2015 is off to a GREAT start, friends!! Last week, I started the year diving head first into growing my business. I had a coaching session with Katelyn James!! If you don’t know her, ‘you betta ask somebody’!! Haha just kidding. But seriously, check out her website and prepare to be amazed. Katelyn is an OUTSTANDING wedding photographer with a beautiful soul. After chatting for 5 minutes, I felt like I reconnected with an old friend! The coaching session consisted of lunch, headshots (below!!) and a one-on-one Q&A in her home office. Let’s recap!

I met Katelyn, her husband Michael (who is just as awesome), and another photographer named Nicki Metcalf (love her!) at Bertucci’s for lunch in Richmond. Nicki had her morning coaching session with Katelyn and it was awesome to see how pumped she was. We all had a great conversation over a delicious meal about photography, full-time jobs, conferences and so much more.  After an hour of lunch & chatting, I couldn’t believe I had the rest of the afternoon left! I felt so full of knowledge (and lasagna haha) that I could have driven home right then!

We headed to a parking garage for headshots. Yep, you read that right. A parking garage! Only Katelyn James could rock out some headshots in a parking garage! She found an empty spot, light coming in at the perfect angle and snapped away! It. was. FREEZING!!!!! The wind was on full blast (as you can see from my wild hair) but I was so excited so I didn’t care! Katelyn worked fast while sharing tips on posing and making the client feel comfortable. I’ll tell you this much- she was awesome at making me feel comfortable! Just five months after having Koa Avery, I was a little nervous about stepping in front of the camera! Katelyn made me feel so beautiful and I hope I’ve done a great job doing that for my clients.

After our headshots, I headed to Katelyn’s house for the one-on-one Q&A. Her house is SO beautifully decorated. If HGTV and Pinterest had a baby, it would be Katelyn James’ house 🙂 🙂 As far as the Q&A, I am STILL processing the valuable information she shared with me about photography and small business! Marketing, editing tips, branding, pricing, workflow… nothing was off limits. Katelyn was prepared to talk about my business specifically. She had looked through my website, portfolio, pricing and Facebook page. One thing I’ll always hold in my heart is that Katelyn said my work was beautiful and consistent. What a compliment!  She has such a peace and positivity about her when giving feedback, too. The number one advice she had for me was to show everyone more of the ANGIE behind McPherson Photography! And she’s right! There are so many things I could be posting about in addition to weddings & portraits including behind the scenes, photography tips, vacation recaps, family stuff, etc. I’ve already got a blog series in mind for this! Her second big recommendation was to have one all encompassing wedding package. Currently, I have two so you may seem some changes in the next few weeks 🙂 I won’t go into detail just yet about our entire conversation because I plan to blog about my new business goals for 2015 next week!

Katelyn, I adore your heart for this industry. Thank you for sharing your experiences and knowledge with others, especially me! I am so glad to have met you and can’t wait to implement the strategies we discussed! XOXO!!

Here are my new headshots taken by Katelyn! And keep scrolling for more images throughout the day including a pic with her adorable puppy, Bokeh!

Here are the headshots I took of Katelyn! She’s absolutely stunning rocking a new hair cut!

Katelyn set up her camera to take a shoot of the three of us. Nicki Metcalf is such a sweetheart!
This is a great perspective of where we were shooting haha!A few iPhone photos!
And finally, I got a sweet pic with Katelyn’s adorable puppy Bokeh the Bich-Poo 🙂

XOXO!