Meet Raegan Waite

We recently connected with Raegan Waite and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Raegan, thanks for sharing your insights with our community today. Part of your success, no doubt, is due to your work ethic and so we’d love if you could open up about where you got your work ethic from?

Nothing terrifies me more than wasting my life away. When I was in college I had a summer internship at an accounting firm, and quickly saw what the next 30 years could look like. I wanted to run the other way. Nothing is wrong with pursuing a typical 9-5 office job, but it was definitely not for me. My work ethic was born out of the question of “How do I create a life that feels purposeful & exciting & like time well spent?” I wanted to create a job that meant something to me and provided space for me to travel and generously love on my family & friends. That is my biggest motivator for working hard. Having the freedom to do those things keeps me going and encourages me to push through hard projects or long weeks.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

My love for photography started with scrapbooks and yearbooks, capturing the big and small moments that make life beautiful. When I photographed my first wedding (for a whopping $60 and a Finish Line Gift Card I should add), I fell in love with the storytelling all over again — capturing the emotions, colors, family chaos, and everything in between.

After shooting solo for a few years, I built an associate team to serve more couples and budgets without sacrificing quality. Together, my team and I have photographed over 350 weddings and received hundreds of five-star reviews. I absolutely adore & admire every photographer on my team. Each one brings their own personality and style, but we all share the same mission: to make you feel comfortable, celebrated, and absolutely in love with how we photograph your story.

For us, wedding photography is so much more than pretty pictures –
it’s about capturing the joy, the tears, the family moments, and everything that makes your day unique. I’ve been at this for over a decade now, and I can honestly say it never gets old. It’s the biggest honor to document the day you marry your person and I’ll never take that for granted.

Clay House is based in Indianapolis, Indiana, but we’ve shot weddings all over the country, helping celebrate love with photos that make you feel all over again.

We recently launched a new website to better share our approach & how we deeply care about connecting with couples in order to best serve them. Wedding photography is a beautiful job, and it feels like the biggest honor when couples invite us in to celebrate with those they love most.

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. Asking good questions. This has been a game changer in connecting with my clients and their families. Making time to understand and learn about people before we ever take their photo has helped us really create work that means something, and work that we think will be cherished for generations to come.

2. Doing work for free. I brought my camera EVERYWHERE when I first started, and was constantly trying to create work that would attract the types of client we wanted to work with. I really had to humble myself and do a lot of stuff for free in order to create a portfolio that felt honest to who we wanted Clay House to be.

3. Outsourcing! For the longest time I thought no one could do it like me, but I quickly learned the power of outsourcing and can now see that my client’s experience is 100x better because my brain isn’t in 5 different places. It has been a game changer to hone in on spending my time on the right things, and hiring out everything else. It took time to get to this point but now it is the thing that keeps me going. Having support in this way allows me to have space to be creative & allows me to play more of the visionary role.

Any advice for folks feeling overwhelmed?

I try to move my body outside! Often times I get overwhelmed when I have been staring at my screen too long. I feel so refreshed & grounded when I get outside and make time move.

I also love doing “brain dumps” where I make a giant list of every idea/task/chore floating around in my brain and then organize when I’m going to do it all from there.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://clayhousephoto.com
• Instagram: @clayhosuephoto