We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Joel and Amber Palmer. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Joel and Amber below.
Joel and Amber, we’ve been so fortunate to work with so many incredible folks and one common thread we have seen is that those who have built amazing lives for themselves are also often the folks who are most generous. Where do you think your generosity comes from?
“We love because he first loved us” has been the Bible verse that drives us behind much of our generosity. All that we have, we’ve been given by God, and our goal then is to share that with others. When we first got into photography, we didn’t have a lot of clients, so we’d give away free sessions to build our portfolio and get more practice at taking pictures and working with clients. As we grew in our business and started having plenty of clients, we still gave away a handful of sessions. Even to this day, we do free mini-sessions for anyone in our church. We have been blessed with a talent for photography, and we love to share that in as many ways as possible.
Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
We are wedding photographers based in Huntsville, Alabama. Over a decade of shooting weddings has allowed us to develop our skills as photographers, but we quickly learned that this business is more than just about taking pictures. iPhones can seemingly take pictures that are almost as good as ours, so there has to be so much more to our business than pictures. Our goal then, is to make our couples look amazing by finding great light and location, feel confident and comfortable as a couple while we guide them on how to pose and interact, and ultimately to help ensure their wedding day goes as smoothly as possible. That means we spend much of our time interacting with our couples, guiding them as we take their pictures, going with the flow of the day, and being joyful as we interact with everyone at the wedding.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
1. Never stop learning! Thankfully we learned early on in our business career the importance of learning. Even now we try to consume as many business books, audiobooks, and podcasts as we can to continue to grow and learn. And it doesn’t always have to be directly related to your specific business. The broader your horizon, the more opportunities you might see along the way. 2. “Have courage, and be kind” is one of our favorite mottos, taken straight from the live-action Cinderella movie. This has such great practical advice for our wedding photography business! There’s a time on almost every wedding day when we need to have the courage to step up and organize and arrange people for a specific picture. Family pictures and bridal party pictures are the time to speak up, be confident, and sometimes have a lot of courage! And yet, it all needs to be done with kindness. Whether it’s a smile to the catering servers, a compliment to the florist on a stunning floral arrangement, or even a friendly joke with a groomsman, everything needs to be done with kindness. We’re in the business of building relationships, and we do it through pictures.
3. Everyone needs to be a marketer. Early on we discovered the importance of marketing and consumed a lot of marketing books, and even now we keep seeing how much of what we do is marketing. A bulk of our business comes from referrals, especially referrals from other vendors. So we spend much of our time interacting with other vendors, providing them with pictures and even products to help them in their business. “A rising tide lifts all ships” means that the success of other people’s businesses means success for ours as well.
What do you do when you feel overwhelmed? Any advice or strategies?
Two big keys to avoiding overwhelm. The first is to outsource if possible. Early on in our photography career, we made the choice to outsource a bulk of our editing. This ended up saving many hours after each wedding, and allowed us to get much of our life and evenings back! But it also allowed us to have a faster turnaround, better looking pictures (let’s be honest, we’re photographers, not editors!), and avoid overwhelm. It’s so easy to hang on to all sorts of tasks saying “but nobody else can do it as well as I can!” While this is so often not the case (there are plenty of things others can do better than I can!), it also limits our growth opportunities. If we’re so busy with the mundane things in our business, we’ll miss other opportunities or even burn ourselves out way earlier. Learn to grow your team, and let go of as much as possible in your business. The second key is to simply take things one step at a time. Just start chipping away at whatever the next step is. Maybe it’s a phone call, maybe it’s writing a note to a vendor, maybe it’s finding someone to help rebuild your website. Perhaps you just need to sit down and start writing that blog post. Whatever it is, just start the next step and get to work!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://joelandamberphotography.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joelandamber/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/joelandamber/
- Other: https://www.pinterest.com/joelandamber
Image Credits
Joel and Amber Photography
