Meet Yvellise Lambert

Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Yvellise Lambert. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Yvellise, so great to have you sharing your thoughts and wisdom with our readers and so let’s jump right into one of our favorite topics – empathy. We think a lack of empathy is at the heart of so many issues the world is struggling with and so our hope is to contribute to an environment that fosters the development of empathy. Along those lines, we’d love to hear your thoughts around where your empathy comes from?

Love, Loss and Motherhood. And they all happened at once.

I’ve always had a bleeding heart – I brake for squirrels, cry at weddings…you know the type. That’s why documenting life has always been so important to me. When I’m lost in a moment of joy, there’s always a subsequent sadness in knowing the moment is fleeting.

Nothing could have prepared me, though, for the absolute peak of human experience that was; finding out I was becoming a mother, then losing my unborn baby at the 6th month of pregnancy, auto piloting through a year of life and then finally bringing another baby earth side and watching his one, precious life unfold before me and reinvigorate mine.

I see so much power in every life story untold. And I see beauty in every person I meet.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

I started the contented long island account to share photos and videos I had taken for friends and family at special events like weddings and birthdays because i didn’t think it appropriate for my personal account but wanted my perception of their joy shared in some way.

Quickly and organically I started receiving inquiries to capture events for others and before I had time to realize it, I was running a small business.

Fast forward a year and I had built a whole brand complete with a team of creators who had documented over 100 special moments from larger-than-life wedding days to intimate family portrait sessions and everything in between.

Being touched by grief has driven my emphasis on preserving someone’s memories on their most joyful days. Grief keeps me humble and grateful, every day.

I love my job. I love the on-site work required. I love the relationships I get to build with my clients. I love the local wedding community. I love the creative process. But mostly, I love that I get to gift others with living memories. I get to show them what I see when I look at them. Aside from pregnancy, this is the closest thing to magic. There’s a poem somewhere in there about the parallels of creation – someone needs to write that.

Looking to the future, takes reflecting. I set really small goals for myself when this first started and within a few months I learned to place much bigger bets on myself. At the moment, the biggest undertaking has been the building of my official brand and website.

This is the first step to making what we do a bit more tangible. And without giving it all away, I’ll just say that tangibility is what’s currently inspiring my next big move.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

Courage.

“I learned that courage was not the absence of fear but the triumph over it.”

Allegedly Nelson Mendela said that once but there’s speculation.

In any case, I believe it takes true courage to bet on yourself. You have to risk looking like an amateur because in the beginning, thats what you are. You have to risk producing crap level work so you can improve the next time. You have to be brave enough to be vulnerable to criticism and judgement because it will come and what you do in that moment, how you respond internally will either lead to growth or stunt it entirely.

You have to have the courage to do things you’ve never done before and to do them poorly before you can do them well. And you have to have the courage to let everyone see it happening in real time.

Make the mistakes. Stay consistent. Try again. Improve. Recreate. Reiterate. Until you’ve mastered the technicalities and discovered your own style.

Tell us what your ideal client would be like?

My ideal client is a bride-to-be who cares more about capturing real moments than following this season’s trends. She’s sentimental and a bit nostalgic, drawn to the romantic, documentary-style look that feels like flipping through old photo albums or watching an old home video.

She’s all about meaningful connections and wants her wedding content to reflect the genuine emotions of the day—the laughter, the tears, the hugs that last a little longer. She doesn’t want to waste time performing for social media. Instead, she wants to remember how the day felt through candid moments and memories that are true to her and her people.

She’s intentional about every detail, making choices that reflect her personality and love story. She is more concerned with how her life feels than how it looks.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @contentedlongisland

Image Credits

@gabriellegiovinazziphotography took my photos
bridal photos were taken by me