teaching portion of this, but I remembered during the styled shoot! Big thanks to JayCee for some of the BTS images that I’m in and for the shot of us teaching!

Typical photographer poseMy old man laugh captured perfectly by JayCee
Hot tub mentorning=success
Learning about flash