Can you believe that I photographed these two on their wedding day almost exactly TEN YEARS AGO?! This August, Shanna and Ira will have been married for ten years and I will be celebrating a DECADE of running Katelyn James Photography. It’s crazy to think about! I don’t know about you, but I think we need to throw one big KJP Birthday Party!!!! It was several months ago when Shanna asked me who she could book for an anniversary shoot and after realizing that it had been TEN years since their wedding, I gladly told her to come to our property and that I would take their portraits for free!
Their wedding pictures were beautiful… but they were obviously not representative of my BEST work! I was brand NEW! I think I charged $750 and I remember being SO thankful and SO excited that someone believed in me! I knew that I could do great things in this business but I HAD to find at least ONE bride who would take a leap of faith and be the first one to allow me to capture her day!!! Shanna was that bride! I can’t thank her enough for believing in me and allowing me to capture her day!!
This session is so special to me because it’s the last shoot that I did while I was still pregnant with baby James. If you’re in KJ All Access, you know that we loved being able to film this shoot for photographers to learn from… and we also loved that my sweet baby bump was a part of the video. It’s a shoot that represents a lot of things to me. I was coming to an end of a very hard season of being pregnant and losing this precious baby, and I was also celebrating the success of accomplishments of the last ten years in business.
If you had shown me the work that I currently have on my portfolio site back in 2008, I NEVER would have believed that I would be capable of creating images like I am now!!! I’ve come a long way since these first images were taken. Thank goodness for growth and improvement!!! It doesn’t matter where you are when you start your photography journey, you can always improve and move forward!!
Enjoy these images of Shanna and Ira from TEN YEARS LATER!!! They have been married for a decade, have had two babies, and have lived all over the country!!!!
Thanks for reading!
— Katelyn
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