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Speaking at Blink Conference

We're Amy & Jordan
We're here to help you take amazing photos, build a successful business and live a beautiful life. We're high school sweethearts, parents of three and teachers at heart. 
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Happy Monday, friends!

We just got off the phone with a friend who asked us how our weekend went. We started to start our very next sentence with, “It was crazy!” and then stopped ourselves because, lately, it seems like that’s always the way we start sentences. Let’s just be honest. Right now, our life has been crazy almost every day, and that’s okay, because we feel blessed by the opportunity to love and serve our brides and grooms, as well as our fellow photographers, all of whom we love so much. This weekend, we had the privilege of speaking at The Blink Conference for the first time in our hometown of Scottsdale, Arizona at the swanky, retro hotel called Hotel Valley Ho. We went to a really fun rooftop kick-ff party on Thursday night (Amy wore a police hat and Jordan went rastafari) and then spoke on Friday afternoon on Making the Leap, sharing our practical steps for going from part-time to full-time. It’s a topic that we continue to be passionate about — and probably always will be — because of the joy and freedom we’ve experienced (and all of the opportunities) since we made the leap in 2013.

It’s also special for us because it gives us the chance to speak directly into people’s lives who are where we found ourselves when we were in limbo and couldn’t decide whether to leave our day job and pursue our dream, or stick it out a while longer to get ourselves prepared. In some cases, we talked with photographers who thought they were ready, and after our talk decided to go for it, which is so cool! On the other hand, and this seems to be the case more often than not, we had photographers approach us afterward and thank us for stopping them from making a catastrophic decision by making the leap too soon and before they were ready. For some, they want to get debt-free before they make the leap, which is the first step we teach. For others, they realized that, while they love the idea of being “full-time,” that they’re actually really happy with their day job. It pays well, supports their family, and that by redefining their goals from “full-time” to an amount of work that is “just right,” they can be happy without taking such a big risk. Something we call “full-time for you.”

We shot a wedding on Saturday at one of our favorite local venues, and then headed back to Blink on Sunday to give the closing keynote at the conference. Most people don’t know this, but Amy is a born introvert, and gets SO nervous public speaking, especially when it’s new material that we haven’t presented before, like Sunday’s was. This topic something we’ve been talking about with friends and fellow photographers for a while now, and something that we’d love to speak on more: community. We believe with all our heart that the photography industry, for too many (and us included sometimes) can be a lonely, isolated place without community, where online comparison and thoughts of I’m not good enough pervade and prevail more than they should. So, we laid out a prescription in this talk for how we found community in our local market, and how that changed us forever from looking at others as competition and instead looking at them as colleagues, and more importantly, friends. Like Amy’s mom always tells us, when you start praying for other people to have all the good things you want for yourself in life, that’s when you experience real freedom from jealousy, selfishness, comparison, and everything else we all tend to feel from time to time if we’re not careful. We got choked up at different points during the hour-long presentation and could feel such incredible love and energy from all the photographers in the audience. We just got real. Raw. Super vulnerable. Totally honest. Completely transparent. And we loved how it felt and how it made others feel: safe. The longer we do this, the more we realize that, deep down, we all have a deeply innate desire to be loved, accepted, appreciated, cared for, included, and involved in something greater than ourselves, and we want photographers (heck, all people!) everywhere to know that we struggle with exactly what you struggle with in this area (and probably always will a little bit). We get it. You’re not alone. We hope we get the chance to talk more about this soon. Maybe it’ll even be a future blog series or a continuing conference talk!

All in all, it was another non-stop weekend for us, but full of more love, life-change, new friendships, inspiration, and motivation than we could even handle! I think we’re still processing it all, but we’re thankful to every single person who was at the conference, and, most importantly, we’re thankful for everyone who’s part of our in-person and online community of friends and photographers. We love you all, feel your love, too, in so many ways. Here’s to “crazy” weekends! We wouldn’t have it any other way!

Blink Conference_0001

Photo Credit: Elizabeth Langford

 

meet us

Amy & Jordan

We're high school sweethearts who had no formal training in photography, but went from being elementary school teachers to making six figures as full-time photographers. We're teachers at heart (with over 30,000 online course students) and are here to help YOU take amazing photos, build a thriving business and live a beautiful life. As parents to three littles, we're all about making every minute count and love to share what we're learning along the way. We're so glad you're here!
 

Hey friend! we're

meet us

Amy & Jordan

We're high school sweethearts who had no formal training in photography, but went from being elementary school teachers to making six figures as full-time photographers. We're teachers at heart (with over 30,000 online course students) and are here to help YOU take amazing photos, build a thriving business and live a beautiful life. As parents to three littles, we're all about making every minute count and love to share what we're learning along the way. We're so glad you're here!
 

Hey friend! we're

meet us

Amy & Jordan

We're high school sweethearts who had no formal training in photography, but went from being elementary school teachers to making six figures as full-time photographers. We're teachers at heart (with over 30,000 online course students) and are here to help YOU take amazing photos, build a thriving business and live a beautiful life. As parents to three littles, we're all about making every minute count and love to share what we're learning along the way. We're so glad you're here!
 

Hey friend! we're

meet us

Amy & Jordan

We're high school sweethearts who had no formal training in photography, but went from being elementary school teachers to making six figures as full-time photographers. We're teachers at heart (with over 30,000 online course students) and are here to help YOU take amazing photos, build a thriving business and live a beautiful life. As parents to three littles, we're all about making every minute count and love to share what we're learning along the way. We're so glad you're here!
 

Hey friend! we're

meet us

Amy & Jordan

We're high school sweethearts who had no formal training in photography, but went from being elementary school teachers to making six figures as full-time photographers. We're teachers at heart (with over 30,000 online course students) and are here to help YOU take amazing photos, build a thriving business and live a beautiful life. As parents to three littles, we're all about making every minute count and love to share what we're learning along the way. We're so glad you're here!
 

Hey friend! we're

meet us

Amy & Jordan

We're high school sweethearts who had no formal training in photography, but went from being elementary school teachers to making six figures as full-time photographers. We're teachers at heart (with over 30,000 online course students) and are here to help YOU take amazing photos, build a thriving business and live a beautiful life. As parents to three littles, we're all about making every minute count and love to share what we're learning along the way. We're so glad you're here!
 

Hey friend! we're

don't miss it!

In this FREE online class, we'll show you three major photo mistakes (and how to fix them) so you can take beautiful photos with whatever camera you have! No prior experience required!

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FREE ONLINE PHOTO CLASS

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@amy_demos

don't miss it!

In this FREE online class, we'll show you three major photo mistakes (and how to easily fix them) so you can take beautiful photos with whatever camera you have! No prior experience required! 

take amazing photos

FREE ONLINE PHOTO CLASS

3 MaJOR PHOTO MISTAKES

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Don't take another photo without learning the most common photo mistakes most people make (and how to fix them fast!) Get our secrets for amazing pics no matter what camera you have in this online photography training for FREE! No experience required!